Having thus finished his allegory of the five ages, and identified his own generation with the last and worst, it is nowise abrupt or unseasonable in the poet to bring home to the kings and judges of Bœotia their share in the blame of things being as they are, by means of an apologue or fable. Some have said that it ought to be entitled "The Hawk and the Dove," but Hesiod probably had in his mind the legend of Tereus and Philomela; and the epithet attached to the nightingale in v. 268 probably refers to the tincture of green on its dark-coloured throat, with which one of our older ornithologists credits that bird. The fable is as follows, and it represents oppression and violence in their naked repulsiveness. Contrary to the use of later fabulists, the moral is put in the mouth of the hawk, not of the narrator:—
Bore in his pounce a neck-streaked nightingale,
And snatched among the clouds; beneath the stroke
This piteous shrieked, and that imperious spoke:
'Wretch, why these screams? a stronger holds thee now;
"Where'er I shape my course a captive thou,
Maugre thy song, must company my way;
I rend my banquet, or I loose my prey.
Senseless is he who dares with power contend;
Defeat, rebuke, despair shall be his end."
—E. 267-276.
From fable the poet passes at once to a more direct appeal. Addressing Perses and the judges, he points out that injustice and overbearing conduct not only crush the poor man, but eventually the rich and powerful fail to stand against its consequences. He pictures
