Listening to the Spider: reading Hesiod’s Works and Days

 

CHAPTER 10. HAVE A NICE DAY

vv. 765-825

 

            In fact, it can now be said with confidence that our poem does not end at v. 764: As against earlier skepticism, recent scholarship shows that the “Days” portion which follows is as authentic as is the rest of the work (i.e., up to a possible interpolated line here and there). The problem is to find its actual role: The common sentiment that it merely continues the “superstiti­ous” type of “advice” of vv. 724-59 (after supposedly more tasteful material earlier in the poem) is the view most responsible for the proposals to excise it, and in any case does not seem right.[1]

            One could approach this problem thematically: Nagy observes that, as is consistent with Hesiod generally, Days contains a good deal of “pan-Hellenization,” the superseding of purely loc­al traditions. Perhaps the poet wishes to end his work with a statement of what it means to be Greek, not just Ionian or Boeotian. Differently, some suggest a natural progression in the poem from the year to the day, e.g., Athanassakis: “having dealt with (the time of year for tasks), (Hesi­od) may indeed feel it necessary to concentrate on when things should or should not be done from day to day.” Or others think of a process going from the “age” (reading that construal of “race” in vv. 106-201) to the year to the month (reading that in the structure of Days) to the day, and even to parts of days toward the end (Hamilton). Most recently, André Lardinois analyzes the detailed citations of days “in the works” of the main part of the poem, and of those activities “in the days” of this part, to suggest that use of the concept “day” itself in the earlier portions is the impe­tus: These citations create momentum which culminates in discussing particular days. Here I will examine the portion’s poetry and structure without actually endorsing any of these proposals, but while retaining their general sense of its positive valorization.[2]

 

From holy days to practical days.

            The opening of Days sets the tone of at least its first part. I construe it thus: There are occult forces (vv. 724-59), and Pheme is also some god (760-4),

 

                        but days are from Zeus: (in particular,) being well observant, in good order,

                        declare to your servants: the “thirty” of the month is best

                        both for overseeing the work and for distributing the rations

                        -- when people of judgment observe it truthfully.[3]

(765-8)

(The last thought presumably refers to the correct choice among competing calendars, discussed by West.) That is to say, unlike the immediate antecedents the entity “day” is Zeus-based, just as poets and musicians are otherwise derived in one Theogony verse, “but kings are from Zeus.” The standard construal is “observe the days from Zeus well in good order,” as if some days were not from him (as Hamilton says for those in 780-97). But claiming that days generally are such allows the poet to proceed in a more clear-cut and elegant fashion than saying that some mysteri­ous enti­ty will punish us for peeing in the river, at least for the next several lines. The elegance is assisted by beginning with the last day of the month (named with a noun rather than just saying “the thirti­eth”), particularly since 766-7 seems to allude to Laertes “oversee(ing) the work” on his estate and eating with his “servants.” A fine point is that “well in good order” in 765, eu kata moir­an, is a combination of the standard phrases kata moiran and eu kata kosmon, but one which replac­es a term for “order” with relatively little nuance, kosmos, with the more “fateful” moira.[4]

            Next the poet seems to elaborate, explaining why at least some days are from Zeus:

 

                        For these days are from “Zeus of the counsels:”

                        First of all, the “old” is a “holy day,” and the four and the seventh

                        -- for on it Leto bore “Apollo of the golden sword” --

                        and the eighth and the ninth. ....  [5]

(vv. 769-72)

(“The old” is short for “the old and the new,” a traditional reference to the first of the month.) That is, the given days are from Zeus, i.e., they are holy (hieros), and the basis for holiness is theologi­cal (Apollo), not mystical as with the last section of the poem. Indeed, Nagy points out that both the first and seventh traditionally concerned Apollo; the fourth, Aphrodite; the eighth and ninth at least in Athens, Poseidon and Dionysus, respectively. Apollo was perhaps the second most impor­­tant Greek deity after Zeus, and this may be why the poet goes out of his way to cite him overtly after doing so nowhere else in the poem. To be sure, there is epic imagery: Apart from standard expressions I put in quotation marks, “seventh” and “day” take the respective verse positions of (Heracles’s eventual task-master) Eurytheus being born in the “seventh ... month” of his mother’s pregnancy, while the phrase “Leto bore” (geinato Lētō) follows the pattern of verse-ending “a mother bore” (geinato mētēr) a given epic character.[6]

