Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Classic Reprint)

The early Greek epic-that is, epic poetry as a natural and popular, and not (as it became later) an artificial and academic literary form-passed through the usual three phases, of development, of maturity, and of decline. No fragments which can be identified as belonging to the first period survive to give us even a general idea of the history of the earliest epic, and we are therefore thrown back upon the evidence of analogy from other forms of literature and of inference from the two great epics which have come down to us. So reconstructed, the earliest period appears to us as a time of slow development in which the characteristic epic metre, diction, and structure grew up slowly from crude elements and were improved until the verge of maturity was reached. The second period, which produced the Iliad and the Odyssey, needs no description here : but it is very important to observe the effect of these poems on the course of post-Homeric epic. As the supreme per

Table of Contents

introduction ix; bibliography xliii; hesiod 1-283; Works and Days 2; The Divination by Birds 64; The Astronomy 66; The Precepts of Chiron 72; The Great Works 74; The Idaean Dactyls 76; The Theogony 78; The Catalogues of Women and the Eoiae 154; The Shield of Heracles 220; The Marriage of Ceyx 254; The Great Eoiae 256; The Melampodia 266; The Aegimius 270; Fragments of Unknown Position 274; Doubtful Fragments 280; the homeric hymns 285-463; i-To Dionysus 286; ii-To Demeter 288; in-To Apollo 324; iv-To Hermes 362; v-To Aphrodite 406; vi-To Aphrodite 426; vii-To Dionysus 428; viii-To Ares 432; ix-To Artemis 434; x-To Aphrodite 434; xi-To Athena 436; xii-To Hera 436; xiii-To Demeter 436; xiv-To the Mother of the Gods 438; xv-To Heracles the Lion-hearted 438; vii; D*gi!*2cJ bv Microsoft $; CONTENTS; the homeric hymns (continued)-; xvi-To Asclepius 440; xvii-To the Dioscuri 440; xviii-To Hermes 440; xix-To Pan 442; xx-To Hephaestus 446; xxi