CHAPTER 3

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

CHAPTER 3. A FRESH APPROACH

vv. 106-382

{Note: Substantial portions of this chapter written in 2003 have subsequently appeared, albeit in a form more oriented toward the specialist reader, in the article in Classical Journal listed in the writings page for 2005/06. That article has considerably less detail but is more up to date in terms of scholarship.}

It can be seen in retrospect that, as against the standard view of separate narratives, but as Berkley Peabody has proposed on the basis of the poem’s “song” structure, the last chapter construed vv. 11-105 as a single entity, unfolding continuously through such means as the need for exemplification of the two Strifes concept after 26 and ambiguity in the object of “hid” in 47. In that context it is not difficult to see a fundamental break embodied in the next segment:[1]

Or if you will, I’ll thoroughly relate to you another account

well and knowledgably -- and you lay it in your heart --

thus (or: of how) gods and mortal humans arise from the same (what?).[2]

(106-8)

Admittedly, the uncertainty of the last verse could compromise interpretation of the segment. Just how gods and humans have a common origin is unclear, as are the relations of the clause to the antecedent and sequel. Opinions range from Benardete’s, that the thought means the creations next cited are in the gods’ image, to Verdenius’s, that the statement introduces a degeneration of the human race paralleling estrangement from the gods. “The same” (homothen) properly refers to physical location, but here might mean the same birth or generating principle. (Perhaps the latter is Zeus, featured in both the antecedent and the sequel, who is “father” of gods and humans.) Some have simply rejected the line. Or perhaps only the first segment of the sequel is in view, where as we will see humans once lived “like gods.”[3]

But if one can look past that problem, the real issue is the phrase I render as “another account,” heteros logos. The standard construal (West, Verdenius, and most others) is that logos indicates another “story” (as the term in fact means in Homer), and that heteros simply differentiates the “myth” of human races which follows, and only it, from the preceding myth of Prometheus and Pandora (and only it, as against the continuity of vv. 11-101 suggested above). However, assuming for the moment that the forward reference is indeed confined to the races section, a minority of commentators have long said that that is fundamentally different in nature, perhaps even amounting to history. (Most recently, Alain Ballabriga suggests that it corrects the Prometheus-Pandora myth in a modernizing fashion, much as the Documentary Hypothesis’s “Priestly” narrative corrects the earlier “Jahwist” account of the material in the first few chapters of Genesis, e.g., by removing anthropomorphisms from description of the deity.) That is, the aspect of heteros which indicates actual difference comes to the fore. As for logos, there is a bit too uncanny a resemblance between the transition in 106-8 and Protagoras’s statement after Plato’s variation on the Prometheus myth cited at the end of the last chapter. Namely, he says to Socrates that after that mythos he will explain his point alternatively, with a logos, where the word has its classical Greek sense of “argument.” Between these two uses, Heraclitus opened his book by saying that it would give a logos, and the fragments we have from it show that it was certainly not a mere “story.” This suggests that Hesiod’s use of the term is closer to “means of narrative” than to “narrative.” And among the segment’s uses of Homeric language forms, “if you will” in particular normally signals a significant shift in the narrative (e.g., an account of Aeneas’s origin with a full genealogy rather than just his patronymics).[4]

With all that in mind, and also recalling that “means of narrative” need not be confined to a specific narrative, this chapter will proceed from the hypothesis that heteros logos really means “a different way of speaking,” and also that it refers to more in the sequel than the races narrative, with just how much more remaining to be determined.

The past.

The “other account” actually begins with:

Gold first of all (was) the race of bright-faced(?) humans (that)

the deathless ones who have homes on Olympus created.[5]

(vv. 109-10)

This language is quite allusive: Apart from obvious conventional phrases, “gold first of all” to begin the series of races follows a pattern notably exemplified by “Nestor first of all” leading a procession, followed by Idomeneus, then others, thus giving a list of notables in order of venerability. Or, Aeneas gives his genealogy following “if you will” as at our 106, beginning with the statement that Zeus engendered “Dardanus first.” These nuances suggest that whatever “gold” means (the people are certainly not literally formed from it), it will entail superiority in some way.[6]

Deferring that issue, we may consider the actual characteristics of the race, stated next:

They indeed were of Cronus’s (era), when he ruled in heaven,

and yes they lived like gods, with carefree heart

free and far from pain and distress; nor at all (did) wretched

old age exist: always with the same feet and hands

they enjoyed their festivals, beyond every kind of evil,

and they died as if taken by sleep; all manner of goods

were theirs: the fertile land bore its fruit

on its own, fully and plentifully; and in contentment they

peacefully abided with their work, with many benefits.[7]

(vv. 111-19)

At one time interpreters identified the utopia portrayed here with that which pertained before the Pandora of the previous narrative, that is, in some presumably definite continuum in “mythical time.” This was said for such reasons as that “free and far from” pain and distress (113) is also stated of the evils before Pandora (91). However, Verdenius and others argue well against this idea (e.g., Ballabriga observes that the gold race version seems agricultural; the pre-Pandora, savage), and to me it seems best to view echoes of the account of 11-105 (here and later in the poem) as memories of a ladder one has used to attain a higher level but no longer carries.[8]

If one looks beyond that issue (and beyond the purely intellectual point of a chronology so vague that Olympians create a race to live under the “earlier” Titans), the poetry is fairly effective. “Lived like gods” suggests a primordial state before the division between humans and divinities. If we may judge from Homer, preservation of the specific body parts feet and hands is associated with youthful vigor, and the pairing of Death and Sleep is natural. More subtle nuances include the point that the shade of the pivotal figure Heracles “enjoyed the festivals,” as well as (so West) “beyond all evil” participating in an analogical system with the fact that a drug makes people “forgetful of all evil” and with the Titans being “beyond all gods” after Zeus defeated them.[9]

However, there is evidence that a tranquil time with Cronus was a previous Greek tradition. The “gold” race might amount to no more than a variation on “the good old days” (in H. C. Baldry’s phrase), if not for its eventual fate. Namely, after an interpolated line:[10]

Whereupon after (?) the earth (has now) covered over this race,

verily by will of Zeus they are spirits

beneficial, on earth, guardians of mortal humans;

?[well, they keep watch over judgments and vicious acts,

veiled in mist, going about all over the earth,]?

wealth-givers: also they have this royal honor.[11]

(vv. 121-6)

It is really this segment that makes the race interesting. We notice first that its passing away as a whole is not stated to be remarkable in itself. (To be sure, it is still possible to wonder why the poet thinks it happened. Ballabriga suggests a contradiction in his view between the gods needing to show their divinity, hence creating humans, and the god-like nature of the creation lowering the prestige of this divinity by comparison, so that it destroyed them.) Perhaps it is viewed as naturally as is the modern idea of extinction of a species. More importantly, in artistic terms, that the end of the lives of the people was not an event (individually or as a whole) matches the uneventful lives themselves. As to the spirits who ensued, their apparent role (at least if we ignore the possibly spurious 124-5) is to grant the characteristics they had while alive to us in the present: “wealth” (i.e., agricultural produce), conferred “royally” by those who were exalted. But more subtly, as is often suggested, the spirits “on earth” are inherently counterposed to the gods “in heaven.” That is to say, again, the poem is about earth rather than sky.[12]

What, then, does “gold” mean? As the possible allusion to Nestor might suggest, commentators have generally thought it to symbolize value in some way, although it has also been suggested that, rather, the metals here and in the sequel have quasi-alchemical “powers.” Perhaps we will learn more from the other races, but for the moment one may note what it does not mean: The metal may be some sort of totem, but its citation is not “mythical” in the sense of, say, some ancestral figure laying eggs of gold, which were then transformed into stone and are now landmarks familiar to the tribe.[13]

The account continues:

Then afterwards (i.e., after the gold race) a second race, much worse,

silver, (those) who have homes on Olympus created,

neither resembling the gold in physique nor in mind (i.e., will);

rather, a child under his mother’s care indeed a hundred years

was raised playing, a big baby “in his (very own) house;”

but well when he came to grow up, and to a measure of young manhood,

they lived but a little time, having suffered

from thoughtlessness; for reckless transgression they could not

avoid toward one another; nor to service of the deathless ones

were they disposed: they did not perform at the holy altars of the blessed ones

-- which is the rule for humans -- according to (local) custom. ...

(or: ones,/ which for humans is the rule according to local custom. ...)[14]

(vv. 127-37)

Surely this race is more interesting. The poet plays on the Ur-utopia cliché to yield its opposite, and already at the outset by means of a studied repetition of “they who have homes on Olympus created,” applied to silver rather than gold. As to the juxtaposition, there is no evidence that the archaic Greeks felt silver to be more that slightly inferior to gold in value, but our silver race is “much worse.” This is a puzzle as Ferdinand Bamberger already noted in the mid nineteenth century. In any case, Hesiodic wit is betrayed by the image of a century-old person remaining a child “in his house,” an expression employed ironically also elsewhere, in such situations as Heracles killing a guest “in his (own) house.” Thus, although West thinks that the silver race is a variation on a pre-existing narrative, one is inclined to agree with Eduard Meyer that it is Hesiod’s invention. Either way, our sociologist-poet realizes that no one is really going to grow up from such a childhood, and so he makes the “adults” of the race totally irresponsible. A subtle point, at least if I am correct that “according to custom” applies to the previous verse, is that this allows for variation by local cult: the race did not anywhere at all sacrifice at “holy altars, which is the rule for humans” (two epic phrases).[15]

Of course, the audience is next told that the failure to sacrifice caused Zeus to erase these people in anger (vv. 137-9), a point over which we need not linger. But then:

Whereupon after the earth also covered over this race,

verily they are called blessed mortals underground (or: are underground, called blessed mortals),

second(ary), but still honor accompanies even them.[16]

(140-2)

Here the repetition of 121 and “they are” in 122 (up to a particle) on the gold race’s spirits is perhaps overly calculated; still, it makes the audience recall the latter. West observes that Castor and Pollux also get honor underground in the Odyssey (if, unlike our entities, they still get to live on alternate days), but that is all the way down to Hades. Evidently the silver afterlife is of earth like the gold, if slightly below it, and “mortals” rather than “spirits,” so that they obtain honor if not as much. But as Bona Quaglia notes, such a fate at death clashes with the race being a disaster while alive. And unlike the gold case, they are honored without it being said that they play a role with present humans (so Wilamowitz). West and Verdenius follow a long-standing view that Hesiod’s schema adapts the entities to honored “local heroes” known to the audience, but if so, the accommodation is far from seamless. Although “even” in the last line may look askance at this afterlife somewhat, the accord with the actual life is partial at best, unlike with the gold.[17]

The fact that the “silver” people are worse overall than the “gold” might suggest that the metals symbolize value to the poet, if as noted above without resonating much with what the audience will have thought previously. But then something different is stated:

Again, father Zeus a third race of bright-faced humans

did create, bronze, not silver nor anything like it,

from ash (melian), terrible and powerful; for them Ares’s

baleful work was the concern (emele), and transgression; nor any bread

(or: Ares’s/ and transgression’s baleful work was the concern; nor any bread)

did they eat; rather, they had an adamantine, stout-spirited heart,

unrefined, and great force and invincible(?) arms

grew from their shoulders over sturdy limbs.

