The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan: Including the Shield of Hercules

The remains of Hesiod are not alone interesting to the antiquary, as tracing a picture of the rude arts and manners of the ancient Greeks. His sublime philosophic allegories; his elevated views of a retributive Providence; and the romantic elegance, or daring grandeur, with which he has invested the legends of his mythology, offer more solid reasons than the accident of coeval existence for the traditional association of his name with that of Homer.

Hesiod has been translated in Latin hexameters by Nicolaus Valla, and by Bernardo Zamagna. A French translation by Jacques le Gras bears date 1586. The earliest essay on his poems by our own countrymen appears in the old racy version of “The Works and Days,” by George Chapman, the translator of Homer, published in 1618. It is so scarce that Warton in “The History of English Poetry” doubts its existence. Some specimens of a work equally curious from its rareness, and interesting as an example of our ancient poetry, are appended to this translation. Parnell has given a sprightly imitation of the Pandora, under the title of “Hesiod, or the Rise of Woman:” and Broome, the coadjutor of Pope in the Odyssey, has paraphrased the battle of the Titans and the Tartarus. The translation by Thomas Cooke omits the splendid heroical fragment of “The Shield,” which I have restored to its legitimate connexion. It was first published in 1728; reprinted in 1740; and has been inserted in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers.