"The Georgicks of Hesiod, by George Chapman; translated elaborately out of the Greek: Containing Doctrine of Husbandrie, Moralitie, and Pietie; with a perpetuall Calendar of Good and Bad Daies; not superstitious, but necessarie (as farre as naturall Causes compell) for all Men to obserue, and difference in following their affaires. "Nec caret vmbra Deo. "London, printed by H. L. for Miles Partrich, and are to be solde at his Shop neare Saint Dunstans Church in Fleetstreet. 1618." The Georgics of Hesiod. [1618.] TO THE MOST NOBLE COMBINER OF LEARNING AND HONOUR, SIR FRANCIS BACON, KNIGHT, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND, ETC. ANTIENT wisdom being so worthily eternized by the now-renewed instance of it in your Lordship; and this ancient Author, one of the most authentic for all wisdom crowned with justice and piety; to what sea owe these poor streams their tribute, but to your Lordship's ocean? The rather, since others of the like antiquity, in my Translation of Homer, teach these their way, and add comfort to their courses, by having received right cheerful countenance and approbation from your Lordship's most grave and honoured predecessor. All judgments of this season (savouring anything the truth) preferring, to the wisdom of all other nations, these most wise, learned, and circularly-spoken Grecians. According to that of the poet : Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo And why may not this Roman eulogy of the Graians extend in praiseful intention (by way of prophetic poesy) to Gray's-Inn wits and orators? Or if the allusion (or petition of the principle) beg with too broad a licence in the general; yet serious truth, for the particular, may most worthily apply it to your Lordship's truly Greek inspiration, and absolutely Attic elocution. Whose all-acknowledged faculty hath banished flattery therein even from the Court; much more from my country and more-than-upland simplicity. Nor were those Greeks so circular in their elegant utterance, but their inward judgments and learnings were as round and solid; their solidity proved in their eternity; and their eternity propagated by love of all virtue and integrity;-that love being the only parent and argument of all truth, in any wisdom or learning; without which all is sophisticate and adulterate, howsoever painted and splinted with degrees and languages. Your Lordship's Advancement of Learning, then, well showing your love to it, and in it, being true to all true goodness, your learning, strengthening that love, must needs be solid and eternal. This orwp pws, therefore, expressed in this Author, is used here as if prophesied by him then, now to take life in your Lordship, whose life is chief soul and essence to all knowledge and virtue; so few there are that live now combining honour and learning. This time resembling the terrible time whereof this poet prophesied; to which he desired he might not live, since not a Grace would then smile on any pious or worthy; all greatness much more gracing impostors 1 Vir verè (seu clarè) sciens; aut illustris Judex, vel procul videns Arbiter, quia eos acutos visu, seu gnaros esse oporteat rei de quâ agitur. VOL. II. P than men truly desertful. The worse depraving the better; and that so frontlessly, that shame and justice should fly the earth for them. To shame which ignorant barbarism now emboldened, let your Lordship's learned humanity prove nothing the less gracious to Virtue for the community of Vice's graces; but shine much the more clear on her for those clouds that eclipse her; no lustre being so sun-like as that which passeth above all clouds unseen, over fields, turrets, and temples; and breaks out, in free beams, on some humblest cottage. In whose like Jove himself hath been feasted; and wherein your Lordship may find more honour than in the fretted roofs of the mighty. To which honour, oftentimes, nothing more conduceth than noble acceptance of most humble presentments. On this nobility in your Lordship my prostrate humility relying, I rest ever submitted, in all simple and hearty vows, Your Honour's most truly, And freely devoted, GEORGE CHAPMAN. OF HESIODUS. HESIODUS, surnamed Ascræus, was one, as of the most ancient Greek poets, so one of the purest and pressest writers. He lived in the later time of Homer, and was surnamed Ascræus, of Ascra, a town in Helicon; in which was built a temple sacred to the Muses; whose priest Hesiodus was consecrate; whom Virgil, among so many writers of Georgics, only imitated, professing it in this : Ascraumque cano Romana per oppida carmen, "Εργα καὶ Ἡμέραι. Nor is there any doubt (saith Mel.) quin idem Virgilius initio Georgicorum hanc inscriptionem expresserit hoc versu: Quid faciat lætas segetes, quo sidere terram,' &c. His authority was such amongst the ancients, that his verses were commonly learned as axioms or oracles, all teaching good life and humanity; which though never so profitable for men's now readings, yet had they rather (saith Isocrates) consume their times still in their own follies, than be any time conversant in these precepts of wisdom; of which (with Homer) he was first father, whose interpreters were all the succeeding philosophers-not Aristotle himself excepted:-who before Thales, Solon, Pittacus, Socrates, Plato, &c., writ of life, of manners, of God, of nature, of the stars, and general state of the universe. Nor are his writings the less worthy, that Poesy informed them, but of so much the more dignity and eternity. Not Thales, nor Anaxagoras, (as Aristotle ingenuously confesseth), having profited the world so much, with all their writings, as Homer's one Ulysses or Nestor. And sooner shall all the atoms of Epicurus sustain division; the fire of Heraclitus be utterly quenched; the water that Thales extols so much be exhausted; the spirit of Anaximenes vanish; the discord of Empedocles be reconciled; and all dissolved to nothing; before by their most celebrated faculties they do the world so much profit for all humane instruction, as this one work of Hesiodus: here being no dwelling on any one subject; but of all humane affairs instructively concluded. THE GEORGICS OF HESIOD. THE FIRST BOOK.1 MUSES! that, out of your Pierian state, To sings your Sire; and him in hymns1 resound By whom all humans, that to death are bound, Are bound together; both the great in fame, 5 And men whose poor fates fit them with no name, 6 Noble and base; great Jove's will orders all; For he with ease extols, with ease lets fall; Easely diminisheth the most in grace, And makes the most elated11 beauty wither; And this is Jove, that breaks his voice so high In horrid sounds, and dwells above the sky. Hear, then, O Jove, that dost both see and hear, And, for thy justice' sake, be orderer Not one contention on the earth there reigns To raise men's fortunes and peculiar gains, But two. The one the knowing man approves ; The other1 hate should force from human loves, Since it derides our reasonable kind, Begat before; which Jove, that in the light Of all the stars dwells, and, though throned aloft, Of each man weighs yet both the work and thought, Put in the roots of earth; from whose womb grow Men's needful means to pay the debt they Owe To life and living. And this strife is far More fit for men, and much the sprightlier: For he in whose hands4 lives no love of art, Nor virtuous industry, yet plucks up heart, And falls to work for living. Any one, Never so stupid and so base a drone, Seeing a rich man haste to sow, and plant, And guide his house well, feels with shame his want, And labours like him. And this strife is good. When strife for riches warms and fires the blood, 1 'Emiμwμntòs, reprehensione, et derisione dignus. "Avdixa, in duas partes. $ OUTIS. He says no man loves this war per se, but per accidens; because men cannot discern from things truly worthy of their loves those that falsely pretend worth and retain none; which he ascribes to some secret counsel of Jove, that, for plague to their impieties, strikes blind their understandings. 4 'Aráλaμvos, cujus manibus nulla ars, nulla sedulitas inest. The neighbour doth the neighbour emulate, 1 The potter doth the potter's profit hate, The smith the smith with spleen inveterate, 2 Beggar maligns the beggar for good done, And the musician the musician. This strife, O Perses, see remember'd still; But fly Contention, that insults on th 'ill3 Of other men, and from thy work doth draw To be a well-seen man in works of law. Nor to those courts afford affected ear; For he that hath not, for the entire year, Enough laid up beforehand, little need Hath to take care those factious courts to feed With what earth bears, and Ceres doth bestow. With which when thou art satiate, nor dost know What to do with it, then to those wars go For others' goods; but see no more spent SO Of thine hereafter. Let ourselves decide, With dooms direct, all differences implied In our affairs; and, what is ratified By Jove's will to be ours, account our own; For that thrives ever best. Our discord, grown For what did from our father's bounty fall, We ended lately, and shared freely all; When thou much more than thine hadst ravish'd home, Of fools, that all things into judgment call, Yet know not how much1 half is more than all! Nor how the mean life is the firmest still, But God hath hid from men the healthful mean; For otherwise a man might heap, and play, Enough to serve the whole year in a day, And straight his draught-tree hang up in the smoke, Nor more his labouring mules nor oxen yoke. But Jove, man's knowledge of his best bereaved, Conceiving anger, since he was deceived By that same wisdom-wresting? Japhet's 1 μov Tavros, dimidium plus toto. He commends the mean, and reproves those kings With which thou madest proud,4 and didst or judges that are too indulgent to their cove 1 Znλoî. He shows artisans' emulations for riches, and approves that kind of contention. Notwithstanding Plato in Lysias, Aristotle in the 5. of his Pol. and 2. of his Rhetor. and Galen, refer this strife to the first harmful discord, yet Plutarch takes our author's part, and ascribes it to the virtuous contention. 2 Koréw, æstuo irâ quam diu pressi in pectore. 3*Eρis Kaкóxаρros, alienis insultans calamitatibus contentio; which he calls their going to law. 4 Méya kudaívwv, valde gloriosos reddens. Βασιλήας δωροφάγους, reges donivoros. tous and glorious appetites, from the frugal and competent life declining ad πλεονεξίαν, i.e., Showing how ignorant they are that the virtue ad plus habendi aviditatem inexhaustam. of justice and mediocrity is to be preferred to injustice and insatiate avarice. By ἥμισυ he understands medium inter lucrum et damnum, which mean is more profitable and notable than Taνтòs, i.e., toto quo et sua pars retinetur, et alterius ad se pertrahitur. 2 'AykuλoμŃτns, he calls Prometheus, i.e., qui obliqua agitat consilia; who wrests that wisdom, which God hath given him to use to his glory, to his own ends; which is cause to all the miseries men suffer, and of all their impious actions that deserve them. Jove's fire signifies Truth, which Prometheus stealing, figures learned men's over-subtle abuse of divine knowledge, wresting it in false expositions to their own objects, thereby to inspire and puff up their own profane earth, intending their corporeal parts, and the irreligious delights of them. But, for the mythology of this, read my Lord Chancellor's book, De Sapientiâ Veterum, cap. 26, being infinitely better. |