Works and Days

Section 1: The Two Strifes, Prometheus and Pandora

1–120

Summary

The poet calls on the Muses of Pieria to sing of Zeus, through whom men are famous or obscure, and who easily makes the strong weak and the crooked straight. He asks Zeus to keep judgements straight, while he himself will tell Perses 'true things' (1–10).

There are, Hesiod now says, two Strifes on the earth. One fosters war and quarrels and is hated; the other, the elder daughter of Night, whom Zeus set in the roots of the earth, rouses even the idle to work, since a man who sees his rich neighbour ploughing and planting wants to equal him. Potter envies potter and singer envies singer (11–26). Perses should avoid the bad Strife of the courthouse. Only a man with a year's grain stored can afford lawsuits; the brothers have already divided their inheritance, and Perses seized the larger share, flattering the lords who judge such cases. Fools: they do not know how much more the half is than the whole (27–41).

The gods have hidden the means of life from men, because Prometheus deceived Zeus. Zeus hid fire; Prometheus stole it back in a fennel-stalk. In anger Zeus promised men 'an evil thing' as the price of fire. Hephaestus mixed earth and water into the shape of a lovely maiden, Athena taught her weaving, Aphrodite gave her grace and longing, and Hermes put in her a 'shameless mind and a deceitful nature'. Because all the gods gave her gifts, she was named Pandora. Epimetheus, forgetting his brother's warning never to accept a gift from Zeus, took her in (42–89).

Before this, men lived free from toil and sickness. But the woman lifted the lid of a great jar and scattered its contents among men; only Hope remained inside under the rim. Now earth and sea are full of evils, and diseases come silently, for Zeus took away their voice (90–105). Hesiod then offers 'another tale', of how gods and men sprang from one source, and begins with the golden race, who lived under Cronos like gods, without toil or old age, and died as if falling asleep (106–120).

Analysis

The opening phrase 'So, after all' (ouk ara mounon) is one of the most striking moments in early Greek poetry, because it seems to correct an earlier statement. In the Theogony Eris is a single, wholly bad daughter of Night (Theog. 225–232); here Hesiod revises his own genealogy to make room for a creative rivalry. The distinction between two Strifes sets the agenda of the whole poem: Perses must exchange the strife of litigation for the strife of labour (West 1978) (Clay 2003).

The Prometheus story is told briefly and assumes that the audience knows the longer version in the Theogony, with the trick at Mekone over the division of the sacrificial ox. What is new is the emphasis on the 'hidden livelihood' (bios): Zeus's anger explains why men must work the land. Pandora's creation is told at greater length than in the Theogony and with a different emphasis: there the woman is herself the evil, a 'race of women' who consume men's goods; here she is named, given a jar, and her act of opening it releases toil and disease (Vernant 1983) (Zeitlin 1996) (Loraux 1993).

The name Pandora is explained as 'all-gift', because all the gods gave her gifts, though the Greek could also mean 'giver of all', a title of the earth. The ambiguity suits a figure who is both a lovely adornment and a 'sheer, hopeless snare'. The jar (pithos) is a storage vessel of the kind a farmer used for grain or wine, which ties the myth to the household economy that the rest of the poem describes; it became a 'box' only in the Renaissance (Panofsky 1956).

The Ages begin with a striking formula: gods and men 'sprang from one source'. The golden race lives the life of the gods, without labour or old age, under Cronos. The point of the story is not only decline but definition: by showing men who did not have to work, it explains what the present human condition is.

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Section 2: The Ages of Mankind, the Hawk and the Nightingale

121–237

Summary

After their death the golden men became kindly spirits who roam the earth in mist, watching over judgements and giving wealth (121–126). The silver race was far worse: children were reared for a hundred years as simpletons, and as adults they lived only briefly, committing outrage against one another and refusing to honour the gods, so Zeus put them away; they became blessed spirits below the earth (127–142).

Zeus then made a race of bronze, 'sprung from ash-trees', terrible and strong, who loved war, ate no bread, and used bronze for everything, since there was no iron. They destroyed one another and went nameless to Hades (143–155). The fourth race, nobler and more just, was the race of heroes or demigods, who died in war at Thebes and at Troy; some of them Zeus settled at the ends of the earth, in the islands of the blessed, where Cronos rules them (156–173).

