Collection of Hesiod, Homer and Homerica

school is forced to season its matter with romantic episodes, and that later it tends more and more to revert (as in the "Shield of Heracles") to the Homeric tradition.

The Boeotian School

How did the continental school of epic poetry arise? There is little definite material for an answer to this question, but the probability is that there were at least three contributory causes. First, it is likely that before the rise of the Ionian epos there existed in Boeotia a purely popular and indigenous poetry of a crude form: it comprised, we may suppose, versified proverbs and precepts relating to life in general, agricultural maxims, weather-lore, and the like. In this sense the Boeotian poetry may be taken to have its germ in maxims similar to our English `Till May be out, ne'er cast a clout,'

or

`A rainbow in the morning Is the Shepherd's warning.'

Secondly and thirdly we may ascribe the rise of the new epic to the nature of the Boeotian people and, as already remarked, to a