ms were preserved has occasioned great
controversy in modern times. Even if they were committed to writing by
the poet himself, and were handed down to posterity in this manner, it
is certain that they were rarely read. We must endeavour to realise
the difference between ancient Greece and our own times. During the
most flourishing period of Athenian literature manuscripts were
indifferently written, without division into parts, and without marks
of punctuation. They were scarce and costly, could be obtained only by
the wealthy, and read only by those who had had considerable literary
training. Under these circumstances the Greeks could never become a
reading people; and thus the great mass even of the Athenians became
acquainted with the productions of the leading poets of Greece only by
hearing them recited at their solemn festivals and on other public
occasions. This was more strikingly the case at an earlier period.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not read by individuals in private, but
were sung or recited at festivals or to assembled companies. The bard
originally sung his own lays to the accompaniment of his lyre. He was
succeeded by a body of professional reciters, called Rhapsodists, who
rehearsed the poems of others, and who appear at early times to have
had exclusive possession of the Homeric poems. But in the seventh
century before the Christian era literary culture began to prevail
among the Greeks; and men of education and wealth were naturally
desirous of obtaining copies of the great poet of the nation. From
this cause copies came to be circulated among the Greeks; but most of
them contained only separate portions of the poems, or single
rhapsodes, as they were called. Pisistratus, the tyrant or despot of
Athens, is said to have been the first person who collected and
arranged the poems in their present form, in order that they might be
recited at the great Panathenaic festival at Athens.

Three works have come down to us bearing the name of Hesiod--the 'Works
and Days,' the 'Theogony,' and a description of the 'Shield of
Hercules.' Many ancient critics believed the 'Works and Days' to be the
only genuine work of Hesiod, and their opinion has been adopted by most
modern scholars. We learn from this work that Hesiod was a native of
Ascra, a village at the foot of Mount Helicon, to which his father had
migrated from the AEolian Cyme in Asia Minor. He further tells us that
he gained the prize at