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REMAINS OF HESIOD.
The Cadmian realm: where they with fatal might
Strove for the flocks of Œdipus in fight.
Some war in navies led to Troy's far shore;[1]
O'er the great space of sea their course they bore;
For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair:
And death for Helen' sake o'erwhelm'd them there.
Them on earth's utmost verge the god assign'd
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,
In those blest isles[2] where Saturn holds his reign,
Strove for the flocks of Œdipus in fight.
Some war in navies led to Troy's far shore;[1]
O'er the great space of sea their course they bore;
For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair:
And death for Helen' sake o'erwhelm'd them there.
Them on earth's utmost verge the god assign'd
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,
In those blest isles[2] where Saturn holds his reign,
- ↑ To Troy’s far shore.] Dr. Clarke in his travels in Greece, Egypt, and the Holy-land, has noticed that the existence of Troy, and the facts relative to the Trojan war, are supported by a variety of evidence independent of Homer: as has been abundantly shown in the course of the controversy between Mr. Bryant and his able antagonist, Mr. Morritt. This passage of Hesiod seems to me decisive testimony. If Hesiod be older than Homer, as is computed by the chronicler of the Parian Marbles, it is self-evident that the Trojan war is not of Homeric invention: and if they were contemporary, or even if Hesiod, according to the vulgar chronology, were really junior by a century, it is not at all probable that he should have copied the fiction of another bard, while tracing the primitive history of mankind. He manifestly used the ancient traditions of his nation, of which the war of Troy was one.
- ↑ In those blest isles.] Pindar also alludes to these in his second Olympic Ode:They take the way which Jove did long ordain
To Saturn's ancient tower beside the deep:
