The same verses, with a few changes, are given in “The Contest;” only the question is assigned to Hesiod, and the answer to Homer; as Robinson conjectures, with perhaps too much refinement, for the secret purpose of depressing Hesiod under the mask of exalting him, by appointing Homer to the more arduous task of solving the questions proposed. With respect also to the award of Panœdes, the judge, which is thought to betray the same design by an imbecile or partial preference of the verses of Hesiod to those of Homer, the reason stated by Panœdes, that “it was just to bestow the prize on him who exhorted men to agriculture and peace, in preference to him who described only war and carnage” is equally noble and philosophical; and by no means merits to have given rise to the proverbial parody quoted by Barnes: Πανιδος ψηφος “the judgment of Pan:” instead of Πανοιδου ψηφος, “the judgment of Panœdes.” The piece seems to be a mere exercise of ingenuity, without any particular design of raising one poet at the expence of the other: and as it contains internal evidence of having been composed after the time of Adrian, who is mentioned by name as “that most divine Emperor,” and Plutarch flourished under Trajan, there is reason to suppose that the narrative of Periander in the “Banquet of Wise Men,” afforded the first hint of the whole contest. To the same zeal for making Hesiod and Homer competitors we owe another inscription, quoted by Eustathius, ad Il. A. p. 5. In Delos first did I with Homer raise The rhapsody of bards; and new the lays: Phœbus Apollo did our numbers sing; Latona’s son, the golden-sworded king. But if the passage in “The Works” be authentic, the spuriousness of this inscriptive record detects itself; as Hesiod there confines his voyages to the crossing the Euripus. Pausanias mentions the institution of a contest at the temple in Delphos, where a hymn was to be sung in honour of Apollo: and says that Hesiod was excluded from the number of the candidates because he had not learnt to sing to the harp. He adds, that Homer came thither also; and was incapacitated from trying his skill by the same deficiency: and, what is very strange, he gives as a reason why he could not have taken a part in the contest, even were he a harper, that he was blind. From Plutarch, Pausanias, and the author of “The Contest,” we are enabled to cull some gossiping traditions of the latter life of Hesiod, which are scarcely worth the gleaning, except that, like the romancing Lives of Homer, they are proofs of the poet’s celebrity. Hesiod, we are told, set out on a pilgrimage to the Delphic Oracle, for the purpose of hearing his fortune: and the old bard could scarcely get in at the gates of the temple, when the prophetess could refrain no longer: “_afflata est numine quando jam propriore Dei_:”