The wisest bard of bards in wisdom tried."
—Pausan., ix. 38, § 4.
The question of Hesiod's literary offspring has been much debated, the 'Works and Days' alone enjoying an undisputed genuineness. But it does not seem that the 'Theogony' was impugned before the time of Pausanias,[1] who records that Hesiod's Heliconian fellow-citizens recognised only the 'Works and Days.' On the other hand—to say nothing of internal evidence in the 'Theogony'—we have the testimony of Herodotus to Hesiod's authorship; whilst the ancient popular opinion on this subject finds corroboration in Plato's direct allusion to a certain passage of the 'Theogony' as Hesiod's recognised work. Alluding to vv. 116-118 of the 'Theogony,' the philosopher writes in the 'Symposium' (178),—"As Hesiod says,—
The everlasting seat of all that is,
And Love.'
In other words, after Chaos, the Earth and Love, these two came into being." Aristophanes, also, in more than one drama, must be considered to refer to the 'Theogony' and the "Works." Furthermore, it is certain that the Alexandrian critics, to whom scepticism in the matter would have opened a congenial field, never so much as hinted a question concerning the age and authorship of the 'Theogony.' Besides these two works, but one other poem has
- ↑ ix. 31, § 3.