Bronze was their equipment, and yes bronze their houses

-- with bronze they worked: there was no black iron.[18]

(vv. 143-51)

(Meli- and -mele are in the same verse position.) It is to be noted that this imagery is primordial: The language “unrefined” and “great force ... sturdy limbs” is said of various monsters in the Theogony, although the fact that our creatures did not eat bread means that they were also like the uncivilized creatures in epic, e.g., the Cyclopes (so West). If “from ash” is literally meant, they are built of strong wood. The resulting image of hard men may be what is meant by their being “not anything like” the possibly effete silver race, although one might think their falling under the regime of the war god is simply more organized in its “transgression” than that of spoiled brats unable to control themselves. At least in that respect the characteristics seem a natural progression from the antecedent.[19]

But the most interesting point is the metal. At least by the end of the segment, this time any symbolism gives way to the claim that the people actually used bronze. On the one hand, that may be part of what is meant by “not anything like;” on the other, actual use of gold and silver, respectively, may be what the poet means for the previous races, as in Gwyn Griffiths’s view of the races narrative as a sequence of archaeological stages. At the least, the final comment on bronze versus iron gives the account a technological-historical aspect.[20]

. In any case, Theogony-based imagery next gives way to what is thoroughly epic:[21]

And see indeed, vanquished by their own hand

they went to the dank home of chilling Hades,

nameless: even for all their ferocity death

seized them, black (death); the bright light of the sun they left.[22]

(vv. 152-5)

I.e., this time the race killed itself off, with neither Zeus nor “gods” in general being required for the feat. And the verses telling us so are justly admired. E.g., “black” in the standard phrase “black death” is enjambed even past the clause’s verb, in order to achieve counterposition to “bright” (also in the Greek). But the lines were originally heard in light of the facts that “vanquished by (someone’s) hand,” “dank home of Hades,” “nameless” (i.e., poignantly unremembered) beginning a verse, “even for all one’s strength,” and “left the light of the sun” are all used in Homer in one place or another, to describe a given hero’s death. “Light of the sun” in particular is apparently a very old figure for life, and “leaving” it is used, especially, to characterize the prophesied key death among the Achaeans (either Patroclus or Achilles). Notice that our poet uses this powerful language to state the doom of an entire people, as the deaths of individuals smoothly merge with this end as a whole. To be sure, the shift to epic imagery lends a nobility to the fate of this race that is inconsistent with its monstrous nature, so that, as with the silver, its life and death are not as well matched as they might be.[23]

But also, describing monsters as if they were heroes makes heroes seem not so noble. Having used language accruing to the latter, the poet now actually cites them, but as few commentators have noticed, the resulting description is ambivalent:[24]

Whereupon after the earth also covered over this race,

yet again another, a fourth, over the much-nourishing earth

Zeus son of Cronus did create, more just and (so) better,

of hero men, a god-like race, those called

demigods, the former generation around the boundless earth.

And them indeed baneful war and dire battle

-- some under (the wall of) seven-gated Thebes, the Cadmean one --

destroyed, fighting for the sake of Oedipus’s flocks;

while again others, in ships over the great gulf of sea

leading (them), to Troy, for the sake of fair-haired Helen.[25]

(vv. 156-65)

I.e., war and battle destroyed some at Thebes and led others over the great gulf. Here the inflected Greek language allows the single sentence comprising 161-5 to be ordered as subject, part of object, verb, and remainder of object, and this is an effective structure in that it achieves proximity of the strong verb “destroyed” in the middle line to both object parts, after an emphatic introductory phrase in the first line. But all this only enhances the negativity of the subject, “baneful war and dire battle” (noted in the Introduction and in Chapter 2 for its use at 16). Moreover, “for the sake of (the flocks or Helen)” recalls Achilles complaining that he has fought much “for the sake of” the wives of the Achaeans. (It would have been just as easy, and more in accord with “more just and better,” to replace either or both of the “for the sake of” phrases with, say, “to win triumph and glory.”) Thus, while the commentators simply take the race to be “good,” the last five lines serve to impugn the two signal events of the Greek heroic tradition, the Theban and Trojan wars.[26]

Most importantly, in stating in v. 160 that this is the “former” generation, i.e., the one before the present, the poet continues the placement of the races narrative in actual history, as with saying the previous people using bronze instead of iron. To be sure, this time no metal is mentioned. Many take that point to support a view to be taken into account shortly, wherein the hero race was not part of a posited original scheme and was added ad hoc. But it could be that, rather, the poet either thinks of it as still using bronze in the absence of iron technology (as was historically the case for the era just preceding Hesiod), or simply no longer feels the need for whatever the metal symbolism meant for the first three races.

This race has a considerable afterlife, which as if to match the point has generated considerable interpretative controversies.

Then indeed the end of death enveloped (some of?) them;

while (others of?) them, granting (them) means of life and abodes apart from humanity

Zeus son of Cronus settled (them), (did) the father, at the earth’s end.

And see indeed they dwell with carefree heart

in the isles of the blessed by deep-swirling Oceanus,

prosperous heroes, to them a sweet harvest

the bountiful land bears, sprouting three times a year.[27]

(vv. 166-8, 170-3)

(Oceanus was thought to be a river encircling the earth.) The first line has been suspected since ancient times on the grounds that it contradicts the next, under the assumption that “them” refers to all the race just cited; however, to many scholars only some are meant to die in the first line, with others living on in the second. Alternatively, the opening could play the role of “the earth covered over,” used with the earlier races (indeed, with the more apposite epic phrase “end of death enveloped”), so that only the former lives of the heroes are meant, with afterlives the subject next. In any case, those of the heroes who are actually meant in the sequel are certainly given a rich reward: A common folklore motif of some individual hero being granted an extended afterlife is applied to an entire group.[28]

Thus the poet accounts for the past. To be sure, the standard view (West, Verdenius, and most others) is that he has only given the first four parts of a definite narrative which includes the next section of the poem as one of “five” races. It is usually held that this results from the poet applying a given meta-historical schema, characterized by a steady decline of human society down to the present, to his own material, but while deviating from it by inserting the hero race to account for actual memory of the “former generation.” However, in accord with a formal ring structure of the type noted in the Introduction which some have noted here, the description of past races functions well as a self-contained section: E.g., the afterlife concluding the fourth race resembles the actual life beginning the first. As for a pre-existing schema, to say the bronze race is worse than the silver is an interpretation; the sequences of entities found in Oriental literature which are posited as evidence for a pre-existing account are only attested later than Hesiod; similar sequences are found in other traditions with no possibility of historical contact; and most importantly, as will be seen the so-called fifth race is treated quite differently.[29]

Rather, while one cannot demonstrate the origin, there is every reason to believe that the author simply attempted to put traditions about the past given to him as disparate into some sort of order in an artistically satisfying manner. (If one insists on calling these traditions “myth” in spite of their not constituting character-driven stories about individuals, at least they did not form a single myth.) Apart from the matter of “local heroes” noted above, such traditions certainly existed for the gold and hero races, and the bronze probably corresponds to a tradition of past “giants,” a common folklore motif which in fact is attested with the Greeks, and/or to “ash” people in Indo-European mythology. Possibly even the text’s nominal chronological ordering of these traditions is not to be read literally (and the early Greeks’ ideas of past time were vague); rather, it may be that, as Kurt von Fritz says, what he calls the “ages” are “essentially not different periods of the past, but different ways of viewing the past.”[30]

It seems mistaken to expect a good deal of coherence in a narrative with such a background. It may be that Hesiod aims implicitly at a sociological generalization, perhaps to the effect that, as Nelson claims he actually achieves, each of the races “finds the fate appropriate to it.” But if so he is only partially successful: As we have seen, the correspondence is at best incomplete. Nor does he shun his own prejudices, in particular in describing the hero race: While he says it is “better” than the bronze, our pacifist poet avoids actually lauding it.[31]

One interesting question is why there are specifically four past races. Perhaps the evidently invented silver race serves the narrative’s logic as what Franz Lämmli calls the “missing link,” allowing transition from the tranquility of the remote past to the warlike character of the recent past. However, it also yields four entities, to achieve an ABBA form. It may be that the number is natural to the human mind in formulating anthropogonies, as in other ways. For example, the Meso-American Popol Vuh also has four past stages prior to a generation connected with present humans, and there can hardly be a question of it having historical contact with our narrative (though uncannily it too has a third group made of wood). There we must leave the matter.[32]

The future; first possibility.

That discussion might be seen as unfortunately adding to an enormous literature either implicitly or explicitly interpreting the races narrative (usually including the next section of the poem, construed as treating the “fifth race”), beginning already in the ancient world with Plato’s social classes symbolized by metals. In modern times, aside from the view of a meta-historical deterioration just noted, there are Vernant’s Structuralist analysis, claims that the races correspond to human psychological states or social categories, and even a physics-like fitting of the piece to a mathematical model. The philosopher Nietzsche thought the bronze and hero races were the same, just differently described, and the novelist and essayist Bruce Chatwin saw the gold race’s living off the land as supporting his view that the natural human state is nomadic.[33]

But I imagine all this would have surprised Hesiod and his original audience. There is no reason to doubt that they saw “the past as prologue,” thinking of the races as a preface to the subject of real interest: dealing with the given world. Its treatment begins as follows:

Would that no longer henceforth I be among the “fifth

men;” rather, either (I should have) died before or (should) be born after,

for right now is “the race of iron:” never by day

will toil cease, nor at all even misery by night

destructive (night), and harsh troubles will the gods give.[34]

(vv. 174-8)

So begins a sustained (through 201) polemic which will constitute some of the most powerful verse in the Works and Days. This opening outburst itself is so emotional (or is presented as such) that it violates correct syntax. (The text expresses resentment of the speaker’s lot in the first line, and then when it asks for a solution in the second, forgets whether sincerely or by contrivance that it has not said ophelon , “I should have,” just the similarly sounding ōphellon , “would that,” as if it governed both clauses.) In the process, offering the expressions “fifth men” and “race of iron” does not continue the antecedent’s studied repetition of the phrase “nth race of humans, (name of a metal);” rather, the distinctly different wording puts the present phrases in relief, thus assisting their true import as an ironic play on the earlier account: They bring out a sentiment something like “look what all this history has brought us.” (Iron seems cited primarily for its actual use, but West acknowledges that it has “overtones of sternness and cruelty” here. It is difficult to see how it fits in any scale of value one might posit for our gold and silver.) While the lesson the antecedent may have offered faintly, that people determine their own fate, will be visible, we no longer deal with anything like sociological analysis, nor with reporting the past quasi-objectively, but as has long been noted, with something resembling Hebrew prophecy.[35]

To wit, the audience next hears:

But still, indeed, in these evils good will be mixed:

Zeus will also destroy this race of bright-faced humans

when they turn out to be gray-haired at birth.

