HESIOD.
CHAPTER I.
THE LIFE OF HESIOD.
Of materials for a biography of the father of didactic poetry there is, as might be expected, far less scarcity than is felt in the case of the founder of epic. Classed as contemporaries by Herodotus, Homer and Hesiod represent two schools of authorship—the former the objective and impersonal, wherein the mover of the puppets that fill his stage is himself invisible; the latter the subjective and personal, which communicates to reader and listener, through the medium of its verse, the private thoughts and circumstances of the individual author. Homer, behind the scenes, sets the battles of the Iliad in array, or carries the reader with his hero through the voyages and adventures of the Odyssey. Hesiod, with all the naïveté of reality, sets himself in the foreground, and lets us into confidences about his family matters his hopes and fears, his aims and discouragements, the earnests of his suc-
