Note 27 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

The bowed feeble rears.] This proem was wanting in the leaden-sheeted copy, seen by Pausanias in Bœotia. The affinity with scriptural language is remarkable. “The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich: he bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dung-hill to set him among princes.” Samuel v. 1, ch. 2. “God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up them that be bowed down. The Lord lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.” Psalms 75, 145, 147. I was originally led to suspect that this introduction had been ingrafted on the poem by one of the Alexandrian Jews; who were addicted to this kind of imposture; but it is probably more ancient than the establishment of the Jewish colony at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies. There is nothing conclusive to be drawn from coincidences of this sort between ancient writings. The first principles of morality, implanted in the human heart by its author, have in all ages been the same: and Socrates and Confucius might be found to agree, surely without any suspicion of imitation. Many passages of Hesiod may be paralleled with verses in the Psalms and Proverbs: and in the proem under consideration, there seem no grounds for the conjecture of plagiarism from views of the vicissitudes of human condition, and the ordinations of a ruling providence which are continually passing before our eyes, and which must have struck the reasoning and serious part of mankind in all ages. Horace has a similar passage: b. i. od. 34.

Le Clerc conjectures this exordium to be the addition of one of the rhapsodists: of whom Pindar says, Nem. Od. 2.