WORKS.
19
Earth-wandering spirits they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side:
And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:
Their kingly state;[1] and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands the wealth of fields[2] is given.
The gods then form'd a second race of man,
Degenerate far; and silver years began.
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:
Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side:
And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:
Their kingly state;[1] and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands the wealth of fields[2] is given.
The gods then form'd a second race of man,
Degenerate far; and silver years began.
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:
Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.
- ↑ Their kingly state.] The administration of forensic justice is implied in the words γερας βασιληιον, regal office.
- ↑ The wealth of fields.] Heinsius quotes Hesychius to show that πλοῦτος does not always mean riches, properly so called; but the riches of the soil: and says that it is here applied to the good dæmons as presiding over the productions of the seasons. Bacchus, in the Lenæan rites, was invoked by the epithet πλουτοδοτης, wealth-bestower; in allusion to the vineyard. It seems intimated here, that the Spirits reward the deeds of the just by abundant harvests; the common belief of the Greeks, as appears both from Hesiod and Homer.
of the first ages, as may be observed likewise in Hesiod. Both the poets, however the scene may be varied, allude to the happy times immediately after the deluge; when the great patriarch had full power over his descendants, and equity prevailed without written law.—Bryant.
