INTRODUCTION
the digamma is still living, it is obviously growing weak, and is by no means uniformly effective.
(2) On the other hand while tradition steadily puts the Cyclic poets at various dates from 776 B.C. downwards, it is equally consistent in regarding Homer and Hesiod as "prehistoric." Herodotus indeed puts both poets 400 years before his own time; that is, at about 830-820 B.C., and the evidence stated above points to the middle of the ninth century as the probable date for the Works and Days. The Theogony might be tentatively placed a century later; and the Catalogues and Eoiae are again later, but not greatly later, than the Theogony: the Shield of Heracles may be ascribed to the later half of the seventh century, but there is not evidence enough to show whether the other "developed" poems are to be regarded as of a date so low as this.
Literary Value of Hesiod.—Quintilian's[1] judgment on Hesiod that "he rarely rises to great heights . . . and to him is given the palm in the middle-class of speech" is just, but is liable to give a wrong impression. Hesiod has nothing that remotely approaches such scenes as that between Priam and Achilles, or the pathos of Andromache's preparations for Hector's return, even as he was falling before the walls of Troy; but in matters that come within the range of ordinary experience, he rarely fails to rise to the appropriate level. Take, for instance, the description of the Iron Age (Works and Days, 182 ff.) with its catalogue of wrongdoing and violence ever increasing until Aidôs and Nemesis are forced to
- ↑ x. 1. 52.
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