Th’ Homeric bards, who wont to frame A motley-woven verse, Ere they the song rehearse, Begin from Jove, and prelude with his name. [28] _The other elder rose._] Night is meant to be the mother of both the Strifes. Guietus remarks that ευφρονη is a term for night: from ευφρονεω, to be wise. She was the mother of wise designs, because favourable to meditation: the mother of good, therefore, as well as of evil. The good Strife is made the elder, because the evil one arose in the later and degenerate ages of mankind. [29] _Almsmen zealous throng._] The proximity of the beggar to the bard might in a modern writer convey a satirical innuendo, of which Hesiod cannot be suspected. The bard, as is evident from Homer’s Odyssey, enjoyed a sort of conventional hospitality, bestowed with reverence and affection. It should seem, however, from this passage that the asker of alms was not regarded in the light of a common mendicant with us. It was a popular superstition that the gods often assumed similar characters for the purpose of trying the benevolence of men. A noble incentive to charity, which indicates the hospitable character of a semi-barbarous age. [30] _The patrimonial land._] The manner of inheritance in ancient Greece was that of gavelkind: the sons dividing the patrimony in equal portions. When there were children by a concubine, they also received a certain proportion. This is illustrated by a passage in the 14th book of the Odyssey: An humbler mate, His purchased concubine, gave birth to me: ... His illustrious sons among themselves Portion’d his goods by lot: to me indeed They gave a dwelling, and but little more. COWPER. [31] _The good which asphodel and mallows yield._] A similar sentiment occurs in the Proverbs: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Ch. 15. v. 17. Plutarch in the “Banquet of the Seven Sages,” observes, that “the herb mallows is good for food, as is the sweet stalk of the asphodel or daffodil.” These plants were often used by metonymy for a frugal table. Homer (Odyssey 24.) places the shades of the blessed in meadows of asphodel, because they were supposed to be restored to the state of primitive innocence, when men were contented with the simple and spontaneous aliment of the ground. Perhaps the Greeks had this allusion in their custom of planting the asphodel in the cemeteries, and also burying it with the bodies of the dead. It appears from Pliny, b. xxii. c. 22. that Hesiod had treated of the asphodel in some other work: as he is said to have spoken of it as a native of the woods. [32] _The food of man in deep concealment lies._] The meaning of this passage resembles that of the passage in Virgil’s first Georgic: The sire of gods and men with hard decrees Forbade our plenty to be bought with ease. DRYDEN.