Hesiod wishes he had not been born into the fifth race, of iron, whose men never rest from labour and sorrow. Zeus will destroy this race too, when children are born grey-haired. Father will quarrel with son, guest with host, brother with brother; parents will be neglected, oaths broken, might will be right, and finally Aidos (Shame) and Nemesis (Righteous Indignation) will leave the earth for the gods (174–201).

Now Hesiod tells a fable 'for princes': a hawk carries a nightingale in his talons and tells her that crying is useless, since he may eat her or let her go as he pleases (202–212). He turns to Perses: violence is bad, and Justice wins in the end. When she is dragged away by bribe-eating men she follows, weeping, bringing harm on the city. But the city that gives straight judgements flourishes: peace, plenty, fertile flocks and women who bear children like their fathers (213–237).

Analysis

The myth of the races is not a simple story of decline. The metals descend in value, but the fourth race, the heroes, is better than the bronze and has no metal at all. Hesiod seems to have fitted the heroes of epic into an older scheme of metals, which is why the parallels in Persian and Hebrew texts have four metals and no heroes (West 1978) (West 1997). Jean-Pierre Vernant proposed a structural reading in which the races form pairs, each split between justice and outrage (hybris): gold and silver, bronze and heroes, with the iron race containing both possibilities in itself (Vernant 1983). Glenn Most showed how differently the myth can be counted and organised (Most 1997).

The iron age is described in the future tense, which turns history into prophecy. Hesiod's wish that he had 'died before or been born afterwards' has suggested to some readers that a better age might follow, so that the myth would be cyclical; the text does not say so, and the line may simply express despair. The picture of the iron age is also a picture of what Perses' behaviour leads to: broken family bonds, perjury, and the rule of strength over right.

The fable of the hawk and the nightingale is an ainos, a story with a hidden meaning addressed to those who 'understand'. The hawk speaks like a tyrant, and he is not refuted within the fable. The answer comes in what follows: the law of the strong belongs to animals, but Zeus gave men justice (276–280). Since the nightingale (aēdōn) is the singer among birds, many readers see in her an image of the poet himself, at the mercy of the kings (Nagy 1990) (Canevaro 2015).

The just city (225–237) is a picture of a golden-age plenty available to the present, but only through justice and work. Its blessings are those of a farming community: harvests, acorns and honey, fleeces, legitimate children. Notably, its people 'do not travel on ships': seafaring is a sign of need, a point Hesiod returns to later.

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Section 3: Justice, Work and Wealth

238–351

Summary

For the violent Zeus ordains punishment: often a whole city suffers for one wicked man, with famine, plague, barren women, or the loss of armies, walls and ships (238–247). Hesiod warns the princes that thirty thousand immortal watchers roam the earth observing judgements, and that the maiden Dike, daughter of Zeus, sits by her father and tells him of men's wickedness, so that the people pay for their rulers' crooked sentences (248–264). He who harms another harms himself. Hesiod would not wish to be just himself if the unjust were to have the greater right; but he does not believe Zeus will allow it (265–273).

To Perses he explains that Zeus gave justice to men, while fishes, beasts and birds devour one another because they lack it; the man who swears truly will prosper, and the perjurer's line will fade (274–285). Badness is easy to reach, but the gods have put sweat before Goodness: the road is long and steep at first, and easy once one reaches the top (286–292).

The best man thinks for himself; the next best listens to good advice; the man who does neither is useless (293–297). Perses must work, so that Hunger will hate him and Demeter fill his barn; the idle man is like the drones who eat the bees' labour. Work is no disgrace; idleness is (298–319). Wealth should not be seized by force or fraud; Zeus punishes the man who wrongs a suppliant or guest, seduces his brother's wife, harms orphans or abuses his aged father. Sacrifice to the gods so that you can buy another's land, and not another yours (320–341). Invite your friend and especially your neighbour to a feast, since neighbours come quickly in trouble; measure fairly with your neighbour, and repay him with more if you can (342–351).

Analysis

This section completes Hesiod's theology of justice. Zeus is not only the strongest god of the Theogony but the guarantor of right among men, working through a network of spirits (the golden race of 121–126), through his daughter Dike, and through collective punishment. The idea that a whole city suffers for one man's crime, strange to modern ideas of justice, reflects the communal thinking of an agrarian society, and it reappears in Greek tragedy (Lloyd-Jones 1971) (Solmsen 1949).