            Still, theology aside, this poet cannot long stay away from human practice:

 

                         .... But still, two days of the month

                        (, the) waxing (month,) stand out to be busy with mortal works:

                        “the eleventh and the twelfth” -- yes still, both are good

                        both to shear sheep and to gather the “cheerful harvest,”

                        though the twelfth is much better than the eleventh;

                        for see, on it the “high-hovering” spider weaves his work

                        in the full of the day, yes, when the wise one gathers his (or her?) heap;

                        then a woman can “stand her loom up” and set up her work.[7]

(vv. 772-9)

Evidently “but still” (ge men) signals a contrast. I.e., some days are hieros (whether or not one is actually to eschew working on them, as West thinks). Yet there are others which are good for mor­­­­tals, both in general and in particular (“yes still,” also ge men). There is a ready-made epic phrase for them, “the eleventh and the twelfth,” as well as for “cheerful harvest” (or rather, Trojan heralds bear two lambs and “cheerful” wine which is the “harvest” of the earth). In fact, we hear no more of the Olympians after their basic authority is invoked in 765-72 (just some primeval spirits at 803-4 and Demeter in her agricultural role at 805). This does not mean that the days are no longer “from Zeus,” as Hamilton says for some in the sequel, but that Zeus sponsors practice as well as festivals: He (and Apollo) have handed the ball to the poet, who now runs with it.[8]

            And the scholarly debates have obscured the fact that this is nice poetry! True, the rela­tive merits of the two days the two weavings (vv. 777, 779) and the two gather­ings (775, 778) seem influenced by the ideas of sympathetic magic. Still, they are nicely ordered as: referred sub­ject gathering, referent weaving, referent gathering, referred weaving, that is, an ABBA pattern superimposed on an ABAB. Whoever is the “wise one,” gathering whatever might be the “heap,” the poet cleverly plays on epic’s “high-stepping” (aersipodes) horses to yield “high-hovering spi­der” (aersipotētos arachnēs), an assonant phrase in the Greek which he connects with an alliter­ation I preserve with “weaves work” (nei nēmata). As West notes, “full” matches the fact that the moon is full. There is a connection to the larger world, in that “stands up the loom” is the same Greek as when early in the Iliad Odysseus and others “stood up the mast” of their ship and sailed back to the camp after freeing the daughter of Apollo’s priest.[9]

            There is a reason for this virtuosity: The spider weaving his web is the emblem of the poet composing the Works and Days! The spider is of course a creative principle in the myth of tribal cultures (e.g., the Trickster avatar named “Ananse” in West Africa). The point continues in modern times in poetry. Emily Dickenson says, e.g., the spider is an artist who is unemployed (meaning despised), “Though his surpassing Merit/ Is freely certified/ By every Broom and Bridget/ Throughout a Christian Land”). Then Sylvia Plath: “The spider on its own string/ Crosses the lake ... ,” nominally the physical lake at the artist’s colony where this particular poem was composed, but in context a background presence for evolution. Hesiod is already in this tradition.[10]

            Viewing the spider as a more or less universal symbol, there are three subtle issues rele­vant to Hesiod’s use. First, the point is the creature’s process, not its result alone. It is true that many poets stress the Apollonian form, as it were, of the web with spokes and concentric circles which is achieved by some species of arachnid (as in an entry in a contemporary anthology spea­k­ing of the web’s “beautiful geometry”). But one already reads in Ovid’s myth of the weaving virtuoso Arachne, whom Athena transformed into a (or: the?) spider in a jealous rage, that at least in her original maiden form, “it was pleasant to watch, not only her work,/ but also its becom­ing: such elegance abided in her skill,” whether in the operation of spinning the yarn from the wool or in the embroidery. The activity of spinning itself was of course originally thought divine, carried out by the Fates in determining destiny (an Indo-European heritage).[11]

            Second, the spider’s lack of physical voice is itself poetry: If you will, it is the silent poet. Whitman has a “noiseless, patient spider” sending out filaments as does his own soul. More nega­­tively, Baudelaire speaks of “a dumb crowd of sordid spiders” spreading webs at the source of our minds. But Lorca tells of a “melodic” spider which entraps silence itself to make it such. Theodore Roethke demands: “Voice, come out of the silence./ Say something./ Appear in the form of a spider,/ a moth beating a curtain.” In another culture, Bashō asks: “What voice,/ what song, spider,/ in the autumn wind?,” as if the entity would produce something audible if the “wind” (perhaps our confused senses?) did not drown it out.[12]

            Third, the spider is not a tabula rasa. The biological spider does not follow the cybernetic “input/output” model of simply ingesting its prey and, thus nourished, creating the web: Rather, and if perhaps neither Hesiod nor Dickenson was aware of the fact, it actually excretes its diges­t­ive fluids to be mixed with the prey externally before the ingestion. Meanwhile, a poet’s mind puts its own point of view into the material it processes to create the poem, in our case including such features as the disdain for war and love of word play which color much of the work.[13]

            Within other Greek literature Aristotle gives us, in effect, an industrial manual of the spid­er’s web-making process. However, and while our poet can learn from “high in the clouds” birds, it is highly appropriate for him to imply that it is good when the aersipotētos arachnēs works in broad daylight (unlike the nightingale), at his own modest “height” (aersi- is actually “raised,” not hupsi-, “high” proper), because that entity is the creative artist par excellence. It is the emblem with which he stamps his own process of creation some fifty lines before that ends -- rather like the cameo roles Alfred Hitchcock played in his films. The spider does not literally sing or fly, but Hesiod has given the specific messages of those who do, and now goes beyond them.[14]

            That came in the context of illustrating an important idea: some days are better than others for given tasks, not better in the abstract as the traditional understanding of Days would have it. Next, a given day can be better for some tasks than for others:

 

                        Avoid the thirteenth of the waxing month

                        for starting seeds: it is best for planting vines (or: trees?).[15]

(vv. 780-1)

(This is connected with the previous segment via alliteration: for “waxing,” the poet uses hista­menos rather than aexomenos as at 773, whereas “loom” in 779 is histos.) Without the second line this would be a simple statement of triskaidecaphobia, and one which might justify the charge that Days is but a listing of lucky and unlucky days, or Bona Quaglia’s claim that it is a “horoscope.” But with the enjambement (inessential as at 766-7, 770-2, and 777-8 so far), one sees that the thirteenth is good for something after all. Possibly the poet picks a traditionally maligned number in order to put the point in high relief; or, indeed, the advice may draw on traditional lore based on how it was felt vegetation was affected by the phases of the moon. The language continues to be standard, with “seeds” and “avoid” falling in the verse positions of 446 (where a mature man is good at planting “seeds” and “avoiding” oversowing), and with “plant trees(?)” (phuta d’ enthrepsasthai) perhaps recalling Thetis saying that she “nurtur(ed) (Achilles like) a tree” in a thriving orchard (threpsasa phuton). Our “thirteenth” does not follow “twelve” as in all four of its Homeric cases (the “n then nth plus first” pattern noted earlier), but it does follow the “twelfth” of 774.[16]

            Next, association of ideas with respect to such plants allows the introduction of humans and animals (going forward three days, whether or not for a reason):

 

                        The sixth of mid (month) is very inappropriate for plants,

                        but for man-begetting (not: man-birth) good; it is not appropriate for a girl,

                        either to be born to begin with or yet to “encounter marriage.”

