[30] That the Hesiodic Theogony is referable to an age considerably later than the Homeric poems, appears now to be the generally admitted opinion; and the reasons for believing so are, in my opinion, satisfactory. Whether the Theogony is composed by the same author as the Works and Days is a disputed point. The Bœotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly denied the identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days: Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31. 4; ix. 35. 1), and Völcker (Mithologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 14) maintains the same opinion, as well as Göttling (Præf. ad Hesiod. xxi.): K. O. Müller (History of Grecian Literature, ch. 8. § 4) thinks that there is not sufficient evidence to form a decisive opinion. Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual in antiquity respecting authorship, but which modern critics have not much mended by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect, or family) passed many different poems, belonging to three classes quite distinct from each other, but all disparate from the Homeric epic:—1. The poems of legend cast into historical and genealogical series, such as the Eoiai, the Catalogue of Women, etc. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as the Works and Days, the Precepts of Cheirôn, the Art of Augural Prophecy, etc. 3. Separate and short mythical compositions, such as the Shield of Hêraklês, the Marriage of Keyx (which, however, was of disputed authenticity, Athenæ. ii. p. 49), the Epithalamium of Pêleus and Thetis, etc. (See Marktscheffel, Præfat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89). The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Promêtheus, etc.: moreover in the portion which respects Hekatê, it has both a mystic character and a distinct bearing upon present life and customs, which we may also trace in the allusions to Krête and Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B. C., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem is evidently conceived upon one scheme, yet the parts are so disorderly and incoherent, that it is difficult to say how much is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected the exordium; see the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poetæ Minor. p. 63).