Not father at one with fathered, nor at all fathered (with father),

nor guest by guest-hoster and comrade by comrade,

nor brother (by brother), loved, will be, as it was before.

(People) will dishonor their parents soon upon their aging:

yes they will reproach them with harshly offered words,

vicious (words), not conscious of the gods’ vengeance; nor indeed for their part

will they give to their aging parents (to compensate) for their rearing.[36]

(vv. 179-88)

While the commentators feel that the first line is for the purpose of softening the otherwise bleak picture, it seems to me that the good it cites simply consists in the fact that Zeus will destroy the race, another comment in the mode of black humor (like leaving Expectation in the jar at 96). The image of babies with gray hair is often explained as a deterioration from the continued youth of the gold race and the century-long childhood of the silver; still, that does not negate the fact that the poet takes to extremes an attested folklore motif of premature aging as punishment. The rest is an Isaiah-like indictment, and is effective. The “nor” epanaphora is nicely tied together by “will be” for all three lines 182-4, and by “loved” for the last two. The horror of the family breakdown is enhanced by “at all” making the childrens’ distance from their father worse than vice versa (Verdenius) and by all the implications of “vicious” (our poet’s bad Strife as well as epic use). An ironic twist is that “as it was before” usually means continuity with the past rather than contrast. “Dishonor parents” may recall that Phoenix’s father “dishonored his wife” by taking a mistress. Granted, the line on guests and comrades, 183, is somewhat disruptive: It does not concern the family relations which unite the rest of the segment, and the Greek verse lacks the main caesura but does not set off the beginning or end of a group of verses (nor is it of the type with three increasing cola). To be sure, its alliteration (first hemistich oude xeinos xeinodokōi) seems to match that of father and children in the previous line (patēr paidessin), and it may be conditioned by the juxtaposition of guest with “brother” in the next line recalling an epic motif.[37]

There follows a segment that in comparison with its antecedent is not of particular interest insofar as issues of poetry are concerned, but does serve to highlight the issue of “justice” which was mentioned in connection with the hero race (v. 168), and which will prove of importance shortly:

There will be arm-justice: one will sack the city of another;

there will be no respect for the true oath-giver, nor for the just,

nor for the good; rather the evil-doer and the transgressive

man will (people) honor: “justice” will be in the arm; and shame

will not exist, and the evil will harm the better man,

speaking in crooked words, while swearing an “oath” on them.[38]

(189-94)

In short, “might will be right” (as we would say), and “oath” will amount to perjury.

Then the prophecy concludes strikingly:

Envy, all miserable humans

will-accompany, ill-sounding, delighting-in-evil, hate-faced.

Indeed right then, to Olympus from broad-wayed earth,

their white cloaks covering their beautiful bodies,

to the tribe of immortals will go, abandoning humanity,

Shame and Indignation; and what are painful woes will be left

to mortal humans: there will be no defense against evil.[39]

(195-201)

I.e., Envy, who is ill-sounding, etc., will accompany all miserable humans. (The effective doubled line and the staccato effect of the concluding terms in this sentence make me think of Allen Ginsberg: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.”) But citation of the daemon Envy gives rise to the thought of what she has replaced, Shame and Indignation; the second of our two striking sentences, describing their departure, is enhanced by a plethora of expressions from the epic supertext: Above all, Agamemnon orders his men to instill “shame and indignation” (meaning, of course, the capacity to feel them) into themselves prior to battle, thus articulating a concept for our poet to personify in typical archaic Greek fashion. He also employs other images of the gods (Zeus and other gods return “to Olympus” after visiting Ethiopia; gods and heroes have “beautiful bodies;” Zeus orders the gods favoring the Greeks over the Trojans to desist and return “to the tribes” of gods; the horse Pegasus “abandoned” the earth for the sky). As for humans, “painful woes will be left” to Andromache after Hector’s death, and “there is no defense against the evil” of storms for men at sea.[40]

One sees that with this ending Hesiod conceives essentially of a “hell on earth” rather than the Yahweh-enforced apocalypse of Amos or Isaiah. To be sure, he has said “Zeus” will destroy us, but that was several verses back, and is interpretable anyway as Zeus letting us destroy ourselves. And the most efficient way for a people to do so is to lose the ability even to feel outrage at the perversion of family and social relations which has just been predicted. Without that capacity, the poet implies, humanity will not survive. It is this ability to suggest a human need for social solidarity in essentially naturalistic terms (pace Bona Quaglia and others) that differentiates him from the Old Testament tradition.

The future; another possibility, in the general.

But as with the prophets (in a non-Fundamentalist exegesis), that was a warning, not an expression of certitude about the future. There is another possibility, and to introduce it the poet naturally turns to the leaders of the society facing such danger, addressing them indirectly:

Now I will tell a fable for kings, indeed they understand it:

As follows a hawk addressed a spangled nightingale,

carrying her very high in the clouds, gripping her in his talons,

while she piteously, by curved talons pierced, (her body) around (them),

wailed; to her he it was who haughtily addressed the speech:

“possessed one, why do you screech? A much better now holds you;

where you go is where I alone lead, for all that you are a poet;

if I want I’ll make a meal, or let you go.

Foolish is he who would confront stronger ones:

he is deprived of victory and suffers bitter disgrace too.”

So (he) said, (did) the fast-flying hawk, the stretched-winged bird.[41]

(vv. 202-12)

(The spacings in 206 correspond to a three-fold metrical structure in the Greek. Note the succession of images: the nightingale; the hawk; the speech.)

At first this looks like the fable it claims to be, if cast in epic language. The hawk may follow a tradition of talking animals (attested for the Near East, whatever the date of the Aesop collection), but speaks like an epic character: “Addressed the speech” and “so he/she said” are ubiquitous framing phrases, and “possessed one, why?” has such uses as Zeus wondering why Hera supports the Achaeans. And an epic atmosphere is otherwise manifested in the standard expressions “indeed they understand it,” “very high in the clouds,” “bearing in talons,” and “stretched-winged bird.” Indeed, the solution to a puzzle of why a bird which in fact is drab is called “spangled” may lie in the poet’s attraction to an analogical system: aēdona poikilodeiron, “spangled nightingale” in the accusative, parallels Odysseus’s double epithet daïphrona poikilomētēn, “wise, with varied wiles” in accusative. As to content, the hawk enhances his point by asking the lesser bird ironically why she verbalizes like hawks themselves do (as the employment of “screech” in Homer shows), although Hesiod himself has only said that she “wailed.” To be sure, the hawk then acknowledges that she is a “poet” (aoidos, an epic bard in Homer; cf. similarly-sounding aēdōn, “nightingale,” five lines earlier), which suggests more than meets the eye.[42]

Indeed, the first appearance was misleading. The narrative is really a quotation of a fable, i.e., a meta-fable: The idea of “kings will understand it” is that this is a fable they would tell as such, that the hawk’s moral is what they would think. (Or, as Hartmut Erbse puts it, “the judges the poet has in view are like wild animals.”) The hawk’s speech is heavy-handed -- the rhythm of the last three lines has a drumbeat-like effect in the Greek, with the same choices of dactyls and spondees -- but that helps recall the “might is right” situation of vv.189-94 ironically. Taking this “moral” seriously has led a minority of commentators to say that, for it not to be defeated, the hawk must stand for Zeus; the nightingale, for the nobles or Perses who are to be punished, but it is not meant as the poet’s own sentiment. To be sure, the more common interpretation that the birds are still simple metaphors: the hawk for the nobles; the nightingale for Hesiod, also seems off the mark. For our poet and audience likely believed that the nightingale really was a poet as the hawk says (if in a language other than Greek), not a figure for something else.[43]

But interpretation aside, the passage’s most direct effect is to cast the negatives of a few lines earlier in a contemporary light, in the process implying that the kings are guilty of those outrages, thus making a relatively smooth transition from a prophetic future to the actual present-future. The segment will also turn out to play structural roles in the poem, but they are best discussed below, when its earliest audience becomes aware of them.

Having made that transition, the poet turns to the nominal direct addressee himself.

Hey Perses, you listen to Justice; don’t foment transgression;

for yes transgression is a bane for the “lowly (of) mortal(s);” not even the valiant

is able to carry it easily: yes he is weighed down by it,

meeting calamities; to pass along by the other way, the road

to the just (actions), is better; justice has it over transgression

as it comes out in the end; though yes the fool learns this by suffering.[44]

(vv. 213-18)

As Verdenius notes, this says “listen to (something)” much as Homer would say listen to a god. Thus Justice (Dikē) is personified as a daemon, at the least. “Lowly mortals” normally sets off the human species as a whole in epic, but by the end of the verse here the audience realizes that differentiation into classes is meant, as the arrogance of society’s upper crust (those who are “valiant,” esthlos) is wryly said to be its own enemy. The poet then brings in the significant image of right behavior as a road, implied to be chosen over a different one. The segment ends with a parallel of “yes fool learns” with a warrior warning his adversary not to challenge him.[45]

A quasi-explanation of the last thought then fleshes out the personification:

For forthwith Oath runs along with crooked judgments:

of this Justice (there is) an uproar at (her) rape as men drag her,

the gift-eaters, as they render decisions with crooked judgments.