Michael Gagarin argued that dike in the Works and Days means chiefly a legal settlement or process, the 'straight' or 'crooked' judgement given by the kings, rather than an abstract moral principle; the poem's ethics grow out of the practice of settling disputes (Gagarin 1973). Lines 270–273 show how much is at stake: if the unjust prospered, it would be foolish to be just. Hesiod's faith in Zeus is an argument, not a mere assumption, and it is made in the face of present injustice.

The road to Goodness (aretē, here better 'excellence' or 'prosperity' than moral virtue) became one of the most quoted passages of Greek literature; it lies behind the later allegory of Heracles at the crossroads. The comparison of the idle man to drones has a counterpart in the Theogony, where women are the drones who consume the labour of men (Theog. 594–602); in the Works and Days the drone is any man who will not work (Sussman 1978).

The advice on neighbours reveals the social world of the poem: a village economy based on reciprocity, where loans of grain or tools are remembered and repaid with interest, and where a good neighbour is more useful than distant kin. Paul Millett and the economic historians Tandy and Neale used these lines to reconstruct the life of an early Greek peasant community (Millett 1984) (Tandy 1996).

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Section 4: Maxims, and the Farmer's Year Begins

352–464

Summary

A series of maxims follows: avoid base gain; give to those who give; Give is a good girl and Take is bad; add a little to a little and it becomes great; keep your goods at home; be sparing in the middle of the cask. Fix a friend's wages, and even with your brother 'smile and get a witness'. Beware a woman who flatters you to get at your barn. An only son is best for keeping an estate together, though Zeus can give wealth to more (352–380). If you want wealth, 'work with work upon work' (381–382).

The calendar begins. Reap when the Pleiades rise, plough when they set; they are hidden for forty days. Strip to sow, plough and reap, or you will end up begging, as Perses has already come begging to Hesiod; but Hesiod will give him nothing more (383–404). First get a house, a woman to follow the oxen, and an ox; do not put off work (405–413).

In autumn, when the heat abates and Sirius is seen less by day, cut timber, for it is least liable to worm: a mortar, a pestle, an axle, wheels, and a plough, two if possible, one in a single piece and one jointed. Get two nine-year-old oxen and a ploughman of forty who will keep his mind on his work (414–447). The cry of the crane signals the time for ploughing and winter rain; the man without oxen will find it easy to ask for a yoke and easy to be refused. There are a hundred timbers to a waggon. When the time comes, plough early and in all weathers (448–464).

Analysis

The maxims show the poem's link with proverbial wisdom. Many are compressed to a single line, and several, such as 'Give is a good girl, but Take is bad', personify actions as figures, in the same way that Hesiod personifies Strife, Justice and Shame. Their ethic is one of prudent reciprocity rather than altruism: give to the giver, guard against even a brother (West 1978) (Millett 1984).

The transition from moral precept to farming is marked by a sky-sign. The farmer's year is governed by the stars, especially the Pleiades, whose morning rising in May and morning setting in November mark harvest and ploughing. This is how a society without a fixed civil calendar told the seasons, and it gives the poem a cosmic frame: the order of Zeus is visible in the regular movement of the stars and the migration of birds (Nelson 1998).

Perses reappears in the middle of the farming advice, now begging at his brother's door. Whether Perses is a real brother or a fiction, his presence keeps the instructions personal and argumentative; the lesson of the calendar is the same as that of the myths, that need comes to those who will not work at the right time (Griffith 1983).

The detailed instructions for making a plough and waggon have struck some readers as unpoetic. They show Hesiod's pleasure in exact technical knowledge, and they make a moral point: the 'man rich in fancy' who thinks his waggon already built is the opposite of the farmer who prepares beforehand.

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Section 5: Sowing, Winter and Spring

465–581

Summary

When ploughing begins, pray to Zeus of the Earth and to Demeter, and let a slave follow with a mattock to cover the seed from the birds; then, if Zeus grants a good end, you will have plenty until spring (465–478). If you plough at the winter solstice, the crop will be thin; but a late ploughing can still succeed if Zeus sends rain when the cuckoo first calls (479–492).