                        Nor indeed, as for girls, to be born (is) the first sixth

                        suitable, but for gelding kids and “flocks of sheep”

                        and for putting a fence around the sheepfold it is a gentle day

                        -- and worthy for man-begetting, though he for his part(?) may be fond of

                        “lies and diversionary words” and secret intimacies.[17]

(vv. 782-9)

Thus with the chiastic order “bad plants man good” the poet gets to the idea of starting a child instead, with the natural expectation that it will be a son. But then, he implies, we must remember that there are females in the world: This is not a good day for them at two points on their life tra­jectory. That could mean any time on it (just as defiling the river at its spring and at its outlet in 757-8 meant anywhere along it), and indeed, it is a frequent epic pattern to state a negative gen­erality and then give examples which may or may not be exhaustive of the category.  Thus Zeus to Hera: “no one will hear it first (proteros; cf. our “to begin with,” prōta ) before you, neither gods nor humans.” In any case, at a different time but still the “sixth,” the idea of reproduction is main­tained as we move to animals, if negatively by way of their castration. We can also start a child then, but the world is ambiguous so we don’t know how he will turn out.[18]

            The virtuosity with which the poet has put these thoughts in a sequence raises the pos­si­bility that, far from them constituting traditional beliefs, he has invented the numbers out of whole cloth for a purpose. (After all, it is generally thought that the Theogony poet, at least, has invented some of its deities.) Namely, our poet may want to connote (or the audience may sense) the gen­eral idea that if we can’t do some given task on a particular day (the specific material coming from the main poem, as Lardinois observes), we can do something else.[19]

            In any case, the focus is not confined to the bare text: “Lies and diversionary words” recalls Pandora at v. 78, the theft-prone woman of 374, and Calypso in the Odyssey. And apart from other standard expressions, “encounter marriage” and “flocks of sheep,” “for putting a fence around the sheepfold” (sēkon t’ amphibalein poimnēion), might com­pare with Odysseus proving his identity to Penelope: “I built a chamber, putting it up around it,” i.e., around an olive tree, from which he built his bed (tōi d’ egō amphibalōn thalamon demon). As for “gentle day,” apart from “holy day” Homer has seven cases of unmetrical, “evil day” (kakon ēmar, __ v __ x) at verse end; thus our poet’s saying ēpion ēmar ( __ vv __ x) instead stresses his pos­i­tive vision of the “day” in both content and prosody.[20]

            Then two days forward:

 

                        On the eighth of the month, the boar and the “loud-bellowing ox”

                        (you should) geld, and “hard-working” mules (or: asses?) on the twelfth.

                        And on the great twenty, in the full of the day, a learned person

                        is to be born, for yes (his) will be (or: is?) a finely-textured mind.[21]

(vv. 790-3)

“Loud-bellowing ox” is standard (but always plural in Homer), as is “hard-working,” if with a differ­ent word for “mules.” “Boar and loud-bellowing ox” (kapron kai boun erimukon) has an analogue in the memorable simile where Nausicaa and her maids are compared with Artemis and her atten­d­ants romping in the mountains, delighting “in boars and swift deer” (kaproisi kai ōkeiēis elaphoi­si). But going from animals to humans, the “fullness” of the day might be thought to again match that of the moon as Nagy says (although if that began on the twelfth it is now only partial). “Per­son” on the twentieth (phōta) contrasts with “plants” on the thirteenth (phuta, 781).[22]

            In one way of viewing the material beginning at the second hemistich of v. 772 on the eleventh and twelfth, it has been a long aside about mortal days in contrast to holy ones. This continues for a little over one more verse, but then climaxes in a whirl of epic animal phrases:

 

                        Worthy for man-begetting (or: -birth) is the tenth, but yes for a girl the fourth

                        of mid (month), and on it “sheep and rolling-gaited curved-horned(?) oxen”

                        and the “jagged-toothed dog” and “hard-working mules(?)”

                        you should put a hand on to tame. ... [23]

(794-7)

Indeed, “sheep and oxen” with the double epithet are sacrificed at one point in the Iliad, and Pat­ro­clus’s body was surrounded by their carcasses for the pyre. As previously noted, “jagged-tooth­ed dogs” vie with lions over a goat, although at the very beginning of his attack on the Achaean camp early in the Iliad, Apollo shot the “mules (our ourēes, not hēmionoi) and dogs” (if “swift,” not “jagged-toothed”). Apart from alluding to other animals, “put a hand on (epi)” looks like a play on a phrase whereby a person “puts (something) in (en) the hands” of another, often as a gift.[24]

            This image of taming epic animals perhaps means subjecting epic poetry to domestica­tion in some way, just as beaching epic ships at vv. 619-30 meant forgoing epic poetry. It certain­ly connotes the idea of using them rather than sacrificing them, if anything more strongly than in the case of 436-40 discussed in Chap. 5.

