recalls to us those of the banquet-hall in the Odyssey. When Antinous rates the swine-herd Eumæus for bringing Ulysses disguised as a beggar-man into the hall of feasting, his grievance is that
Of vagrants and mean mendicants that prey,
As kill-joys, at our banquets, we have got
A concourse ample. Is it nought to thee
That such as these, here gathering, all the means
Of thy young master waste?"
—Odyssey, xvii. 624-628 (Musgrave).
It is probable that the beggar's place was nearer the threshold than that of Phemius the bard, who had just before been singing to his harp, or of other inspired minstrels, of whom it is said that
At all feasts are made welcome."
—Odyssey, xvii. 639-641 (Musgrave).
But that he had an assured footing and dole in such assemblies is plain from Irus's jealousy of a supposed rival beggar, which results in the boxing-match with Ulysses in the 18th Book.
To return to Hesiod. The bettermost kind of rivalry is the goddess to whom he would have Perses give heed, and not her wrangling sister, who inspires wrongful dealing, chicanery, and roguish shifts, and has no fancy for fair-play or healthy emulation. She, says the poet, has had it too much her own way since Prometheus stole the fire from heaven, because Zeus, as a punishment, made labour toilsome, and the idle,
