be delivered from feebleness and weakness of soul,
as also from impulses to wanton and brutal violence.

The only other considerable hymn is that to "Pan", which describes how
he roams hunting among the mountains and thickets and streams, how he
makes music at dusk while returning from the chase, and how he joins in
dancing with the nymphs who sing the story of his birth. This, beyond
most works of Greek literature, is remarkable for its fresh and
spontaneous love of wild natural scenes.

The remaining hymns are mostly of the briefest compass, merely hailing
the god to be celebrated and mentioning his chief attributes. The Hymns
to "Hermes" (xviii), to the "Dioscuri" (xvii), and to "Demeter" (xiii)
are mere abstracts of the longer hymns iv, xxxiii, and ii.

The Epigrams of Homer

The "Epigrams of Homer" are derived from the pseudo-Herodotean "Life of
Homer", but many of them occur in other documents such as the "Contest
of Homer and Hesiod", or are quoted by various ancient authors. These
poetic fragments clearly antedate the "Life" itself, which seems to have
been so written round them as to supply appropriate occasions for their
composition. Epigram iii on Midas of Larissa was otherwise attributed to
Cleobulus of Lindus, one of the Seven Sages; the address to Glaucus (xi)
is purely Hesiodic; xiii, according to MM. Croiset, is a fragment from a
gnomic poem. Epigram xiv is a curious poem attributed on no very obvious
grounds to Hesiod by Julius Pollox. In it the poet invokes Athena to
protect certain potters and their craft, if they will, according to
promise, give him a reward for his song; if they prove false, malignant
gnomes are invoked to wreck the kiln and hurt the potters.

The Burlesque Poems

To Homer were popularly ascribed certain burlesque poems in which
Aristotle ("Poetics" iv) saw the germ of comedy. Most interesting of
these, were it extant, would be the "Margites". The hero of the epic is
at once sciolist and simpleton, 'knowing many things, but knowing them
all badly'. It is unfortunately impossible to trace the plan of
the poem, which presumably detailed the adventures of this unheroic
character: the metre used was a curious mixture of hexametric and iambic
lines. The date of such a work cannot be high: Croiset thinks it may
belong to the period of Archilochus (c. 650 B.C.), but it may well be
somewhat later.

Another poem, of which we know even less, is the "Cercopes". These
Cerco