20
REMAINS OF HESIOD.
Yet still a hundred years[1] beheld the boy
Beneath the mother's roof, her infant joy;
All tender and unform'd: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom'd, it wither'd in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:
Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf'd; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,
And second honours grace their memory.
Beneath the mother's roof, her infant joy;
All tender and unform'd: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom'd, it wither'd in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:
Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf'd; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,
And second honours grace their memory.
- ↑ A hundred years.] Heinsius explains this passage to mean, that "although this age was indeed deteriorated from the former, this much of good remained; that the boys were not early exposed to the contagion of vice, but long participated the chaste and retired education of their sisters in the seclusion of the female apartments." Grævius, on the contrary, insists that Hesiod notes it as a mark of depravation, that the youth were educated in sloth and effeminacy, and grew up, as it were, on the lap of their mothers. These two opinions are about equally to the purpose. ["The poet manifestly alludes to the longevity of persons in the patriarchic age: for they did not, it seems, die at three-score and ten, but took more time even in advancing towards puberty. He speaks, however, of their being cut off in their prime; and whatever portion of life nature might have allotted to them, they were abridged of it by their own folly and injustice."]—Bryant.
