[155] See this subject further mentioned—_infra_, chap. xvi. p. 565.
In the imagination of the author of the “Works and Days,” the dæmons occupy an important place, and are regarded as being of serious practical efficiency. When he is remonstrating with the rulers around him upon their gross injustice and corruption, he reminds them of the vast number of these immortal servants of Zeus who are perpetually on guard amidst mankind, and through whom the visitations of the gods will descend even upon the most potent evil doers.[156] His supposition that the dæmons were not gods, but departed men of the golden race, allowed him to multiply their number indefinitely, without too much cheapening the divine dignity.
[156] Opp. Di. 252. Τρὶς γὰρ μύριοί εἰσιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ, etc.
As this poet has been so much enslaved by the current legends as to introduce the Heroic race into a series to which it does not legitimately belong, so he has under the same influence inserted in another part of his poem the mythe of Pandora and Promêtheus,[157] as a means of explaining the primary diffusion, and actual abundance, of evil among mankind. Yet this mythe can in no way consist with his quintuple scale of distinct races, and is in fact a totally distinct theory to explain the same problem,—the transition of mankind from a supposed state of antecedent happiness to one of present toil and suffering. Such an inconsistency is not a sufficient reason for questioning the genuineness of either passage; for the two stories, though one contradicts the other, both harmonize with that central purpose which governs the author’s mind,—a querulous and didactic appreciation of the present. That such was his purpose appears not only from the whole tenor of his poem, but also from the remarkable fact that his own personality, his own adventures and kindred, and his own sufferings, figure in it conspicuously. And this introduction of self imparts to it a peculiar interest. The father of Hesiod came over from the Æolic Kymê, with the view of bettering his condition, and settled at Askra in Bœotia, at the foot of Mount Helicon. After his death his two sons divided the family inheritance: but Hesiod bitterly complains that his brother Persês cheated and went to law with him, and obtained through corrupt judges an unjust decision. He farther reproaches his brother with a preference for the suits and unprofitable bustle of the agora, at a time when he ought to be laboring for his subsistence in the field. Askra indeed was a miserable place, repulsive both in summer and winter. Hesiod had never crossed the sea, except once from Aulis to Eubœa, whither he went to attend the funeral games of Amphidamas, the chief of Chalkis: he sung a hymn, and gained as prize a tripod, which he consecrated to the muses in Helicon.[158]