Weeping, she follows the city and its people’s ways

(or possibly: she follows, weeping for the city and its people’s ways),

veiled in mist, bringing ill to humans,

the ones who would drive her out by not apportioning straightly.[46]

(vv. 219-24)

The other daemon here introduced, Oath, of course means the punisher of oath-breakers, and his race with the crooked judgments (i.e., with those who give them) continues the “road” imagery. The “gift-eaters” are not specified here, but their identification with corrupt judges at 39 can hardly be out of the audience’s memory. On a long-noticed parallel, I agree with Verdenius that this passage alludes directly to the epic simile where the tumult of galloping horses is compared with Zeus sending a flood to those who make “decisions with crooked judgments,/ and drive out justice.” However, our poet makes this thought serve the personifications, especially of Justice, having her raped in a rhythmically prominent verse, either three-colon or (as Sheehan thinks) one long colon “of ... rape,” followed by a short one. As West observes, she is made both victim and avenger. (He calls this “awkward,” but is she to submit meekly to being violated?) She is also stealthy in seeking punishment, hiding in mist (like Hera and Sleep on their way to Mt. Ida to fool Zeus). The syntactical isolation of “uproar” (rhothos, in epic from waves crashing against rocks) allows interpretation: does the tumult surround the rape itself or the protest against it? Probably both.[47]

Having painted so striking a picture, and thus getting our attention, the poet next gives a rather pedantic expansion which, as has been widely discussed, at least glosses the epic concept of Zeus’s responsibility for justice involved in the flood simile just cited. To begin:[48]

(As for) they who to foreigners and inhabitants give judgments

(which are) straight, and in no way walk outside of just (action),

their city flourishes, and the people in it blossom;

son-rearing Peace is in their land throughout, nor ever for them

does broad-sounding Zeus apportion grievous war;

nor ever does Famine accompany straight-justice men,

nor Ruin (or Delusion?): at feasts they enjoy the fruits of their labors.

For them: the earth indeed bears much livelihood; the mountain oaks

yes bear acorns at the top (or on the outside?), honey in the middle;

wooly sheep are heavy(?) with fleece;

women bear young resembling their parents;

and they flourish throughout, without in ships

(needing to be) going: the bountiful land bears (enough) fruit.[49]

(vv. 225-37)

Whatever the relation to Homer’s concept, this is efficacious. “Walking outside” continues the road image, thus highlighting the human activity, but some daemones from the Theogony (Peace, Famine, Ruin) are also enlisted in the cause. While the segment is certainly didactic, its last half is a symmetric structure where “the earth’s” bounty is stated, then paralleled by that of trees, animals, and women, and finally the general “flourishing” is restated. A suggestion that sailing is problematic deepens the slight allusion to that fact in the earlier mythical section (in saying that one could store the rudder if the means of livelihood were found easily, 45). All this offers a positive vision fairly effectively. To be sure, there is a negative one as well: The next segment (238-47) complements this vision by giving the outlook for people who are not just, but rather, have “baneful transgression” as their business. It offers the specific contrasts of war and famine to peace and plenty, but cites women, not simply as bearing questionable young, but barren, and sea-going which is not just unpleasant, but deadly. This need not be spelled out here.[50]

As far as theology is concerned, Michael Erler may be correct in saying that Hesiod’s primary derivation in this particular case of a theme in Greek poetry (of dikē blessing the city) is Oriental: The Homeric passage to which vv. 219-24 alludes has Zeus harness a naturally occurring phenomenon (the flood) to punish wrongdoers, but Hesiod speaks of actually barren women, as if the gods cause the laws of nature to be altered, much more a Near East concept. However, as to the category of poetry, Verdenius properly criticizes West for taking the primary derivation to be Oriental. Epic language (“son-rearing,” “broad-sounding Zeus,” “grievous war,” “accompany” at verse end, “earth and mountains,” “wooly sheep,” “bountiful land” as with the fourth race above, plus some analogical formations) is used to list benefits of just behavior which are more or less those of an Odyssey passage on the life of the Phaeacians.[51]

Then, after having referred to the kings indirectly, the poet addresses them outright:

Hey kings, you mark carefully even yourselves

this justice: for nigh unto humans, beings

(which are) deathless consider how much with crooked judgments

they wear one another down, unconcerned with the gaze of the gods.[52]

(vv. 248-51)

The previous working up to this with indirect address including the hawk narrative (and “even yourselves” is the same Greek as “indeed they” at 202) does not prevent its shock: Aside from the point that the addressee is supposed to be Perses, the form of address is bold (the poet does not say something like “I grasp your knees, o kings” in supplication), Still, it is ominous: While “this justice” uses the same phrase as what the corrupt judges favoring Perses dispensed early in the poem (39), here it refers to what has just been mentioned as befalling the corrupt city and to what is likely to come to the new addressees from the “deathless beings.” And “unconcerned with the gaze of the gods” (meaning not realizing the threat of punishment by them) seems to return us to the allusion to Zeus’s flood on the justice-violators, where the phrase in fact occurs. Probably any kings listening to the original recital who were not simply angry at the speaker’s effrontery were frightened by his allusions.[53]

In principle the poet could have left it at that, but he elects to expand on the point:

For three times numberless on much-nourishing earth are

the deathless ones from Zeus, guardians of mortal humans;

well, they keep watch over judgments as well as (watching over) vicious acts,

veiled in mist, going about all over the earth.[54]

(vv. 252-5)

West cites evidence of immortal watchers in Indo-European tradition generally. Still, the phrase “guardians of mortal humans,” repeated from 123, suggests that the specific examples cited here are the spirits of the gold race (even without the next two lines there, possibly interpolated from those here). If so, they look out for our welfare in a world of corrupt nobles in particular. In any case they are invisible, as was Justice looking for offenders at 223, and of universal reach.[55]

But this is still not enough for the poet. Having had occasion to mention judgments, he not only reminds the kings that Justice is a daemon, but magnifies her importance as such:

And yes there is the maiden Justice, born of Zeus,

illustrious and venerable to the gods who have Olympus;

so indeed whenever anyone casts her aside, crookedly scorning her,

forthwith sitting down by her father Zeus, son of Cronus,

she proclaims the unjust mind of humans, so that will pay penalty

(will) the public for the reckless kings who, thinking of (acts which will be) painful,

turn wrongly and pronounce crooked judgments.[56]

(256-62)

That is, Justice is not only a personality as said earlier, but is no less than daughter of Zeus. The second line employs epic parallels (noted by West) to cement her Olympian status. The fourth is an advance over Thetis or Ares sitting by Zeus to supplicate him over narrower concerns (West corrected by Verdenius). Justice advises her father of what has happened to her (for the image of the rape can hardly have been forgotten, pace Verdenius). We notice that it is not merely a matter of wreaking vengeance on the specific perpetrators. As was the general view of the times, the people as a whole will be affected.[57]

The poet then reminds the kings that this is meant for them, with an edge:

Heed this, kings, straighten your utterances,

gift-eaters: entirely leave off crooked judgments.

Yes works evil on himself (does) the man who works evil on another,

and the evil will is most evil to the willer.

all seeing, the eye of Zeus, and all knowing,

even now all this, if it wishes, espies; nor does escape it

(the fact that) the city practices within it exactly this kind of justice.[58]

(vv. 263-9)

(I.e., the eye of Zeus espies all this, nor does the fact that the city practices this justice escape it.) Newly backed by the very daughter of Zeus, the poet now not only addresses the kings, but insults them with the “gift-eater” jibe used before purely in describing them (39) or alluding to them (221) in the third person. (In Homer Achilles can call Agamemnon “dog-face,” among other niceties, but the commoner Thersites is put in his place for questioning the latter’s unwillingness to be satisfied with what he has.) A pair of catchy proverbs is included, with the caesura in the Greek lines neatly dividing the protases and apodoses (in accordance with Martin’s point discussed in the Introduction above). They have Near East parallels (cited by West), but the Greek ear is struck by their rhythmic contrast with the three colon verse given next, which sets off Zeus’s superior vision and knowledge to some effect. (This line seems patterned after an expression where Helios, the personified sun, is all-seeing and all-hearing.) In short, Zeus is on your case, kings.[59]

There is a coda which one can think of as still part of the address to the kings, or not:

Right now neither I myself toward people just

would be, nor (would) a son of mine, since (it is) no good a just man

to be, if the more unjust has what is the greater “justice.”

But as to this, I trust Zeus the counselor (or: who delights in thunder) will never let it come to pass.[60]

(vv. 270-3)

That is, implicitly recalling the social breakdown of the earlier prophetic version of the future, one has no choice but to teach children criminal behavior in an world where injustice is called “justice” (anticipating Orwell). This would be intolerable, so the poet finally says it will not happen.

We seem primed for a total about face from the prophecy of vv. 179-201, and indeed:

Hey Perses, you store this in your heart

and listen now to justice: entirely forget violence.

For the son of Cronus allots this rule for humans:

on the one hand, fishes and beasts and winged birds

feed upon one another, since justice is not among them;

on the other, to humans he gives justice, which much the best

turns out to be; ....[61]

(274-80)

Several more lines (to 285) give actual reasons why justice is best (e.g., that it ensures the welfare of one’s descendants), but the essential point has been made. As the poet returns to the original addressee, he completes the theoretical vision of a better future by also returning to the “winged birds.” The point of the hawk and nightingale finally becomes clear: we do not need to be like them after all. With this profound thought on humanity being above nature (original insofar as what is attested) the poet also closes the formal structure consisting of 202-85.[62]

In passing, one detail appears to have escaped notice in the debate over the extent to which Hesiod advances Homer’s concept of justice. Apart from other parallels, the segment just cited takes the metrically defined phrase dikē esti, here meaning “justice is,” from Homer’s use of the phrase with the older sense of “is the way.” On four occasions in the Odyssey a given characteristic “is the way” of a group (death is the way of mortals; giving gifts, of servants; lighting a hall, of gods; and a soft bed, of elders, albeit there the sense approaches “right”). Our poet uses the phrase in an absolute sense, and meaning “justice,” not just Homer’s “way.” To be sure, there are overtones that feeding upon one another is “the way” of animals.[63]

The future; another possibility, in the particular.

