. The eastern nations and Greece. Fig. 132. Homer Ideal portrait of the Hellenistic Age 304 GREEK LITERATURE [§337 337. Hesiod. Hesiod, a Boeotian, who is believed to have livedtowards the close of the eighth century , was the poet of natureand of real life, especially of peasant life, in the dim transition age ofHellas (sect. 152). The Homeric bards sang of the deeds of heroes,and of a far-away time when gods mingled with men. Hesiod singsof common men, and of everyday, present duties. His greatest poem,a didactic epic, is entitled Works and Days. This is, in the main, asort of farmers ca
. The eastern nations and Greece. Fig. 132. Homer Ideal portrait of the Hellenistic Age 304 GREEK LITERATURE [§337 337. Hesiod. Hesiod, a Boeotian, who is believed to have livedtowards the close of the eighth century , was the poet of natureand of real life, especially of peasant life, in the dim transition age ofHellas (sect. 152). The Homeric bards sang of the deeds of heroes,and of a far-away time when gods mingled with men. Hesiod singsof common men, and of everyday, present duties. His greatest poem,a didactic epic, is entitled Works and Days. This is, in the main, asort of farmers calendar, in which the poet points out to the husband-mai;i the lucky and unlucky days for doing certain kinds of work, giveshim minute instructions respecting farm labor, discourses on justice. Fig. 133. Hoeing and Ploughing. (From a vase painting of the sixth century ) Pray to Zeus . . when thou beginnest thy labor, as soon as, putting thy hand to the plough, thou touchest the back of the oxen that draw at the oaken beam. Just behind thee, let a servant, equipped with a mattock, raise trouble for the birds by covering the seed. — Hesiod, Works and Days, w. 465-471 (Croisets trans.) (in spite of all the injustice of the evil age in which Hesiod lived hekept his faith in the justice of heaven), and intersperses among allhis practical lines homely maxims of morality and beautiful descrip-tive passages of the changing seasons. 338. Lyric Poetry: Pindar. As epic poetry, represented by theHomeric and Hesiodic poems, was the characteristic production ofthe earlier part of the first period of Greek literature, so was lyricpoetry the most noteworthy product of the latter part of the period.^ The ^olian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of severalof the earlier lyric p
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