In winter pass by the smithy where idle men gather to keep warm; the idle man who waits on empty hope plans mischief. Tell your slaves in midsummer that it will not always be summer, and build barns (493–503). Avoid the month of Lenaeon, when Boreas blows from Thrace, the forests roar and the beasts shiver; the wind pierces ox-hide and goat-hair but not fleece, bends the old man like a wheel, but does not reach the girl who stays indoors with her mother. Then the 'Boneless One' gnaws his foot in his fireless home, and the beasts seek shelter (504–535).

Wear a soft cloak and long tunic, boots lined with felt, a cape of kidskins and a felt cap; finish your work before the cloud and mist come. Give oxen less food and men more in the long nights (536–563). Sixty days after the solstice Arcturus rises at dusk and the swallow comes: prune the vines first. When the 'House-carrier' climbs the plants to escape the Pleiades, stop digging the vineyards and sharpen your sickles. Rise early in harvest time, for dawn takes a third of the day's work (564–581).

Analysis

The prayer to 'Zeus of the Earth' (Zeus Chthonios) and Demeter shows that farming is a religious act. Work and piety go together: the farmer does everything he can, but success depends on Zeus, 'whose will is different at different times'. This combination of human effort and divine uncertainty runs through the calendar (Nelson 1998) (Clay 2003).

The winter passage (504–563) is the most elaborate descriptive writing in the poem, and it shows that Hesiod's style is not merely plain. The wind's progress through ox, goat and sheep, past the old man to the sheltered girl, is a carefully graded sequence; the girl indoors, 'unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite', is a rare image of comfort and innocence in a hard world. The month-name Lenaeon is Ionian rather than Boeotian, a detail that has been used in arguments about Hesiod's language and audience (West 1978).

Hesiod often uses kennings, riddling names for common things: the 'Boneless One' is the octopus, believed to eat its own tentacles in winter; the 'House-carrier' is the snail; the 'Three-legged One' is an old man with a stick; later the 'Day-sleeper' is the thief. These periphrases may reflect an older, perhaps taboo-based, way of speaking, and they give the farming lore a flavour of riddle and proverb.

The repeated attacks on idleness, at the smithy and in 'empty hope', recall the jar of Pandora: the hope that remains with men is ambiguous, and here it is plainly bad, the hope of the man who does not work.

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Section 6: Summer, Harvest and Sailing

582–694

Summary

When the artichoke flowers and the cicada sings in the heat, goats are fattest and wine sweetest, women most wanton and men weakest, because Sirius parches them. Then Hesiod would sit in the shade with wine, curds, milk and meat, facing the west wind, and pour three measures of water to one of wine (582–596). When Orion appears, have the grain winnowed and stored; hire a servant-girl without a child, feed the dog to keep off thieves, and lay in fodder (597–608). When Orion and Sirius are in mid-heaven and Arcturus rises at dawn, cut the grapes, dry them in the sun ten days, cover them five, and on the sixth draw off the wine. When the Pleiades, Hyades and Orion set, it is time to plough again, and the year is complete (609–617).

If Perses wants to go to sea, he should know that when the Pleiades set, storms rage; then the ship should be drawn up on land and stored, with its rudder hung over the smoke (618–632). Hesiod's father used to sail because he lacked a livelihood; he left Aeolian Cyme to escape poverty and settled at Ascra, 'bad in winter, sultry in summer, and good at no time' (633–640). Admire a small ship, but load a large one (641–645).

Hesiod admits that he has never sailed except from Aulis to Euboea, where he went to the games of Amphidamas at Chalcis and won a tripod for a song, which he dedicated to the Muses of Helicon. But the Muses have taught him to sing, so he will tell the will of Zeus (646–662). The best sailing season is the fifty days after the summer solstice; there is also a risky spring season, when the first small leaves appear at the top of the fig-tree, but Hesiod does not praise it. Do not put all your goods in ships; observe due measure in all things (663–694).

Analysis

The summer picnic (582–596) is a moment of rest after the year's labour, and the only point where the speaker imagines his own pleasure in detail. It is balanced against the winter scene, and both show that the poem's instruction is set within a vivid sense of the seasons. Alcaeus later adapted these lines in a drinking song, an early sign of the poem's influence (West 1978) (Hunter 2014).