In principle it would be possible to say that the heteros logos promised at v. 106 has now concluded, and that we will proceed to a fundamentally new part of the poem, indeed, that its “second half” begins. Thus Erbse in particular says the portion comprising 106-285 “lies at the basis of, and founds, the outline of the entire poem,” as if the various parts of the remainder after this point were on a mutually equivalent footing.[64]

However, while what follows immediately here is more concrete, it is not so specific as telling us precisely what farm implements to make, as will the material still later. It is easy to believe that the original audience will have sensed the sequel as following smoothly and logically from the antecedent by way of specifying the latter. The continuity is achieved in particular by means of the road metaphor introduced in v. 216 and remaining latent from there to here:

I speak thinking of you as valiant, big baby Perses;

see, on the one hand what is wretched is caught indeed in numbers

easily: short (or smooth?) is the way (to it), and it lies nearby;

but on the other, before (getting to) what is aretē the gods have placed sweat,

(have) the deathless ones: long and steep is the track to it,

and rough at first; when one reaches the top,

forthwith (the way) gets easy, for all that it was difficult.[65]

(286-92)

The concept aretē is best left untranslated. (It is often construed as “virtue,” but to say the least has strong overtones of, rather, the appearance of virtue.) As West explains, given the gender of “easy” the elided subject of 292 must be “way” (hodos, which can be used of an actual road), the “track” (hoimos, not an epic term, but a barren expanse in classical Greek) reverting to it after one reaches the top. This is certainly a nice way to express the point, and otherwise in this richly portrayed figure, the “way” is distinguished from the “track” above all by the “sweat” which it takes to traverse the latter “long and steep” path. Here for the first time the key idea of physical exertion goes beyond anything implicit in telling Perses to fill his barn before frequenting the plaza (30-4), to actually being given an image. To be sure, there may be other ideas, such as (Paley) the verb for “caught” implying that obtaining a wretched state is like hunting animals. And it is possible that the segment recalls Odysseus’s choice between two “ways” (hodoi), to Scylla or to Charybdis, and/or his “rough” path up the cliffs from the beach after reaching Ithaca. In any case, we learn that exertion is how one attains the key quality of aretē.[66]

Most importantly, as Graziano Arrighetti in particular notices, this segment implies the idea of human responsibility: Success or failure is up to us. That is in contrast to the proto-Calvinist aftermath of Pandora opening the jar, where Zeus leaves us Expectation -- i.e., of not having to work -- and no way to defeat his will.[67]

The exertion itself calls for explication, but since it looks like it will be important, the poet first reminds us of why we should listen:[68]

This one (here) is best of all, who thinks out everything himself,

considering what is thereafter and what will be better in the end;

while that one (there), again, is also noble who heeds the one speaking well;

but (as for) he who neither thinks out himself nor listens to the other,

taking (the advice) to heart, he however is a useless man.[69]

(vv. 293-7)

As is sometimes noted, this can remind us of Pro- and Epi-metheus, with and without foresight, respectively. However, it is as least as significant that in Homer it is age, not thought, which makes one considered worthy of attention, e.g., as with Nestor. As to form, the segment inverts a common pattern in Greek literature, wherein A and B are good but C is best (West).[70]

After that, although while subtly continuing to appeal to his authority, the poet comes back to the point, and thus makes it strongly:

But as for you, always remember our urging and

work, god-born Perses, so that you Famine

hates, while befriends you (does) garlanded Demeter

the honored, and fills your barn with the means of life.

(298-301)

“But” in 298 allows us the possibility of not emulating the useless one just cited. As to “our,” Verdenius and Arrighetti say that it serves to make the addressee feel participation in the wisdom; however, surely it is also a “royal we” which makes the speaker’s authority sound magnified. To take a modern example, when a physicist today speaks of “our” knowledge of the universe, referring to a set of complex mathematical formulae, the immediate image one is supposed to experience is that of general human knowledge of which the speaker is only the custodian, but the average person has no understanding of this purported knowledge, and is also expected to appreciate that this is an expert speaking whom one must trust. (To be sure, in the Greek the juxtaposition of hēmeterēs, “our,” just before the main caesura to memnēmenos, “remember,” just after it sounds pleasant.) Much ink has been spilled over why Perses is called “god-born,” but what is most important is that the identification of the speaker with the font of knowledge leads after all into the point: work! This is said in the imperative, and put in the emphatic first position in the line. Thus the sweat cited in 289 which we might have wondered about comes, not from, say, swinging a sword in the battle a hero would fight for his own aretē, but from work, specifically to get (Demeter to get) the barn filled. And the ordering of the terms involving Famine and Demeter makes the thought flow nicely.[71]

That might have been enough, but the poet expands, and, it must be said, tediously so:

For see Famine is entirely the fellow traveler of the non-working man;

toward him gods and men are indignant, he who would without working

live, with a spirit like drones without-sting(?),

the ones who consume the product of bees, and without working

they eat; it should be dear to you to put your tasks in good order;

see thus the barns will fill up with livelihood in due season.

From work men are many in flocks and rich,

and the working one is more loved by the deathless ones too.

?[Also he will be by mortals; for they greatly hate the non-working.]?

Working is not at all a disgrace; rather, non-working is the disgrace.

If you work, quickly the non-working one envies you

in gaining wealth: aretē and kudos accompany wealth.

Whatever your situation is (or: was?), to work is better,

if (only) from another’s possessions your giddy mind

you turn, to working to care for your livelihood, as I advise you.[72]

(vv. 302-16)

(Kudos is approximately “glory,” but is naturally paired with terms like aretē.) Unlike in the case of the expansion after 248-51 on why the kings should consider the difference between just and unjust cities (where at least the immortal watchers and Justice as daughter of Zeus offer reasonably fetching images), here there is no particular artistry that I can discover. The best the poet can do is recycle material from the discussion of not following the bad Strife in 27-39 (and Demeter in 300 is already enough to recall that), transfer the “drones” metaphor from its application to women in the Theogony, and string together some other miscellaneous thoughts. The passage by itself certainly supports the view of Hesiod as a pessimist who sees work at least by males as necessary drudgery, and is about as tedious in its verse as would be carrying out what it enjoins. (Perhaps that is the point, “form following content” taken to extremes.) The segment on giving and taking advice (293-7) was certainly required to make us sit through this.[73]

For some reason (perhaps related to the thought of what is and is not a disgrace in the last segment, v. 311), the poet next elects to give an epanaphora about “shame:”

Shame is not good company for a man in need,

shame, that which greatly damages as well as benefits men;

shame see is close to poverty; boldness is close to prosperity.[74]

(317-19)

As is well noted, the first line is almost identical to one where Telemachus explains to a transient (Odysseus in disguise) that it is reasonable for him to beg from the suitors: It repeats either the latter or a general proverb only attested for us in these two places. The usual interpretation of the triplet (I have nothing better) is that even the high-born, presumably including Perses, must do what is needed, in this case work. “As well as” in the second line perhaps allows for Shame being considered good in abandoning us at the end of the earlier prophecy (196-201), while the third presumably says that we should strike out into the unknown territory of manual labor. That is done reasonably effectively with the three-fold rhythm, if the more satisfying epanaphorae enjamb the third verse into the next line to create a thought twice the length of each of the first two members (e.g., how Zeus “easily” acts at the beginning of our poem, or the Catalogue of Ships entry for the minor king Nereus). In any case, we may think of these three lines as a coda to the “work” segment -- one which perhaps redeems its artlessness.[75]

The sequel is more interesting, especially in that it allows one to see what “work” has to do with the earlier general “justice” discussion. Apparently proceeding from the thought of “boldness,” the poet next says:

(But) no snatching of property! the god-given is much better;

for even if one gets great wealth with his hands by force,

or he for his part plunders by his tongue, as yes much

happens just when profit deceives the mind

of people, yes Effrontery drives Shame away,

blithely the gods obscure him, and they waste the estate

of the man: yes little is the time wealth accompanies him.[76]

(vv. 320-6)

In the context of the epic supertext, one sees that “no snatching” (West: like a “no smoking” sign) introduces a clever composition. The combination of “much better” and “force” may allude to Patroclus’s father telling him that Achilles “is much better in force;” “by his tongue,” applied to fraud here, is used of the “sweet” words of Nestor in the latter’s initial appearance in Homer (if perhaps also in negative settings like our poet’s, in examples not lost); and “as yes much/ happens” is used of warriors being wounded in battle. Apart from that, “waste estate” (here and in the unjust city, 244) is also found in epic, but here the enjambement to include “of the man” nicely sets up the concluding moral that plunder will after all go for nought.[77]

But in terms of the overall structure of the poem, the critic must now see that obtaining goods through work (vv. 286-317) rather than seizure (320-6) constitutes a concrete application of the general principle developed in the previous section, that one should follow justice rather than violence. (To be sure, avoiding the prophetic future is also illustrated, in that Shame being driven off in 324 recalls being deprived of her at 197-201.) That is, the injunction to work is not simply parallel to that discussion of justice as the commentators claim, but illustrates it: It is just to work for prosperity rather than employ force or fraud. (The metaphor of the proper road introduced with justice in 216 is specified, not just paralleled, by the one involving sweat of 289.) Despite the heavy-handedness of some of the verse, the result is to cover why work is needed in a manner which follows naturally from its antecedent, thus succeeding in showing this need after the Prometheus-Pandora narrative failed to do so.

One thereby also sees that heteros logos in v. 106 extends past not only 201, but also 285. And we will still be in its regime in the sequel, in yet more applications of “just” behavior. The transition to the next one proceeds by way of alluding to a proverb, namely (wherever else it might have been known), Alcinous’s appeal to the Phaeacians to treat Odysseus well:

A guest or a suppliant is like a brother

to a man who yes has even a little range of wit.

(Od. 8.546-7)

“Man” in the dative and “little” (oligen rather than our pauron) are in the verse positions of our v. 326. Then, when the next segment begins, we get all of suppliant, guest, and brother:[78]

Likewise for he who works evil on a suppliant, or he (who does so) on a guest,

or he who climbs into his brother’s bed

[for secret coupling with his consort, going past propriety],

or he who heedlessly transgresses against fatherless (or: parentless?) children,

or he who his aging parent on the threshold of baneful old age

upbraids, accosting him/her with harsh words;

at him see truly Zeus himself is indignant: in the end

he exacts harsh recompense for (such) injustices.[79]

(327-34)

Given the allusion, the inclusion of this segment is not as random as commentators sometimes imply. As to details, many of the cited sins are true of the future men of the prophecy (182-7, quoted above). They perhaps have less impact here, but are surely needed if one is specifying all aspects of heeding justice. And the composition is not bad, e.g., answering the harsh words with harsh deeds. In general, even apart from the point that the preceding segment on work specifies justice, the recollection here of the predictions of divine punishment in the earlier section on abstract justice, and the overt mention of adikē (“injustice”) in 334, show that Hesiod’s concept of dikē is not solely about legal matters.[80]

But having discussed “just” relations which pertain mostly with one’s family (indeed, the treatment of suppliants and guests still involves the household), the poet finds it natural to proceed to those with others. In particular, to the early Greeks the gods were still close to being thought part of society, so it is logical to include a mini-essay about dealing with them. Thus, although while including a line which is ambiguous as to whether it begins the new segment or concludes the last, the poet tells Perses:[81]

But you indeed keep your giddy mind entirely from these things;

as best you are able make offerings to the deathless gods

reverently and cleanly: burn the splendid thighs upon (altars);

although at other times propitiate with libations and incense,

indeed both when you go to bed and when the holy light comes;

thus see they will have a gracious heart and spirit,

so that you acquire another’s allotment (or: property?), not another yours.[82]

(vv. 335-41)

