contest with Homer, which is said to have taken place at Chalcis during the funeral solemnities of King Amphidamas, or, according to others, at Aulis or Delos. The story of this contest gave rise to a composition still extant under the title of the Contest between Homer and Hesiod, the work of a grammarian who lived toward the end of the first century of our era, in which the two poets are represented as engaged in the contest and answering each other in their verses. The work is printed in Goettling's edition of Hesiod, p. 242—254, and in Westermann's Vitarum Scriptores Græci, p. 33, etc. Its author knows the whole family history of Hesiod, the names of his father and mother, as well as of his ancestors, and traces his descent to Orpheus, Linus, and Apollo himself. These legends, though they are mere fictions, show the connection which the ancients conceived to exist between the poetry of Hesiod (especially the Theogony) and the ancient schools of priests and bards which had their seats in Thrace and Pieria, and thence spread into Bœotia, where they probably formed the elements out of which the Hesiodic poetry was developed. Some of the fables, pretending to be the personal history of Hesiod, are of such a nature as to throw considerable doubt upon the personal existence of the poet altogether; and although we do not deny that there may have been in the Bœotian school a poet of the name of Hesiod, whose eminence caused him to be regarded as the representative, and a number of works to be attributed to him, still we would in speaking of Hesiod, be rather understood to mean the whole school than any particular individual. Thus an ancient epigram mentions that Hes'od was twice a youth and was twice buried; and there was a tradition that, by the command of an oracle, the bones of Hesiod were removed from Naupactus to Orchomenus, for the purpose of averting an epidemic. These traditions show that Hesiod was looked upon and worshipped in Bœotia (and also in Phocis) as an ancient hero, and, like many other heroes, he was said to have been unjustly killed in the Grove of the Nemean Jupiter. All that we can say, under these circumstances, is that a poet or hero of the name of Hesiod was regarded by the ancients as the head and representative of that school of poetry which was based on the Thracian or Pierian bards, and was developed in Bœotia. as distinct from the Homeric or Ionic school.
The differences between the two schools of poetry are plain and obvious, and were recognized in ancient times no less than at present, as may be seen from the Contest between Homer and Hesiod, In their mode of delivery the poets of the two schools likewise differed; for while the Homeric poems were recited under the accompaniment of the cithara, those of Hesiod were recited
