CHAPTER VI.
IMITATORS OF HESIOD.
Although it would be impossible to point to any direct imitation of Hesiod in poetry subsequent to Virgil's, and though even his is only imitation within certain conditions, it seems incumbent on us to notice briefly the influence, for the most part indirect and unconscious, which his poetry, especially his didactic poetry, has had upon later poets. Those shorter epic scraps, of which the 'Shield of Hercules' is a sample, have their modern presentment, if anywhere, in idyls and professed fragments; but the differences here betwixt the old and the new are so considerable as to make it unsafe to press the likeness. For the 'Theogony' we have one or two modern parallels, though it, too, has served rather for a mine into which Christian apologists might dig for relics of heathen mythology, than as a type to be reproduced at the risk of that endlessness which is associated with genealogies. But as regards Hesiod's 'Works and Days,' there can be no question that its form, and its union of practical teaching with charm of versification, possessed an