It is important to note that, with “make” in 336 and then the segment’s other recommendations, the poet introduces a convention which will gradually become the rule in the rest of the poem: the use of a verb’s infinitive to denote a (thereby somewhat less forceful) imperative. Otherwise, as to language, as usual there are epic expressions (“giddy mind” here and at 315, “deathless gods,” “heart and spirit” but also “gracious spirit”), but the poet gives us the apparently original phrase “burn the splendid thighs” and, in this theistic context, the nice touch of “holy light” for dawn. The actual content is straightforward, if, notably, the final verse reminds us that good social relations, with deities in this case, is good business. (Indeed, in the Greek its meter is weighty, with spondees for all of the first four feet.) It is also noteworthy that, with the last segment and this one, the composition has entered a realm which will continue until the end of the entire section, of mostly sentences consisting of verse-length clauses, with little inessential enjambement like that of 336-7. This feature is what one expects in collections of proverbs, even if ours are organized more artistically than, say, those of the Old Testament.[83]

Most importantly, the transition from the previous segment to this one, i.e., from against social sins to for religious duties, brings with it a positive tone, one which, indeed, will continue far into the second part of the work. To be sure, this fact (together with the entry of infinitive as imperative, which will be favored in the second part) suggest that the process of getting there is gradual. Thus, while thematically we will find no reason to set the boundary before the segment vv. 381-2, stylistically the division is not so clearcut.[84]

In any case, having done family and gods, the poet proceeds to neighbors, in an application of his mini-essay form which is surely a tour de force:

The friend invite to dinner, the enemy let be;

especially, invite anyone who lives near you;

for see even if something untoward happens on your land

neighbors come ungirded; gird themselves, (do) kin.

A bad neighbor is a pain as much as yes a good, a great advantage;

see, has honor (from the neighbor) (does) he who yes has a good neighbor;

nor would an ox disappear if there were no bad neighbor.

Well have measured (what you borrow) from a neighbor, and well give back,

in the same measure, or better if possible;

thus if you need him afterwards indeed you will find him reliable.

Do not profit evilly; evil profit equals ruin (or: delusion?).[85]

(vv. 342-52)

This enters without fanfare (or a formal conjunction); indeed, as West and Verdenius note, the sacrifice just cited implies the meal first mentioned. However, it is here that Hesiod’s adaptation of proverbial wisdom becomes poetically interesting. One can cite Near East precedents for some of the individual thoughts, as does West, but our poet puts these into epic language: “lives near,” “bad pain,” “great advantage,” “has honor,” “well ... well” (all beginning the hemistiches of a verse), “if possible,” and “evil profit,” in addition to “ox disappear” from 46. Thus the phrases serve an overall composition. This composition makes implications from keeping cattle safe to avoiding gossip, but with no lack of wit, especially in the chiastic clause saying that neighbors are readier than kin when you need help (345): The problem cannot be that the latter have further to travel (as West, Verdenius, and others think), since at least some kin will live as close as the neighbor considered, and I take it the thought is at least in part a veiled reference to an excessive sense of formality on their part. One can quibble that the general thought of the last verse is not specifically focused, as has been the mode in dealing with neighbors, but at least a connection is visible.[86]

The segment also provides a positive complement to vv. 320-6 against acquiring goods by force, in that “for even if see” (ei gar toi kai, 344) recalls “for even if one” (ei gar tis kai, 321).

From this point, a transitional verse (353) about being friendly leads to a segment on the optimum approach to “giving” (354-60), stated without regard to whomever the recipient constitutes. Then there is discussion of the size, use, and guarding of what is stored (361-75) (which, however, include a segment with miscellaneous thoughts about employees and trusting people, 370-2, that many commentators suspect). These lines raise no new poetic issues.[87]

Finally, a thought in vv. 372-5 about not trusting women, specifically around one’s stores, leads to the thought of propagation of the species. Thus the series of mini-essays concludes, appropriately enough, on the weighty question of inheritance:

Let there be an only-begotten son, your ancestral estate

to preserve; for thus wealth increases in the house;

may you die old, leaving behind another (or: someone not yourself, i.e., a) son:

easily for more can Zeus provide incredible prosperity:

with more (there is) more attention (to the work), and (so) a greater increase.[88]

(376-80)

As to this, whether the thought of 378 is about a second son (or grandson), or means the same as the “only-begotten son” of 376, the latter verse’s use of the phrase should not blind us to the stated fact that the entity it denotes is for the purpose of ensuring the estate. It is possible that the singleness of the son contributes to this goal by avoiding fraternal disputes; however, it seems more likely to me that this noun-epithet phrase (perhaps an otherwise lost standard phrase) is meant to be counterposed, not to a second son, but to no son at all (as in “Abraham, sacrifice your only son” in Genesis). That is, the poet uses the phrase without noticing any contradiction between it and having more children. Then we are free to believe that the second son (if that is what is meant in 378, as seems likeliest) is actually desired, and that 379-80 are not just a fall-back position in case he arrives: There is always enough work for more hands.[89]

At last, the poet concludes:

If your heart of hearts desires wealth,

do thus, and carry out task after task.

(vv. 381-2)

(I render the last verse idiomatically, but no translation can capture the Greek:

Hōs erdein, kai (w)ergon ep’ ergōi (w)ergazesthai,

with its er- assonance, polyptoton, and weighty spondees in all possible feet but the third.)[90]

Thus closes the section on the concrete aspects of “just” behavior. One can sum up as does Nelson: “(Some of the preceding segments) are about the way human beings ought to behave. That is to say, they are about justice.” It only need be stressed that (as the concluding couplet again suggests) the work segment of vv. 286-16 (with coda 317-19) is to be included in this assessment, in accordance with the above analysis showing that it emerges from the abstract justice section in an integral way. To be sure, the notion that the poem’s discussion of work is simply parallel to that of justice (at bottom, stemming from the old view of a disjointed poem) is widespread: Its endorsement goes beyond the strictly philological commentary of West, Verdenius, and others, to such efforts as Richard Gotshalk’s recent treatment of philosophy in Homer and Hesiod. But the tight integration of the segment on work with the others shows that this view is to be rejected. In short, the section illustrates the proper life which had been stated in theoretical terms, in an artistically integrated and detailed way (in contrast to the earlier schematic treatment of Prometheus and Pandora).[91]

The last line also suggests introduction or prolegomena to the rest of the poem, especially in that the latter mostly concerns work, but also by means of Hesiod’s typical boundary-smearing: As Verdenius says, “do thus” in v. 382 is easily taken to refer to the sequel as well as the antecedent. Thus, I suggest, the “way human beings ought to behave” is also implicit in whatever is to follow. In Erbse’s terms for 106-285 (extending them to cover 286-382 as well), the audience now surely has the basis for whatever is to be described in the sequel.[92] (to Chap. 4)

thanks

NOTES:

[1] Peabody (243-7) believes, namely, that the “song” of vv. 11-105 is patterned on a certain Iliad passage, 3.1-4.421. Two of his points are certainly noteworthy: (1) As noted in the Introduction above, Zeus’s promise of “great pain” to Prometheus and to men at v. 56 alludes to Hector’s complaint that Paris has brought “great pain” to his family and people in bringing the woman Helen to Troy (3.48-50). (2) The names of Paris and Pandarus, warriors featured in the Homeric passage, are similar to our Perses and Pandora, respectively.

[2] “Thoroughly relate” renders ekkoruphōsō. Verdenius is surely right that ek- is an intensive prefix, contra West’s view (followed by G. Wakker, Glotta, 68, 1990, 86-90) that the verb means “summarize,” since what follows is too detailed to be a summary of anything.

[3] Benardete (156). Peabody (249-50) thinks the sequel to v. 108 will speak of “humans,” as did the antecedent of “gods.” To say the line refers to Zeus (most recently Ballabriga, 1998, 315-17) does not itself explain its relation to the poem. To Arrighetti (ad 108-201 (1)) it remains obscure. A recent theory of the interpolation of 108 and of 173a-e is J.-C. Carrière, in Mélanges Étienne Bernand (Paris, 1991), 61-119. Tandy and Neale think only the first race is meant.

[4] Ballabriga (1998, summary: 307). T. Rosenmeyer, Hermes, 85 (1957), 257-85 (German transl. in Heitsch, 602-48), even thinks the races narrative amounts to history; cf. M. I. Finley, History and Theory, 4 (1965), 287; Erbse (20). Protagoras: Plato, Prot. 324d. Heraclitus: fr. B1 Diels-Kranz. (Logos is in the singular there, but Hesiod’s use is the first attested as such.) Aeneas: Il. 20.213 (= 6.150, an account of the speaker’s origins rather than nothing); cf. 19.142; 21.487; Od. 3.324 (go by land rather than sea); 16.82; 17.277. Only at Od. 15.80 is the train of thought maintained. The use with Aeneas (an important passage; see M. Edwards ad 20.200-58) may well be our poet’s model, given a resonance with our “gold race” to be noted shortly. “Well and knowledgably” refers to excellence in craftsmanship at Il. 10.265, Od. 20.161, 23.197. A line with fourteen attested cases is “I will tell you another (thing), and you lay it in your heart.”

[5] “Bright-faced:” merops itself is obscure (Russo ad Od. 20.49). However, the genitive plural meropōn anthrōpōn merely seems used in lieu of thnētōn anthrōpōn (“of mortal humans”) when it is desired to avoid the latter’s initial double consonant (G. Edwards, 66; differently, H. Koller, Glotta, 46, 1968, 18-19), not for any difference in the image’s content. The Romans read the notion of a golden “age” into the segment, and some still construe that, but Greek genos simply does not mean a temporal period (any more than with the Strife sisters; above, Chap. 2 n. 1), even if one assumes that the chronological ordering of the races which follow is meant literally.

[6] For our chruseon men prōtista, cf. Nestora men prōtista, Il. 2.405 (cf. Kirk ad 2.404-9); similarly, 9.168, Od. 3.57. Dardanon au prōton: Il. 20.215. Ballabriga (1998, 312) remarks that, although the gods “formed” Pandora, i.e., as craft, they more abstractly “created” the races.

[7] West is wrong (so Verdenius) in implying that ti (“at all”) in “nor at all” (v. 113) only has a metrical role, thus lacking content: E.g., “not at all” does Achilles see anyone where Aeneas once stood (Il. 20.345); Odysseus knows “not at all” if Orestes lives (Od. 11.463); Power and Force have “no” seat “at all” except by Zeus (Th. 386). I deviate from the editors in ending 115 only with a comma, under the assumption that sleeplike death continues the specification of lack of old age. The verb of 119 is iterative; see Kirk ad Il. 2.496. West, Verdenius, and others up to Arrighetti construe erga (properly “work”) to mean agricultural products, but I support Marg’s view that the gold people had more or less pleasant tasks in comparison with the present: Hesiod does not need the idea of zero work to evoke paradise, and possibly cannot even conceive of it.

