2–4
So you must be assuredly liable to one of these three charges: either you were lying, to put it harshly, when you said that the Muses promised you power to foretell the future; or they kept their promise, but out of spite you are keeping their gift hidden in your pocket and not sharing it with those who ask; or you have written a great deal on the subject, but not yet given it to the outside world, preserving its use for some or other special occasion. I wouldn’t dare say this, that the Muses promised you two things and gave you one, breaking half their promise—knowledge of the future I mean—especially when they promised this first in your verse. Cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 32.
Who but you yourself could tell us this, Hesiod? As the gods are “givers of goods”, Homer, Od. viii, 325. so it is proper for you poets, their friends and disciples, to expound in all sincerity the knowledge you have and free us from our perplexity.
HESIOD
My fine friend, there is an easy answer to it all. I could say that nothing that I composed belonged to me personally, but to the Muses, and you should have asked them for an account of what was put in and what left out. But for what I knew for myself—tending, herding, driving, milking, and the other practices and lore of shepherds—I would be rightly accountable; but the goddesses give their gifts to whom they will and for as long as they think it proper.