 

From mystical days to practical days.

            Hamilton makes the important point that a new section begins with the last part of v. 797. In particular, it opens with the same verb as that of the participle in 765. Unfortunately, I see no way to avoid a stubborn textual controversy over its beginning. There are two possibilities:[25]

 

(1)                  ... But in your heart take care (true imperative)

                        to avoid the fourth of either the waning or the waxing (month)

                        gnawing your heart with(?) troubles: see (or: for) very accomplished is the day;[26]

(vv. 797-9)

or:

(2)                  ... But in your heart guard against (797)

                        troubles: see (or: for) very heart-gnawing is (this) accomplished day, (799)

 

i.e., deleting 798, and referring to the middle “fourth” of the last segment. With the first possibility we speak of “fourths” other than that one. Present knowledge does not allow a clear choice, but the arguments may be summarized: As to the syntax, Renehan’s discussion (the best to date) observes that the first possibility results in a “miserable sentence” (the connec­tion of “fourth” with “heart-gnawing troubles” is clumsy in the Greek). On the other hand, he says, it is unnatural to con­­strue the given verb as “guard against,” as in the second. Syntax aside, and while one is proper­ly suspi­ci­ous of athetizing verses merely on the grounds of their not making sense to our modern minds, the contradiction of 798 with what is said in the next segment is in fact blatant: We will be told to take a significant step precisely on the waxing fourth that that line says we should avoid.[27]

            However that problem is to be resolved, the next segment indicates that we are in the realm of magic rather than either theology or common sense. We hear:

 

                        On the fourth of the month bring “home a spouse,”

                        (but while) judging the bird signs best for this deed.

                        Avoid the fifths, since they are difficult and dire;

                        for on the fifth they say “the Furies attended”

                        at the birth of Oath, whom Strife “bore as a bane to” perjurers.[28]

(vv. 800-4)

(“The fifths” presumably means all three: waxing, full, and waning, if we might wonder which one is the birthday of Oath.) The fourth is of theological import (770), thus one would think the right day for marriage as a matter of course. However, the poet calls it a “deed” (ergma), not the more prosaic “act” (ergon), suggesting that, as West says, it is serious business which requires the extra precaution of checking with the birds. As to 802-4, the critic must observe that the notion of two Strifes governed by “the gods” or Zeus, respectively, as was featured in 11-26, is nowhere to be seen; in fact we go back to the Theogony rather than away from it: Oath is also the son of Strife there (if without “Furies attended,” a phrase attested in the Odyssey). Presumably the intent is that strife gives rise to the punishment of perjury in the here and now, particularly on the fifth of any third-of-month. In any case, Oath and the Furies are primordial forces, and the mention of bird signs makes the mystical thrust clear. The point is assisted by a haunting allusion: Scylla’s mother “bore (her) as a bane to mortals” (teke pēma brotoisin, in the verse position of our teke pēmē epiorkois). Thus, although Hamilton believes that this new section returns to the “holy days” (and is more orderly than its immediate antecedent in terms of number sequences), the truth is that its beginning, at least, is more occult in focus.[29]

            But, just as after the “holy” days of vv. 769-72, the poet next goes to the overtly pragmatic:

 

                        On the middle seventh, “Demeter’s sacred grain” (cf. 466, 597)

                        watching very well, “on a well-rolled threshing floor” (cf. 599)

                        cast (it), and the woodcutter is to cut planks for houses

                        and for ships “much wood,” “that which for ships is” suitable;

                        on the fourth start to build your slender ships.[30]

(805-9)

This certainly has epic phrases, some already used in the poem. Still, at 809 we wonder if we are to wait seven days after the wood is cut on the second seventh (17th) before building it on the third fourth (24th); or longer, until the first fourth of the next month; or longer still, until its middle fourth to correspond with “middle” in the opening line (as West suggests). Perhaps at least some part of the segment belongs to the post-Hesiodic “rhapsodic expansion” which Solm­sen posits, where the added verses altered origi­nal meanings without the rhapsode realizing it.[31]

            The next segment, however, seems relatively free of difficulty:

 

                        The middle nine is a better day at evening;

                        while the first nine is entirely-untroubled for humans;

                        for yes as for it, it is good for planting as well as to be born (or: to beget?)