[8] Verdenius (ad 113, n. 345); Ballabriga (1998, 319-21); cf. Nelson (1998, 68, 190 n. 42).

[9] Th. 535 says the division of gods and humans was primordial. On feet and hands, see West and Verdenius (ad 114). Sleep and Death are brothers at Il. 14.231 (Janko has a good discussion), 16.682, Th. 756. Heracles: Od. 11.602 (assuming 11.601-27 is authentic, for treatment of which see Heubeck). “Beyond ... evil:” compare our kakōn ektosthen hapantōn with kakōn epilēthon hapantōn, Od. 4.221, and theōn ektosthen hapantōn, Th. 813, respectively.

[10] Baldry: CQ, 2 (1952), 83-92. For the previous traditions, see Baldry (84-5); West ad 111; H. Schwabl, RE Suppl., 15 (1978), 821-2. V. 120 is recognized as spurious.

[11] “After” in v. 121 assumes we read ke(n) (following the MSS) rather than dē (Plato, followed by most editors) or the variant kai (Verdenius). I agree with the latter that we cannot trust Plato’s demonstrably faulty memory; however, to say “also,” i.e., in addition to the races to be discussed next, asks the audience to think too far ahead. Thus I assume the verse begins with autar epei ke as at Il. 6.83 (“thereupon when” you have urged on all the battalions). Alternatively, the reading could be kai construed as an emphatic. Verdenius defends 124-5 (= 254-5) against Solmsen, West and others impugning them, saying that there are other repetitions in the poem which are authentic. That is possible, but “vicious acts” in particular seems to clash with the spirit of this segment, and as West says, 254-5 also follow “guardians of mortal humans;” thus it would have been easy to insert the lines here mistakenly; cf. Arrighetti.

[12] Ballabriga (1998, 321-2). As to the correspondence of life and death, Nelson (1998, 68-9) also says that “the people of each of Hesiod’s five ages end (like they lived),” although as will be seen below this is doubtful for the later races. On wealth as produce and the juxtaposition of earth to heaven, see West, Verdenius. Also, for our epichthonioi phulakes thnētōn anthrōpōn, “on earth, guardians of mortal humans,” in v. 123, cf. epouranioisi theois aieigenetēisi, “forever-being gods in heaven,” also ending Il. 6.527 (Hector will make amends to them if they grant victory).

[13] Value: e.g., West; quasi-alchemy: Verdenius.

[14] “Afterwards” in v. 127 refers back to the creation of the gold race, before discussing its afterlife; for precedent, see Verdenius. As to “and to young manhood” in 132, some have construed the second clause as a later stage of life, but see Verdenius; “and” is perhaps clumsy, but the thought may be conditioned by the parallel of all’ hot’ ar’ hēbēsai te kai, “but well when to grow up, and,” with hopot’ an hēbēsēi te kai, “when (Orestes) grew up and (wanted to rule),” Od. 1.41. The transition from singular to plural in 133 is less jarring in Greek usage than with us (Verdenius contra West). I construe hubris in 134 as “transgression,” its proper sense (see Verdenius ad 213). Many translate it here as “violence,” but elsewhere the poem has plenty of transgression not involving physical force. I take it that not sacrificing at altars (136-7) is a specification of the preceding thought, although others treat them as independent clauses. I also believe the first clause of 137 is parenthetical to the surrounding thought, if others associate “rule” and “custom.”

[15] Bamberger: repr. from 1842 in Heitsch (439). Hera’s chariot has impressive parts, indifferently of gold and silver (although of bronze and iron as well, Il. 5.722-31), while epic has a number of golden thrones, but gives Apollo a silver bow. (In one place, Il. 6.234-6, gold is more valuable than bronze, if not silver.) Heracles: Od. 21.27; moreover, our text with “raised” may allude directly to the statement that Telamon “raised” a bastard “in his (own) house” (Il. 8.284). Meyer: repr. from 1910 in his Kleine Schriften, 2 vols. (Halle, 1924), II 46, and in Heitsch (501). The only other citation of such a race is in an Orphic text (fr. 141 Kern), which probably derives from ours. “At holy altars” is verse-ending here and at Il. 2.305, Od. 3.273. Agamemnon says sex “is the rule for humans” (Il. 9.134).

[16] The second construal of v. 141 is Athanassakis’s. In any case, the entities are not “called blessed by mortals” (e.g., Grene); see Verdenius.

[17] Castor and Pollux: Od. 11.302. Bona Quaglia (99-103), as opposed to Nelson’s claim (above, n. 12), and, in general, to the widely held (e.g., by Ada Neschke, in Blaise, Judet and Rousseau, 465-78) view that the races narrative gives a consistent lesson on following “justice.” Ballabriga (1998, 322-9) gives a detailed discussion of the “local heroes” proposal. “Even” in v. 142 may, however, only be determined by the parallel of timē kai toisin opēdei, “honor accompanies even them,” with timē kai kudos opēdei, “honor and glory accompany” (also ending Il. 17.251). (Tandy and Neale say incorrectly that kudos is what they translate here.)

[18] The choice with “transgression” in v. 146 is a matter of variants hubries versus hubrios. “Adamant” (adjective in 147) refers to a mythical metal. I do not think the possibility that it may actually have been iron (for which see West ad Th. 161) has anything to do with it being invoked here as a synonym for hardness, an assumption which leads Verdenius to think without any other basis of, rather, a “grim” stout-spirited heart. I suppose the latter phrase is the same as our “stout-hearted spirit,” but I render the Greek literally. Verdenius’s “unapproachable” rather than “unrefined” (148) is unconvincing. Aaptos (“invincible”?) is obscure (for discussion see West, Verdenius). “Limbs” for melessi (149) is certainly a problem if we think of arms as opposed to legs (West), but I am not sure we need to construe “bodies” (Verdenius). (Both arms and legs are implicit in the phrase which “over sturdy limbs” inverts, namely, “in gnarled limbs,” denoting old age at several places in Homer.) As against the standard view, I believe 151 is a parenthetical comment on its antecedent, and punctuate accordingly (the three citations of “bronze” do not form much of an anaphora, contra Verdenius, since the first two are of a different gender, and the third is in a different case). There is then no need to consider the implied bronze implements to be exclusive of those of 150, in particular to specify “weapons” as is often done.

[19] Theogony 151-3, 673. West and Verdenius think “from ash” in v. 145 means the humans were born to ash-tree nymphs, but while that may be a related tradition, other cultures have thought past humans were literally fashioned from wood (references: S. Thompson, I 207-8). “Forming” the bronze race would disrupt Ballabriga’s (above, n. 6) neat contrast with making Pandora from earth, but might correspond to this race’s primordial nature. I cannot follow commentators like Verdenius saying (ad 144 ouk ... homoion, citing Mazon) that the bronze-silver contrast is somehow more fundamental than the silver race being “much worse” than the gold.

[20] Griffiths: JHI, 17 (1956), 109-19; cf. M. Erren, in Gnomosyne (Munich, 1981), 155-66, who (159) interestingly suggests that a history of technology is appropriate after we are told in the Prometheus myth of humans acquiring fire. By “no iron,” the author either meant iron-working technology, or was unaware that the metal itself had been known for thousands of years.

[21] To be sure, there are possible epic models for the material of vv. 150-1 in particular. For chalkeoi de te oikoi/ chalkōi d’ (“and yes bronze their houses/ -- with bronze”), cf. chruseē de korōnē/ chruseioi d’ (at the palace of Alcinous, the door’s “handle was gold,/ and gold and” silver dogs were on the sides, Od. 7.90-1). For chalkōi d’ eirgazonto; melas d’ ouk eske sidēros, v. 151, cf. alloi men chalkōi, alloi d’ aithoni sidērōi (the Achaeans barter for wine, “some with bronze, some with bright iron,” Il. 7.473), and an old formulaic line, chalkos te chrusos te polukmētos to sidēros (“bronze and gold and difficultly-wrought iron,” discussed by Hoekstra ad Od. 14.324).

[22] That is, going to Hades is explained by death seizing them (Verdenius), and possibly also by leaving the light. Thus it is misleading to say death is cited “three times” as West claims.

[23] For citations of the epic expressions, see generally West and Verdenius. On the sense of “nameless,” see Hainsworth ad Il. 12.70; on “light of the sun,” Kirk ad 5.120. “Leaving” it: 18.11 (interpreted by Achilles as meaning Patroclus, but possibly pointing forward to the death of Achilles himself, the unstated culminating point of the work), Od. 11.93 (an ironic use). Again (cf. above, ns. 12, 17), Nelson’s view of the congruence of life and death is too simple.

[24] The historian Frank Manuel, Freedom from history and other untimely essays (New York, 1971), 72-3, does notice the point, if he is not specific as to where the ambivalence lies.

[25] For “over” the earth (dative case) in v. 157, i.e., expansively, see Verdenius ad 90 (cf. above, Chap. 2, n. 1 for the accusative); for “around” at 160, i.e., spottily, ad loc. “More just” in 158 is the comparative of dikaios; to be sure, entire books have been written on the meaning of dikē and its derivatives, and “justice” is but an approximation. “Hero” (159) is a label for the race, not an indication of valor. The text literally says “Cadmean land” in 162, but Verdenius seems right that the point is to distinguish that Thebes from the Egyptian Thebes.

[26] For our marnamenous mēlōn henek’ Oidipodao (“fighting for the sake of Oedipus’s flocks”) and Helenēs henek’ ēukomoio (“for the sake of fair-haired Helen”), cf. marnamenos oarōn heneka spheteraōn (“fighting on account of their wives,” Il. 9.327). Also, a verse not in the standard Iliad text, but given in some sources, “23.81a,” has Patroclus’s shade tell Achilles that he too will die marnamenon dēiois Helenēs henek’ ēukomoio, “fighting with enemies on account of fair-haired Helen.” Euchos kai kudos aresthai would fit at the end of either of vv. 163, 165, whereas euchos aresthai and kudos aresthai are standard verse-ending phrases. To be sure, there are other subtleties. Especially, following the line which begins the segment, “fourth” is in the verse position whereby after a series of three actions by an epic character, the fourth is decisive; see Kirk ad Il. 5.437. Other standard expressions include “over much-nourishing earth,” “Zeus son of Cronus,” “of hero men,” “god-like race,” “former generation,” “boundless earth” (with either “over” or “around”), “in ships” in our verse position, and “great gulf of sea.”

