Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/103

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THE THEOGONY.
89
As fusile tin, by art of youths, aboveThe wide-brimmed vase up-bubbling, foams with heat;Or iron hardest of the mine, subduedBy burning flame, amid the mountain dellsMelts in the sacred caves beneath the handsOf Vulcan, so earth melted in the glareOf blazing fire. He down wide Hell's abyssHis victim hurled, in bitterness of soul."—E. 1108-1149.

The italicised lines may recall the noble image in the 'Paradise Lost;'[1] a passage which Milton's editor, Todd, pronounces grander in conception than Hesiod's. But, as Elton fairly answers, it is only in Milton's reservation that he is superior. "The mere rising of Zeus causing mountains to rock beneath his everlasting feet, is sublimer than the firmament shaking from the rolling of wheels."

After quelling this monster, Zeus is represented bethinking himself of a suitable consort, and espousing Metis or Wisdom, so as to effect a union of absolute wisdom with absolute power. As, however, in the Hesiodic view of the divinity, there was ever a risk of dethronement to the sire at the hand of his offspring, Zeus hit upon a plan which should prevent his wife producing a progeny that might hereafter conspire with her to dethrone him, after the hereditary fashion. He absorbed Metis, with her babe yet unborn, in his own breast, and, according to mythology, found this task

  1. ↑
    "Under his burning wheelsThe steadfast empyrean shook throughout,All but the throne itself of God."—vi. 832-834.
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