Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica [30]
he came to Lemnos as a beggar and there met Hephaestus who took pity on him and gave him Cedalion his own servant to guide him. So Orion took Cedalion upon his shoulders and used to carry him about while he pointed out the roads. Then he came to the east and appears to have met Helius (the Sun) and to have been healed, and so returned back again to Oenopion to punish him; but Oenopion was hidden away by his people underground. Being disappointed, then, in his search for the king, Orion went away to Crete and spent his time hunting in company with Artemis and Leto. It seems that he threatened to kill every beast there was on earth; whereupon, in her anger, Earth sent up against him a scorpion of very great size by which he was stung and so perished. After this Zeus, at one prayer of Artemis and Leto, put him among the stars, because of his manliness, and the scorpion also as a memorial of him and of what had occurred.
Fragment #5 -- Diodorus iv. 85: Some say that great earthquakes occurred, which broke through the neck of land and formed the straits (3), the sea parting the mainland from the island. But Hesiod, the poet, says just the opposite: that the sea was open, but Orion piled up the promontory by Peloris, and founded the close of Poseidon which is especially esteemed by the people thereabouts. When he had finished this, he went away to Euboea and settled there, and because of his renown was taken into the number of the stars in heaven, and won undying remembrance.
ENDNOTES:
(1) This halt verse is added by the Scholiast on Aratus, 172. (2) The "Catasterismi" ("Placings among the Stars") is a collection of legends relating to the various constellations. (3) The Straits of Messina.
THE PRECEPTS OF CHIRON (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. vi. 19: `And now, pray, mark all these things well in a wise heart. First, whenever you come to your house, offer good sacrifices to the eternal gods.'
Fragment #2 -- Plutarch Mor. 1034 E: `Decide no suit until you have heard both sides speak.'
Fragment #3 -- Plutarch de Orac. defectu ii. 415 C: `A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag's life is four times a crow's, and a raven's life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.'
Fragment #4 -- Quintilian, i. 15: Some consider that children under the age of seven should not receive a literary education... That Hesiod was of this opinion very many writers affirm who were earlier than the critic Aristophanes; for he was the first to reject the "Precepts", in which book this maxim occurs, as a work of that poet.
THE GREAT WORKS (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Comm. on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. v. 8: The verse, however (the slaying of Rhadamanthys), is in Hesiod in the "Great Works" and is as follows: `If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil increase; if men do to him as he has done, it will be true justice.'
Fragment #2 -- Proclus on Hesiod, Works and Days, 126: Some believe that the Silver Race (is to be attributed to) the earth, declaring that in the "Great Works" Hesiod makes silver to be of the family of Earth.
THE IDAEAN DACTYLS (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Pliny, Natural History vii. 56, 197: Hesiod says that those who are called the Idaean Dactyls taught the smelting and tempering of iron in Crete.
Fragment #2 -- Clement, Stromateis i. 16. 75: Celmis, again, and Damnameneus, the first of the Idaean Dactyls, discovered iron in Cyprus; but bronze smelting was discovered by Delas, another Idaean, though Hesiod calls him Scythes (1).
ENDNOTES:
(1) Or perhaps `a Scythian'.
THE THEOGONY (1,041 lines)
(ll. 1-25) From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring
Fragment #5 -- Diodorus iv. 85: Some say that great earthquakes occurred, which broke through the neck of land and formed the straits (3), the sea parting the mainland from the island. But Hesiod, the poet, says just the opposite: that the sea was open, but Orion piled up the promontory by Peloris, and founded the close of Poseidon which is especially esteemed by the people thereabouts. When he had finished this, he went away to Euboea and settled there, and because of his renown was taken into the number of the stars in heaven, and won undying remembrance.
ENDNOTES:
(1) This halt verse is added by the Scholiast on Aratus, 172. (2) The "Catasterismi" ("Placings among the Stars") is a collection of legends relating to the various constellations. (3) The Straits of Messina.
THE PRECEPTS OF CHIRON (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. vi. 19: `And now, pray, mark all these things well in a wise heart. First, whenever you come to your house, offer good sacrifices to the eternal gods.'
Fragment #2 -- Plutarch Mor. 1034 E: `Decide no suit until you have heard both sides speak.'
Fragment #3 -- Plutarch de Orac. defectu ii. 415 C: `A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag's life is four times a crow's, and a raven's life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.'
Fragment #4 -- Quintilian, i. 15: Some consider that children under the age of seven should not receive a literary education... That Hesiod was of this opinion very many writers affirm who were earlier than the critic Aristophanes; for he was the first to reject the "Precepts", in which book this maxim occurs, as a work of that poet.
THE GREAT WORKS (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Comm. on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. v. 8: The verse, however (the slaying of Rhadamanthys), is in Hesiod in the "Great Works" and is as follows: `If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil increase; if men do to him as he has done, it will be true justice.'
Fragment #2 -- Proclus on Hesiod, Works and Days, 126: Some believe that the Silver Race (is to be attributed to) the earth, declaring that in the "Great Works" Hesiod makes silver to be of the family of Earth.
THE IDAEAN DACTYLS (fragments)
Fragment #1 -- Pliny, Natural History vii. 56, 197: Hesiod says that those who are called the Idaean Dactyls taught the smelting and tempering of iron in Crete.
Fragment #2 -- Clement, Stromateis i. 16. 75: Celmis, again, and Damnameneus, the first of the Idaean Dactyls, discovered iron in Cyprus; but bronze smelting was discovered by Delas, another Idaean, though Hesiod calls him Scythes (1).
ENDNOTES:
(1) Or perhaps `a Scythian'.
THE THEOGONY (1,041 lines)
(ll. 1-25) From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring