shonest, ungrateful, thoughtless--such is the present race of men, with a
small admixture of good, which will also end in due time. Such are the
races which Hesiod describes in his poem of the "Works and
Days,"--penetrated with a profound sense of the wickedness and degeneracy
of human life, yet of the ultimate rewards of virtue and truth. His demons
are not gods, nor men, but intermediate agents, essentially good--angels,
whose province was to guard and to benefit the world. But the notions of
demons gradually changed, until they were regarded as both good and bad,
as viewed by Plato, and finally they were regarded as the causes of evil,
as in the time of the Christian writers. Hesiod, who lived, it is
supposed, four hundred years before Herodotus, is a great ethical poet,
and embodied the views of his age respecting the great mysteries of nature
and life.

The legends which Hesiod, Homer, and other poets made so attractive by
their genius, have a perpetual interest, since they are invested with all
the fascinations of song and romance. We will not enter upon those which
relate to gods, but confine ourselves to those which relate to men--the
early heroes of the classic land and age; nor can we allude to all--only a
few--those which are most memorable and impressive.

(M322) Among the most ancient was the legend relating to the Danaides,
which invest the early history of Argos with peculiar interest. Inachus,
who reigned 1986 B.C., according to ancient chronology, is also the name
of the river flowing beneath the walls of the ancient city, situated in
the eastern part of the Peloponnesus. In the reign of Krotopos, one of his
descendants, Danaus came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to Argos in a
vessel of fifty oars, in order to escape the solicitations of the fifty
sons of AEgyptos, his brother, who wished to make them their wives. AEgyptos
and the sons followed in pursuit, and Danaus was compelled to assent to
their desires, but furnished each of his daughters with a dagger, on the
wedding night, who thus slew their husbands, except one, whose husband,
Lynceus, ultimately became king of Argos. From Danaus was derived the name
of Danai, applied to the people of the Argeian territory, and to the
Homeric Greeks generally. We hence infer that Argos--one of the oldest
cities of Greece, was settled in part by Egyptians, probably in the era of
the shepherd kings, who introduced not only the arts, but the religious
rites o