Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/128

priate ground on which to trace their likeness and unlikeness. As Hesiod's passage was not quoted in our second chapter, its citation will be forgiven here, the version selected being that of Mr Elton:—

"When gods alike and mortals rose to birth, A golden race the immortals formed on earth Of many-languaged men: they lived of old, When Saturn reigned in heaven, an age of gold. Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind, Free from the toils and anguish of our kind. Nor e'er decrepit age misshaped their frame, The hand's, the foot's proportions still the same. ${\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}}$Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flowed by:Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high: Dying they sank in sleep, nor seemed to die. Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soilYielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil.They with abundant goods 'midst quiet landsAll willing shared the gathering of their hands."—E. 147-162.

Virgil does not set himself to reproduce the myth of the metallic ages of mankind; but having assuredly the original of the passage just quoted before him, has seen that certain features of it are available for introduction into his account of Jove's ordinance of labour. He dismisses, we shall observe, the realistic allusions to the sickness, death, and decrepit old age, which in the golden days were "conspicuous by their absence," and of which Hesiod had made much. These apparently only suggest to him a couple of lines, in which mortal cares are made an incentive to work, instead of a destiny to be succumbed to; and the death