nor of good pasturage, so that from it we should be able both to live well, and to do service to men."
But them Apollo, the son of Jove, smiling, answered: "Infant-like men, of sad cares, who wish for anxiety, and grievous toils, and groans in your mind, I will tell you an easy word, and set it in your minds. Let each of you, having a cutlass in his right hand, always slay sheep, (but they shall be at hand in all abundance,) as many as the renowned tribes of men bring to me. And guard my temple, and receive the tribes of men assembled hither, and regulate my banquet, as to if there be any vain word or deed, or injury, as is the wont of mortal men.[1] And hereafter there will be other governors among you, under whose control ye will be restrained all your days."
All things are spoken unto thee, but do thou keep them in thy mind. And thou, indeed, hail! O son of Jove and Latona, and I will be mindful of thee and of another song.[2]
II. TO MERCURY.[3]
O Muse, praise Mercury, the son of Jove and Maia, who rules over Cyllene, and sheep-abounding Arcadia, the bene-
- ↑ There is evidently something lost after this line, as Hermann well observes: "Excidit conditio, qua minabatur Apollo malum Cretensibus: nisi feceritis, quod jussi, duros nanciscemini dominos."
- ↑ Chapman:
"Both thee and others of th' immortal state,
My song shall memorize to endless date." - ↑ Coleridge, p. 292, observes that "in this hymn Hermes is gifted with the character of a perfect Spanish Picaro, a sort of Lazarillo de Tormes among the gods, stealing their goods, playing them tricks, and telling such enormous, such immortal lies, to screen himself from detection, that certainly no human thief could ever have the vanity to think of rivalling them on earth." On the importance of this hymn as showing the connexion between the rites and attributes of Apollo and Mercury with each other, see Grote, vol. i. p. 83. The remarks of Muller, who has called its antiquity into question, are important. "A considerably later age is indicated by the circumstance that the lyre or the cithara—for the poet treats these two instruments as identical, though distinguished in