                        for a man “yes and” for a woman, and is never an entirely-bad day.[32]

(810-13)

The ambiguity of bearing versus begetting notwithstanding, this is “entirely” Hesiodic: “A yes and B” (t’ ēde) as a first hemistich is certainly epic in style (e.g., “Hera yes and Poseidon” and Athena wanted to shackle Zeus; Odysseus threatened to strip the upstart Thersites of “his cloak yes and his shirt”). But also, while West notes that epic has “entirely-” (pan-) with an alpha-privative on occa­sion, in fact Homer’s examples are negative (Priam’s sons are “entirely-not-fortunate” and “entirely-not-long-lived”), while Hesiod is positive here. And his returning to the use of a noun rather than ordinal to denote the day (as at 766 and 770) lends a stately quality to the thought.[33]

            Although Hamilton thinks of the next entry as marking “a new beginning,” it falls near the end of the series, and is better considered to climax it:[34]

 

                        Again, few know that the thrice-nine of the month is best

                        to “start (drinking) a jar,” and to “put the yoke on the neck”

                        of oxen and mules and “fleet-footed horses,”

                        and the “fast(?) ship” “with-many-oarlocks” to the “wine-dark sea”

                        “to drag:” yes few “name” it “truly.”[35]

(vv. 814-18)

Whatever “thrice-nine” means in reference to the month (either the 27th, thus going back to num­bering in terms of the full month as with the 30th at 766, or the 29th, to continue the tripartite divi­sion), West documents the number itself as having deep traditional significance. And while Lardi­nois notes that the entire “Days” portion recalls earlier material in the poem, this segment is the epitome of his point: The “jar” is a key motif in the poem: Apart from that of Pandora (94-9), “start a jar” is also said at 368 (where one is to drink deep then and when emptying it, but not in the interim). “Put the yoke on” is a slight rearrangement of terms from 581 where “Dawn” har­nes­ses the oxen, granted that Homer’s warriors “put (a sword to) the neck” of one another. To be sure, while oxen and mules are work animals, as noted in the Introduction horses are not cited elsewhere in the poem and appear to have nothing to do with its interests. However, men­­­tioning them here recalls Hera leading “fleet-footed horses” “under the yoke” (hupo rather than our epi) connecting them to her chariot; thus I believe that, in addition to broadening the reference so that it means taming animals generally, the epic noun-epithet phrase plays the role of introducing expressions in the next line like those which earlier showed that sailing is poetry. Indeed, 817 appears to allude to Hector saying that some day someone may come in a “ship with-many-oarlocks sailing on the wine-dark sea” to see the grave of the man he will kill, an evocative line. That is to say, the thrice-nine is a good day for poetry as well as for normal activities.[36]

            The climactic nature of the segment is particularly evident in “name truly” (alēthea kiklēs­kousin) at its end. Formally, this may only mean the correct designation of the thrice-nine as part of the waning third-month, the 27th or the 29th, but more subtly, it parallels a combination of verse-ending “speak truly” and the suggestive statements in epic that the gods name (kiklēskou­sin) a given entity one thing, but humans another: Especially, Sleep took the form of the bird gods call “Chalkis” (whom Janko thinks must have been a mythical maiden transformed into the bird hum­ans call her); but men, “owl.” That is to say, the gods and our god-inspired poet are the ones who know the truth. And here (and at v. 768) this “truth” is alētheia, which Nagy feels is connect­ed to pan-Hellenism, and which is certainly that which the Muses tell the poet of the Theogony they can sing when they wish, not merely the “facts” our Proemium wishes to give to Perses. In short, we should do everything the poem as a whole says we should do, on the best day we can find, a power­ful summary of what the poet seems to be about in the Days portion.[37]

            But he should have left it at that, since our text continues with, frankly, a mess:

 

                        Open a jar on the fourth -- a holy day above all --(?)

