ccur and are perhaps not characteristic of
Hesiod's genius: if we would see Hesiod at his best, in his most natural
vein, we must turn to such a passage as that which he himself--according
to the compiler of the "Contest of Hesiod and Homer"--selected as best
in all his work, 'When the Pleiades, Atlas' daughters, begin to rise...'
("Works and Days," 383 ff.). The value of such a passage cannot be
analysed: it can only be said that given such a subject, this alone is
the right method of treatment.

Hesiod's diction is in the main Homeric, but one of his charms is the
use of quaint allusive phrases derived, perhaps, from a pre-Hesiodic
peasant poetry: thus the season when Boreas blows is the time when 'the
Boneless One gnaws his foot by his fireless hearth in his cheerless
house'; to cut one's nails is 'to sever the withered from the quick
upon that which has five branches'; similarly the burglar is the
'day-sleeper', and the serpent is the 'hairless one'. Very similar is
his reference to seasons through what happens or is done in that season:
'when the House-carrier, fleeing the Pleiades, climbs up the plants from
the earth', is the season for harvesting; or 'when the artichoke flowers
and the clicking grass-hopper, seated in a tree, pours down his shrill
song', is the time for rest.

Hesiod's charm lies in his child-like and sincere naivete, in his
unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all that
happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those pre-eminently
of the "Works and Days": the literary values of the "Theogony" are of a
more technical character, skill in ordering and disposing long lists of
names, sure judgment in seasoning a monotonous subject with marvellous
incidents or episodes, and no mean imagination in depicting the awful,
as is shown in the description of Tartarus (ll. 736-745). Yet it remains
true that Hesiod's distinctive title to a high place in Greek literature
lies in the very fact of his freedom from classic form, and his grave,
and yet child-like, outlook upon his world.

The Ionic School

The Ionic School of Epic poetry was, as we have seen, dominated by
the Homeric tradition, and while the style and method of treatment are
Homeric, it is natural that the Ionic poets refrained from cultivating
the ground tilled by Homer, and chose for treatment legends which lay
beyond the range of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey". Equally natural it is
that they should have particu