who wedded immortals, of which all but a few fragments are lost.[1] The proem (1-116) addressed to the Heliconian and Pierian muses, is considered to have been variously enlarged, altered and arranged by successive rhapsodists. The poet has interwoven several episodes of rare merit, such as the contest of Zeus and the Olympian gods with the Titans, and the description of the prison-house in which the vanquished Titans are confined, with the Giants for keepers and Day and Night for janitors (735 seq.).
The only other poem which has come down to us under Hesiod’s name is the Shield of Heracles, the opening verses of which are attributed by a nameless grammarian to the fourth book of Eoiai. The theme of the piece is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against the robber Cycnus; but its main object apparently is to describe the shield of Heracles (141-317). It is clearly an imitation of the Homeric account of the shield of Achilles (Iliad, xviii. 470) and is now generally considered spurious. Titles and fragments of other lost poems of Hesiod have come down to us: didactic, as the Maxims of Cheiron; genealogical, as the Aegimius, describing the contest of that mythical ancestor of the Dorians with the Lapithae; and mythical, as the Marriage of Ceyx and the Descent of Theseus to Hades.
Recent editions of Hesiod include the Ἀγὼν Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου, the contest of song between Homer and Hesiod at the funeral games held in honour of King Amphidamas at Chalcis. This little tract belongs to the time of Hadrian, who is actually mentioned as having been present during its recitation, but is founded on an earlier account by the sophist Alcidamas (q.v.). Quotations (old and new) are made from the works of both poets, and, in spite of the sympathies of the audience, the judge decides in favour of Hesiod. Certain biographical details of Homer and Hesiod are also given.
A strong characteristic of Hesiod’s style is his sententious and proverbial philosophy (as in Works and Days, 24-25, 40, 218, 345, 371). There is naturally less of this in the Theogony, yet there too not a few sentiments take the form of the saw or adage. He has undying fame as the first of didactic poets (see Didactic Poetry), the accredited systematizer of Greek mythology and the rough but not unpoetical sketcher of the lines on which Virgil wrought out his exquisitely finished Georgics.
Bibliography.—Complete works: Editio princeps (Milan, 1493); Göttling-Flach (1878), with full bibliography up to date of publication; C. Sittl (1889), with introduction and critical and explanatory notes in Greek; F. A. Paley (1883); A. Rzach (1902), including the fragments. Separate works: Works and Days: Van Lennep (1847); A. Kirchhoff (1889); A. Steitz, Die Werke und Tage des Hesiodos (1869), dealing chiefly with the composition and arrangement of the poem; G. Wlastoff, Prométhée, Pandore, et la légende des siècles (1883). Theogony: Van Lennep (1843); F. G. Welcker (1865), valuable edition; G. F. Schömann (1868), with text, critical notes and exhaustive commentary; H. Flach, Die Hesiodische Theogonie (1873), with prolegomena dealing chiefly with the digamma in Hesiod, System der Hesiodischen Kosmogonie (1874), and Glossen und Scholien zur Theogonie (1876); Meyer, De compositione Theogoniae (1887). Shield of Heracles: Wolf-Ranke (1840); Van Lennep-Hullemann (1854); F. Stegemann, De scuti Herculis Hesiodei poëta Homeri carminum imitatore (1904); the fragments were published by W. Marckscheffel in 1840; for the Ἀγὼν Ὁμήρου (ed. A. Rzach, 1908) see F. Nietzsche in Rheinisches Museum (new series), xxv. p. 528. For papyrus fragments of the “Catalogue,” some 50 lines on the wooing of Helen, and a shorter fragment in praise of Peleus, see Wilamowitz-Möllendorff in Sitzungsber. der königl. preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, for 26th of July 1900; for fragments relating to Meleager and the suitors of Helen, Berliner Klassikertexte, v. (1907); of the Theogony, Oxyrh. Pap. vi. (1908).
On the subject generally, consult G. F. Schömann, Opuscula, ii. (1857); H. Flach, Die Hesiodischen Gedichte (1874); A. Rzach, Der Dialekt des Hesiodos (1876); P. O. Gruppe, Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen, i. (1887); O. Friedel, Die Sage vom Tode Hesiods (1879), from Jahrbücher für classische Philologie (10th suppl. Band, 1879); J. Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece (1908). There is a full bibliography of the publications relating to Hesiod (1884–1898) by A. Rzach in Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, xxvii. (1900).
