without any musical instruments, the reciter holding in his hand only a laurel branch or staff. As Bœotia, Phocis, and Eubœa were the principal parts of Greece where the Hesiodic poetry flourished, we cannot be surprised at finding that the Delphic oracle is a subject of great veneration with this school, and that there exists a strong resemblance between the hexameter oracles of the Pythia and the verses of Hesiod; nay, there is a verse in Hesiod, which is also mentioned by Herodotus as a Pythian oracle, and Hesiod himself is said to have possessed the gift of prophecy, and to have acquired it in Acarnania. A great many allegorical expressions, such as we frequently find in the oracular language, are common also in the poems of Hesiod. This circumstance, as well as certain grammatical forms in the language of Hesiod, constitute another point of difference between the Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, although the dialect in which the poems of both schools are composed is, on the whole, the same—that is, the Ionic-epic, which had become established as the language of epic poetry through the influence of Homer.
The ancients attributed to the one poet Hesiod a great variety of works; that is, all those which, in form and substance, answered to the spirit of the Hesiodic school, and thus seemed to be of a common origin. We shall subjoin a list of them, beginning with those which are still extant.
1. Works and Days, (Latin, Opera et Dies.) In the time of Pausanias, this was the only poem which the people about Mt. Helicon considered to be a genuine production of Hesiod, with the exception of the first ten lines, which certainly appear to have been prefixed by a later hand. There are also several other parts of this poem which seem to be later interpolations; but, on the whole, it bears the impress of a genuine production of very high antiquity, though in its present form it may consist only of disjointed portions of the original. It is written in the most homely and simple style, with scarcely any poetical imagery or ornament, and must be looked upon as the most ancient specimen of didactic poetry. It contains ethical, political, and economical precepts, the last of which constitute the greater part of the work, consisting of rules about choosing a wife, the education of children, agriculture, commerce, and navigation. A poem on these subjects was not of course held in much esteem by the powerful and ruling classes in Greece at the time, and made the Spartan Cleomenes contemptuously call Hesiod the poet of helots, in contrast with Homer, the delight of the warrior. The conclusion of the poem, from verse 750 to 828 is a sort of calendar, and was probably appended to it in later times, and the addition "Days," in the title