Hesiod's attitude to the sea is deeply suspicious. Sailing is the resort of the poor, like his father, and it is 'fearful to die among the waves'. The just city of 225–237 does not need ships. Yet the advice is practical: trade, if necessary, at the safest time and with moderate risk. Anthony Edwards and others have used the passage to argue that Hesiod's community was largely self-sufficient and wary of the market (Edwards 2004) (Tandy 1996).

The autobiographical passage is the richest evidence for Hesiod's life, and also the most discussed. His father's move from Cyme makes Hesiod a kind of outsider, the son of an immigrant, and Richard Martin has read his poetics as that of the metanastes, the newcomer who speaks with the authority of one who stands apart (Martin 1992). The victory at Chalcis connects this poem with the Theogony: the Muses who 'first set me in the way of clear song' are the Muses of the Theogony's opening, who met Hesiod on Helicon (Theog. 22–34).

The reference to Aulis, 'where the Achaeans once stayed', with the dry remark that the strait to Euboea was Hesiod's only voyage, has often been read as a sly contrast between his poetry and Homeric epic of sea-borne expeditions. The later tradition of a contest between Homer and Hesiod at Chalcis grew from these lines (Graziosi 2002) (Nagy 1990).

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Section 7: Marriage, Taboos and the Days

695–828

Summary

Marry at about thirty, a maiden in the fifth year after puberty, preferably a neighbour; nothing is better than a good wife and nothing worse than a bad one, who 'roasts her man without fire' (695–705). Avoid the anger of the gods. Do not make a friend equal to a brother; if he wrongs you, repay him double, but welcome him back if he makes amends. Do not taunt a man with poverty, which the gods send; the best treasure is a sparing tongue. Do not be churlish at a shared feast (706–723).

A series of ritual rules follows: do not pour libations with unwashed hands; observe rules of decency in urinating; do not beget children after a funeral; pray and wash before crossing a river; do not cut your nails at a festival; do not leave the ladle on the mixing-bowl; finish your house, lest a crow croak on it; and avoid pollution from unconsecrated pots and from a woman's bath water (724–759). Avoid the talk of men, for Talk (Pheme) is light and hard to be rid of, and 'even Talk is in some ways divine' (760–764).

The Days follow. The thirtieth is best for inspecting work and handing out rations. The first, fourth and seventh are holy, the seventh being the birthday of Apollo; the eighth, ninth, eleventh and twelfth are good for work; certain days are good for sowing or planting, for the birth of sons or daughters, for gelding animals, for bringing home a bride, for opening a jar or launching a ship. The fifth days are terrible, for on a fifth the Erinyes attended the birth of Oath (765–818). Few know the nature of the days; a day is sometimes a stepmother, sometimes a mother. Happy the man who knows all this, works without offending the gods, reads the omens of birds and avoids transgression (819–828).

Analysis

The advice on marriage and friendship continues the poem's prudent ethics, and its view of women is consistent with the Pandora myth: a good wife is the greatest benefit, but a woman can also consume a man's substance. Scholars have debated whether Hesiod is simply misogynistic or whether his view is more ambiguous, given the importance of the wife in the household economy (Zeitlin 1996) (Sussman 1978).

The taboos (724–759) have embarrassed some modern readers, and some editors have doubted that they belong to the original poem. They are better seen as part of the same concern with right timing and right conduct that governs the calendar: every act, however small, has a proper form, and mistakes bring the anger of the gods. Several resemble later Pythagorean precepts (West 1978).

The Days have been the most suspected part of the poem; some ancient and modern scholars thought them a later addition, and an ancient note records that a section on bird-divination once followed, which was already rejected in antiquity. Most modern critics accept the Days as Hesiodic or at least as an integral ending: the poem narrows from the cosmic order of Zeus to the year, the month and finally the single day, and ends on the knowledge that makes a man 'happy and lucky' (West 1978) (Most 2018) (Canevaro 2015).

The birth of Horcus (Oath) from Eris on a fifth day links the end of the poem to its beginning and to the Theogony, where Oath is the last child of Eris (Theog. 231–232). The bad Strife of the proem and the punishment of perjury in the justice section are recalled in the final calendar.

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