Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/119

Most foolish Perses! let the truths I tell,
Which spring from knowledge, in thy bosom dwell:
Lo! wickednesses rife in troops appear;
Smooth is the track of vice,^[1] the mansion near:
On virtue's path delays and perils grow:
The gods have placed before the sweat that bathes the brow:^[2]

1. Smooth is the track of vice.] The way of sinners is made plain with stones: but at the end thereof is the pit of hell. Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, xxi. 10.
   Both Plato and Xenophon who quote this line of Hesiod, read λειη, smooth, instead of ολιγη, short. Krebsius prefers the reading, as a short road and dwells near make a vapid tautology: and smooth forms a good antithesis to rough.
2. The sweat that bathes the brow.] Spenser has imitated this parable in his description of Honour:
   In woods, in waves, in wars she wonts to dwell,
    And will be found with peril and with pain:
   Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell
    Unto her happy mansion attain.
   Before her gate high God did sweat ordain,
    And wakeful watches ever to abide:
   But easy is the way and passage plain
    To Pleasure's palace: it may soon be spied,
   And day and night her doors to all stand open wide.
   
   
   This allegory of Hesiod seems the basis of the apologue of Hercules, Virtue and Vice, which Xenophon in his "Memorabilia," 2, 21, quotes by memory from Prodicus's "History of Hercules."