                        at mid-(day?). Again, few (know?) that the after twenty of the month is best

                        at the coming of dawn: it is worse at evening.[38]

(vv. 819-21)

“After twenty” presumably means the 21st, but nothing else is easily inferred. (E.g., is the jar open­ed at noon, or do we speak of the middle fourth?) Solmsen notes the incongruity of “open­ing” a jar here with “starting” one on a different day, cited three lines earlier. His solution is to reject 815-16, but if anything was interpolated one can hope it was something from the present segment. Perhaps a rhapsode who was fond of the middle fourth of the month inserted 819, and dropped whatever was the original verb of 820 to make room for the enjambed “mid.” To be sure, the repetition of “again few” from 814 is itself crude, and the entire segment may be spurious. In any case it adds nothing of poetic value to the section.[39]

            The final summary is better. Taking vv. 826-8 to conclude the poem as a whole, the end of Days itself says:[40]

 

                        These days “are to (people) on earth” of “great advantage;”

                        the others, inconstant(?), spiritless, bearing nothing.

                        Other (people) praise other (days), but yes(?) few know (that?)

                        sometimes a day happens to be a stepmother, sometimes a mother.[41]

(822-5)

Presumably the stepmother is bad, the mother good (West documents traditions on the point), while the poet lets us remember which day is which from the antecedent. The continuation of the “few” motif of 814, 818, 820 and the “other”-ness of the segment (the all- root occurs three times in 823-4, and “sometimes ... sometimes” in 825 is also allote ... allote) lend it a rather occult air. To be sure, aside from reminding us that “great advantage” accrued to mallow and asphodel in 41 and to the good neighbor in 346 (and to one case each in the Odyssey and Theogony), the seg­ment may recall Nestor’s statement that no men “are on earth” now to compare with those of his youth. And just as “few will admire you” at 482 alludes to Homeric “many admire him,” “few know” here seems to recall Glaucus (and later Aeneas) saying “many men know it,” i.e., his genealogy, if we do not know anything so definite here: The content and style of the segment befit the mystical character of the material at the beginning of the section (797-804), thus closing it appropriately.[42]

 

            How to sum up Days? For his part, Hamilton says of the bipartite division he has discov­er­ed that the first section has a negative view of women (vv. 783-5); the second, positive (800, 812-13), and that this mirrors a similar movement in the earlier “main” poem. He then says that the portion as a whole “rehabilitates” Perses because of such points as the addressee giving advice to servants at 766 rather than simply listening to the poet’s advice. And he is able to find the two Strifes of 11-26 (the poem’s guiding principle to him) also here. One can certainly object to details of his position (794-5, in the first section, says it is acceptable for a girl to be born; the addressee also advises servants at 503-4).  Or one can find different overall principles (as previously said, I believe 106-382 bases the rest of the poem). However, the principle that Days should recall mater­ial from the rest of the work is itself to be endorsed, and as noted above, Lardinois imple­ments it by showing that the specific activities of the main poem are given specific days here. The extensive recollection of earlier material and tracking of previous trends moves Leclerc to aver that Days is “an organiza­tion of gestures, not of days” (in connection with saying that the vague­ness in the poem here is incompatible with time as the quantitative continuum moderns know). I would only add that the transition from theologically based days to something less straightforward in 797 reflects passing to the “other poetry” at 678 -- from carrying out one’s life in a world where unpredictable but descri­bable deities are an important part, to taking account of the occult which also pervades real­i­ty. One must know both aspects on a daily as well as yearly basis.[43]

            Pointing to such fundamentally structural considerations cannot entirely answer the ques­tion of why Days is needed as a matter of literature, but scholar­ship has only lately approved it as an object of legitimate study, and further work may clarify its role. For the moment one can say that the poet ends the actual body of his work by telling us in effect to “have a nice day.”  I leave it at that.[44]  (to Conclusion)

 

NOTES: