Note 12 — DISSERTATION ON THE LIFE AND ÆRA OF HESIOD, HIS POEMS, AND MYTHOLOGY.
George Chapman translation
The following are enumerated as the lost poems of Hesiod.
The Catalogue of Women or Heroines, in five parts, of which the fifth appears to have been entitled “The Herogony.” Suidas.
The Melampodia; from the sooth-sayer Melampus; a poem on divination. Pausanias, Athenæus.
The great Astronomy or Stellar Book. Pliny.
Descent of Theseus into Hades. Pausanias.
Admonitions of Chiron to Achilles. Pausanias, Aristophanes.
Soothsayings and Explications of Signs. Pausanias.
Divine Speeches. Maximus Tyrius.
Great Actions. Athenæus.
Of the Dactyli of Cretan Ida; discoverers of iron. Suidas, Pliny.
Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis. Tzetzes.
Ægimius. Athenæus. Apocryphal.
Elegy on Batrachus, a beloved youth. Suidas.
Circuit of the Earth. Strabo.
The Marriage of Ceyx. Athenæus, Plutarch.
On Herbs. Pliny.
On Medicine. Plutarch.
Fabricius (Bibliotheca Græca) supposes the two latter subjects to be alluded to as incidental topics in other works of Hesiod. But the passages quoted by him from Pliny and Plutarch seem to justify the opinion that they meant to advert to distinct poems. There is nothing in the works extant which favours the former idea. Mallows and asphodel are the only herbs mentioned: and that merely as synonymous with a frugal meal: like the cichorea levesque malvæ of Horace: nor is there anything medical; for the passages respecting bathing, children, &c. are mere superstitions, unconnected with health. Athenæus (book iii.) quotes some verses as ascribed to Hesiod respecting the fishes fit for salting; but says they seem to be rather the verses of a cook than of a poet; and adds that cities are mentioned in them which were posterior to Hesiod’s time. Lilius Gyraldus states that the fables of Æsop have been assigned to Hesiod. Plutarch, indeed, observes that Æsop might himself have profited by Hesiod’s apologue of the Hawk and the Nightingale; and Quintilian mentions Hesiod, and not Æsop, as the earliest fabulist; which passages may have been strained to bear the above meaning. As to the Greek fables, extant under the name of Æsop, they are proved to be spurious. See Bentley’s Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, &c. and the fables of Æsop.