There are translations of the Hesiodic poems in English by Cooke (1728), C. A. Elton (1815), J. Banks (1856), and specially by A. W. Mair, with introduction and appendices (Oxford Library of Translations, 1908); in German (metrical version) with valuable introductions and notes by R. Peppmüller (1896) and in other modern languages. (J. Da.; J. H. F.)
HESPERIDES, in Greek mythology, maidens who guarded
the golden apples which Earth gave Hera on her marriage to
Zeus. According to Hesiod (Theogony, 215) they were the
daughters of Erebus and Night; in later accounts, of Atlas and
Hesperis, or of Phorcys and Ceto (schol. on Apoll. Rhod. iv.
1399; Diod. Sic. iv. 27). They were usually supposed to be
three in number—Aegle, Erytheia, Hesperis (or Hesperethusa);
according to some, four, or even seven. They lived far away
in the west at the borders of Ocean, where the sun sets. Hence
the sun (according to Mimnermus ap. Athenaeum xi. p. 470)
sails in the golden bowl made by Hephaestus from the abode
of the Hesperides to the land where he rises again. According
to other accounts their home was among the Hyperboreans.
The golden apples grew on a tree guarded by Ladon, the ever-watchful
dragon. The sun is often in German and Lithuanian
legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the
nightly heaven, while the dragon, the envious power, keeps the
light back from men till some beneficent power takes it from
him. Heracles is the hero who brings back the golden apples
to mankind again. Like Perseus, he first applies to the Nymphs,
who help him to learn where the garden is. Arrived there he
slays the dragon and carries the apples to Argos; and finally,
like Perseus, he gives them to Athena. The Hesperides are,
like the Sirens, possessed of the gift of delightful song. The
apples appear to have been the symbol of love and fruitfulness,
and are introduced at the marriages of Cadmus and Harmonia
and Peleus and Thetis. The golden apples, the gift of Aphrodite
to Hippomenes before his race with Atalanta, were also plucked
from the garden of the Hesperides.
HESPERUS (Gr. Ἕσπερος, Lat. Vesper), the evening star,
son or brother of Atlas. According to Diodorus Siculus (iii.
60, iv. 27), he ascended Mount Atlas to observe the motions of
the stars, and was suddenly swept away by a whirlwind. Ever
afterwards he was honoured as a god, and the most brilliant star
in the heavens was called by his name. Although as a mythological
personality he is regarded as distinct from Phosphoros
or Heosphoros (Lat. Lucifer), the morning star or bringer of
light, the son of Astraeus (or Cephalus) and Eos, the two stars
were early identified by the Greeks.
Diog. Laërt. viii. 1. 14; Cicero, De nat. deorum, ii. 20; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 6 [8].
HESS, the name of a family of German artists.
Heinrich Maria Hess (1798–1863)—von Hess, after he received a patent of personal nobility—was born at Düsseldorf and brought up to the profession of art by his father, the engraver Karl Ernst Christoph Hess (1755–1828). Karl Hess had already acquired a name when in 1806 the elector of Bavaria, having been raised to a kingship by Napoleon, transferred the Düsseldorf academy and gallery to Munich. Karl Hess accompanied the academy to its new home, and there continued the education of his children. In time Heinrich Hess became sufficiently master of his art to attract the attention of King Maximilian. He was sent with a stipend to Rome, where a copy which he made of Raphael’s Parnassus, and the study of great examples of monumental design, probably caused him to become a painter of ecclesiastical subjects on a large scale. In 1828 he was made professor of painting and director of all the art collections at Munich. He decorated the Aukirche, the Glyptothek and the Allerheiligencapelle at Munich with frescoes; and his cartoons were selected for glass windows in the cathedrals of Cologne and Regensburg. Then came the great cycle of frescoes in the basilica of St Boniface at Munich, and the monumental picture of the Virgin and Child enthroned between the four doctors, and receiving the homage of the four patrons of the Munich churches (now in the Pinakothek). His last work, the “Lord’s Supper,” was found unfinished in his atelier after his death in 1863. Before testing his strength as a composer Heinrich Hess
- ↑ Part of the poem was called Eoiai, because the description of each heroine began with ἤ οἴη, "or like as." (See Bibliography.)
