It must have been an impression of this proem which led Gibbon in his “Notes on the editions of the Classics” (Miscellaneous Works, vol. v.) to observe, “in the Theogony I can discern a more recent hand:” for many details in the poem have all the internal evidence of antiquity. Perhaps the catalogue of names, which Robinson superfluously defends on the score of their metrical harmony, and compares with Homer’s catalogue of ships, of which the merit is geographical and historical, may furnish a strong presumptive argument of antiquity. They would appear to have been composed at a period when alphabetic writing was unknown, and the memory of names and things depended on the technical help of oral tradition. Pausanias says, speaking of the Theogony, “There are some who consider Hesiod as the author of this poem.” That _some_ theogony was composed by Hesiod is evidenced by the passage in Herodotus; who, speaking of Hesiod and Homer, affirms, “these are they who framed a Theogony for the Greeks:” and the fable of Pandora in the Theogony, that we now possess, bears characteristical marks of having come from the same hand as that in the Works and Days. Of the Shield of Hercules it is asserted by Cooke, that “there is great reason to believe this poem was not in existence in the time of Augustus:” but he merely advances, in proof of this assertion, that “Manilius, who was an author of the Augustan age, takes notice of no other than the Theogony, and the Works and Days:” yet this, if indeed anything decisive could be concluded from the omission, would only prove that he did not believe the piece authentic. He further remarks that critics should not suppose it to have formed a part of another poem, unless they could show when, where, or by whom the title had been changed. This is surely to demand a very unreasonable as well as unnecessary kind of proof. The distinct title affords, in fact, no evidence for the completeness of the poem; as we learn from Ælian, that portions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were known by such separate titles as, “the Funeral Games of Patroclus,” the “Grot of Calypso;” and sung as detached pieces. The argument of Cooke that it cannot be an imitation of the Shield of Achilles, because the description of the mere Shield occupies but a small part of the piece, is equivalent to contending that Virgil could not have imitated the simile of Diana in the first book of the Æneid from the Odyssey, because the rest of the book bears no resemblance to any thing in Homer. A slight presumption of the Shield being from the hand of Hesiod may be founded on a quotation of Polybius, from one of Hesiod’s lost works: the historian speaks of the Macedonians as being “such as Hesiod describes the Æacidæ; rejoicing in war rather than in the banquet:” book v. ch. i. In the Shield, Iölaus says of himself and Hercules, that battles “are better to them than a feast.” The expression, however, may have been proverbial, and used by more poets than one.