Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/816

proceeds, from the spontaneous generation of Erebus and Night from Chaos, to detail a cosmogonic order at first corresponding with the Mosaic. The first ruler of creation, Uranus, is disabled and dethroned by Cronus, and Cronus in turn by his sixth son by Rhea, Zeus; but the chronicling of Titans and Cyclopes, of Nereids and Oceanids, divine rivers and water-nymphs, defies even the briefest enumera- tion. The poet has interwoven several episodes of rare merit, such as the contest of Zeus and the Olympian gods with the Titans, or the description of the prison-house in which the vanquished Titans are confined, with thie Giants for keepers and Day and Night for janitors (735 seg.). Notable also is the version of the legend of Pandora given in the Theogony as compared with that in the Works and Days. The Theogony omits the part played in the earlier poem by Epimetheus in accepting Pandora at Jove’s hands in spite of the counsel of Prometheus, as well as the mention of the casket of evils from which in the Works and Days Pandora lifts the lid with such woeful results.

The only other approach to a poem of Hesiod is the so-called Shield of Hercules, a piece of patchwork with which interpolators have done their worst. The opening verses are attributed by a nameless grammarian to the fourth book of oiaz. The theme of the piece is the expedition of Hercules and Iolaus against the robber Cycnus; but its main object apparently is to describe the shield of Hercules (141-317). ©. O. Miiiler deems this description worthy of a place beside Homer’s shield of Achilles in 77. xiii., and recognizes in it the genuine spirit of the Hesiodic school. Titles and fragments of other lost poems of Hesiod have come down to us: didactic, as the Maxims of Chiron; genealogic, as the gimius; and mythic, as the Marriage of Ceyx and the Descent of Theseus to Hades.

A strong characteristic of Hesiod’s style is his sententious and proverbial philosophy (as in Works and Days, 24-5, 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. With the poet’s history, apart from the evidence of his poems, we have little acquaintance. There is reason to suppose that in later life he removed from Ascra to Orchomenus, where, ac- cording to Pausanias, were his sepulchre and epitaph. Tradition has assigned a tragical ending to a life seemingly placid and unemotional; but the story that he met a violent death near the Locrian Géneon in the territory of Naupactus, by reason of an intrigue with a sister of his host, or a guilty knowledge of such intrigue, is probably valueless except as evidence of the hero-worship of Hesiod in Locris and Beeotia (cf. Friedel, Die Sage vom Tole Hesiods, Leipsic, 1879). The poet will be remem- bered as the first of didactic poets, the accredited syste- matizer of Greek mythology, and the rough but not unpoetical sketcher of the lines on which Virgil wrought gut his exquisitely finished Georgics.

Among the older editions of the Hesiodic poems may be mentioned those published at Venice in 1495 and 1537, and those of Heinsius (Leyd. 1622), Schrevelius (Leyd. 1650), Grevius (Amst. 1701), Robinson (Oxf. 1737); and among those of modern date, Paley (Lond. 1861), Lehrs (Leips. 1840, new ed. 1868), Schomann (Berl. 1869), Kéchly and Kinkel (Leip. 1870), Flach (Berl. 1874). The Works and Days has been edited apart by Spehn (Leip. 1819), Vollbehr (Kiel, 1844), Lennep (Ainst. 1847); and the Theogony by F. A. Wolf (Halle, 1788), Lennep (Amst. 1843), Schomann (Berl. 1869), and Flach (Berl. 1873). The Fragments were col- lected by Markscheffel (Leip. 1840). The many disputed questions associated with the name of Hesiod have given rise to a vast critical and polemic literature. In regard to the language of the poems the student may consult W. Clemm, ‘‘ Krit. Beitrage zur Lehre vom Digamma” in Curtius, Studien, ix. ; Dr H. Flach, Das dialektische Diqamma des Hesiodos (Ber). 1876); Alois Rzach, Der Dialckt des Hesiodus (Leip. 1876). The composition and system of the Theogony have been investigated by Kock (Breslau, 1842), Gerhard (Berl. 1856), Wolcker (Elberf. 1865), Leitschuh (Wurz- burg, 1867), Schomann (Berl. 1868), Flach (Leip. 1874),

(j. da.)

HESPERIDES, maidens whose number is variously given as three, four, or seven, who guarded the golden apples which Earth gave Hera at her marriage to Zeus. They live far away in the west at the borders of Ocean, in other words at that point of heaven where the sun scts. Hence the sun (according to Mimnermus) sails in the golden bowl that Hephzestus made from the abode of the Hesperides to the land where he rises again. According to other accounts they dwell among the Hyperboreans, who live in quietness and calm, ze. they dwell in heaven among the souls of them that have died on earth, The golden apples grow on a tree which is guarded by an ever-watehful dragon. The sun is often in German and Lithuanian legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the nightly heaven, like the fleece of the sun-ram that was sacrificed and skinned, and the dragon, the envious power, keeps the light back from men till some Leneticent 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 gardenis. Arrived there he slays the dragon and carries the apples to Argos; and finally, like Perseus, he gives them to Athene. The Hesperides are, like the Sirens, beautiful singers, Avyidwvor. They are said to be the daughters of Atlas; or, according to other aecounts, they are the children of Erebus and Night, or Phorcys and Ceto, and are thus sisters of the Graz, who also receive into their care the setting sun. Hesperides are introduced into the Argonautic legend, but it is doubtful if this is really antique, or only a poetic embellishment of the wanderings of the Argonauts.

HESS. Amongst numerous German artists of this name, the following particularly deserve attention.

Heinrich Maria Hess—Von Hess, after he received a patent of personal nobility—was born at Diisseldorf in 1798, and brought up to the profession of art by his father, the engraver Karl Ernst Christoph Hess. Karl Tess had already acquired a name when in 1806 the elector of Bavaria, having been raised to a kingship by Napoleon, transferred the Diisseldorf 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 collec- tions at Munich. Te decorated the Aukirche, the Clypto- thek, and the Allerhciligencapelle at Munich with frescos ; and his cartoons were selected for glass windows in the cathedrals of Cologne and Ratisbon. Then came the great cycle of frescos in the basilica of St Boniface at Munich,