[27] V. 169 of the transmitted text has been transposed from within the group “173a-e,” itself an early interpolation designed to make the discussion of the present beginning at 174 look like it was preceded by a creation account as were the past races (see West for detailed discussion). I see nothing to recommend Verdenius’s “delicious” for “sweet” at 172: The term seems meant more metaphorically here than with “sweet (grape) harvest” on the Shield of Achilles (Il. 18.568).

[28] Oceanus: see West ad Th. 133, Verdenius ad loc. Solmsen and others impugn v. 166; West and Verdenius argue for the “some ... other” construction. For thanatou telos amphekalupsen (“end of death enveloped”), cf. thanatos de min amphekalupsen (“and death enveloped him,” also ending Il. 5.68), apart from less close formulations. Folklore motif: S. Thompson (I 124-5).

[29] On ring structure for the four past races, see Walcot (1961, 4-7), or for more detail, Carl Querbach, CJ, 81 (1985), 1-12. Against the bronze as worse than the silver, see most recently Sihvola (30). West (ad 106-201) cites three Oriental accounts, from Zoroastrian texts, from the Book of Daniel, and the Indian theory of four yugas (“ages”). The first two are well known to be late, so that as Baldry says (JHI, 17, 1956, 353-4), they are just as likely derived from our narrative. The locus classicus of the Indian account is Mahābhārata 3.148 (in the critical edition, 19 vols., ed. S. Sukthankar et al., Poona, 1927-66), with further allusion at 3.186. Its comparison with a later version of our narrative was already noted in medieval times by the Islamic scholar al-Bīrūnī; see E. Sachau, Alberuni’s India (Delhi, 1964) 378-85. But its late date is guaranteed, e.g, by its saying from the point of view of the third age that that there “will be” foreign rulers including Greeks in the fourth, thus betraying knowledge of the Alexandrian conquest. (By way of confirmation, Mary Carroll Smith, The Warrior Code of India’s Sacred Song, New York, 1992, claims to isolate the text’s original stratum on internal grounds, and it lacks the two passages.) Alf Hiltebeitel, The Ritual of Battle (Albany, 1990), 48-59, observes that many cultures put a hero stage between the “essentially mythic” and the “purportedly historical” of its traditions (also in the Mahābhārata, Hesiod scholars notwithstanding, where it reduces to an episode between the third and fourth ages: the bhārata war itself), and as will be noted shortly, some anthropogonies from the Western Hemisphere are similar to ours. Differently, K. Matthiessen, Philologus, 121 (1977), 176-88, thinks the fourth race was added to the Greek tradition, but earlier than Hesiod.

[30] Most recently, J.-C. Carrière (in Blaise, Judet and Rousseau, 412 with n. 39) agrees that the origin of the presumed narrative of five races cannot be proven. (His and other essays on the narrative in the same volume, 393-518, continue the perception that it is a “myth.”) However, as West (ad 106-201) says, the bronze race seems to recall the Theogony’s Gigantes, while the aged Nestor speaks of men in his youth who had defeated powerful beast-like men (Il. 1.266-8). (On the motif generally, see S. Thompson, I 212.) In the Icelandic Edda the three Norns come from a well beneath the ash world-tree (Völuspá 19-20), and are giants (Vafthrúthnismál 49, and possibly Völuspá 8)., although it is conceivable that this is influenced by Hesiod. On the early Greek sense of time, see, e.g., Finley (above, n. 4), 294-5. Von Fritz: Review of Religion, 11 (1947), 240 (German trans. in Heitsch, 385), emphasis original. To be sure, in her view of “time” in the poem Leclerc (1994, 158-62) takes the chronology seriously.

[31] Nelson (1998, 70), but cf. ns. 12, 17, 23 above.

[32] Lämmli: Homo Faber (Basel, 1968), 19, 86 n. 58. ABBA form: Querbach (above, n. 29). An introduction to the literature on the Popol Vuh is Nuevas Perspectivas sobre el Popol Vuh (Guatamala City, 1983); an English translation of the text is Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh (New York, 1996). As to its ancestry, while the work we have dates from after the Spanish conquest, the conquerors will not have been concerned to spread the ideas of pagan antiquity such as our narrative at a time when the Inquisition was executing heretics. (Nor is likely that earlier contacts from Africa some suggest took place will have done so.) Native Americans in the southwest U. S. have an “emergence myth,” wherein humans climbed up through four successive worlds to reach the present. At least for the Popol Vuh, the relation of specifically four groups to Jungian psychology and related theories is treated by Alfonso Rodríguez, La Estructura Mítica del Popol Vuh (Miami, 1985), 39-58. To be sure, as noted above (n. 26), “fourth” in Greek epic is decisive.

[33] Plato, Rep. 415a-c; cf. 547a-b. Vernant (1983, 3-32; essay originally 1960). For psychological and social states, see P. Smith, CW, 74 (1980), 145-63, and T. Falkner, CA, 8, (1989), 42-60, respectively. B. Mezzadri, l’Homme, 28 (April-September 1988), 51-7, observes that a simple circular form does not match the first and fifth races turning out opposite, and so represents the narrative as a Möbius strip! Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Essay 1, Chap. XI. Chatwin, The Songlines (New York, 1988), 204.

[34] “Would that” in v. 174 cannot govern the clause of 175 (so Sinclair): Verdenius posits mēketi (“no longer”) meaning “never,” so as to say “would that I had never been among ... ,” but I find no such extension of the term into the past elsewhere. “Men” is the gender-specific andres, not anthrōpoi. West may be right that the present is meant in 177-8, but I translate the future literally. The poet presumably uses it in order to proceed smoothly to the future proper beginning at 179. “Destructive” is phtheiromenoi; West emends to teiromenoi, “wearying,” but see Verdenius.

[35] To be sure, ōphellon in v. 174 with thanein (“die”) in 175 may recall ophelen(-on) thaneein (someone “should have died” in different circumstances than he did, Il. 22.436, Od. 5.308, 14.274). West (ad 106-201, 176) on iron’s cruelty is disputed by Verdenius ad 176, claiming Homeric evidence, but see M. Edwards ad Il. 17.424-5. On Hesiod and the prophets, see most recently the comparison with Amos by K. Seybold and J. von Ungern-Sternberg, in Anfänge politischen Denkens in der Antike (Munich, 1993), 215-39. (Amos, 1:1, 7:14-15, also claims to have been a shepherd; cf. Th. 23. And having flourished sometime in the first half of the 8th century, B.C.E., he was far enough in the past of any possible date for our poem that transmission of his thought to Hesiod is a definite possibility.) Of course the use of epic language nonetheless continues: “Never” and “nor at all” beginning a clause in the fifth foot as at 176 and 177 are standard; adjectival “iron” normally begins the second hemistich, as here (as opposed to the noun compared with bronze at verse end at 151); and “gods” and “harsh” as at 178 are coupled at Il. 20.131, Od. 11.292 (slightly differently at Od. 23.81).

[36] Differently, Verdenius thinks the graying of v. 181 is soon after birth. “At one with” (182) does not mean “(physically) like,” as some say; see Renehan. Many translate 182-4 as if independent clauses were meant, i.e., nominal sentences for the first two, but that seems wrong with the future tense. “Yes” in 186 is the combination of the quasi-causal particle ara and the connective de with specifying import (following the thrust of Verdenius and Denniston, 33).

[37] Saying v. 179 is ameliorative are, e.g., West, Verdenius, Sihvola (30), Arrighetti. Folklore motif: S. Thompson (V 250). (As West notes, a similar thought occurs in the fourth Indian age; above, n. 29.) Falkner’s (above, n. 33, 58) attempt to connect this to the fact of the “iron” men, because iron is also sometimes gray in epic, seems tenuous in the absence of close language parallels bearing on the point. On “vicious,” see above (Chap. 2, n. 5). “As it was before:” e.g., Il. 5.806, Od. 2.305 (but contrast at Il. 22.250). Phoenix: Il. 9.450 (“dishonor” same verse position); cf. Od. 18.144 = 24.459 (the suitors dishonor Odysseus’s wife). The word break after oude in 183 is a half foot too early to make a threefold line, and the verse seems heard as a single long colon extending past the normal caesura, followed by a short one. (A similar case is 486, to be discussed in Chapter 5.) A guest is to be treated like a brother: Od. 8.546.

[38] Some (e.g., Solmsen) have impugned v. 189, on the grounds that it seems to begin a new theme abruptly, and that the first clause is repeated in 192, but West responds adequately. Against West’s emendation so that “justice and shame will be in the arm,” see Richardson (1979, 170), Solmsen (1980, 217), Renehan. To be sure, epic language forms are used to good effect. E.g., “there is no respect” for good works on the part of the suitors (Od. 4.695), and Achilles “swore an oath on” not washing off Patroclus’s blood until the body was burned (Il. 23.42).

[39] “What are” in v. 200 is the appositional use of ta (for which see Verdenius), the particle which in later Greece would become the definite article. West thinks of “they,” referring to something in the antecedent as leaving the woes, but if this were Shame and Indignation the dual form tō would be used, while if it were something before v. 197 the thought would be overly clumsy.

[40] The Greek word order of v. 196 is actually “ill-sounding, delighting-in-evil, will-accompany, hate-faced.” (Ginsberg’s first draft of Howl was even closer, as it set off “starving, hysterical, naked” in the opening line with commas.) Shame and indignation: Il. 13.122. To Olympus: 1.494. Bodies: 5.354, 23.805, Od. 24.44. Tribes: Il. 15.54, 161 (= 177). Pegasus: Th. 284. Andromache: Il. 24.742. Defense against evil: Th. 876. In addition, “from broad-wayed earth” is standard, and the 3d person dual of “to go” is always in the verse position of our 199: Il. 1.347 (Patroclus and the girl “went” from Achilles to deliver her to Agamemnon), Od. 9.430, 21.244.

[41] The hawk’s claws cannot embrace an entire bird, so that as West explains, “pierced” in v. 205 must imply that it is “around” the claws, not the reverse. Verdenius says “stronger” rather than “better” in 207, but as he himself notes, the passage in general recalls the boasting of epic heroes, for whom areiōn had a broader reference. As often as not in epic the next person mentioned after “so said” concludes a speech is someone else, so that the audience will not think of “fast-flying hawk” in 212 as the verb’s grammatical subject (nor “father of men and gods” in 59).

[42] On Near East fables with talking animals (and plants), see Perry (xxxi-xxxiv). Zeus to Hera: Il. 4.31 (cf. Andromache to Aphrodite, 3.399; Odysseus to the upstart maid Melantho, Od. 19.71). “Understand:” Il. 23.305. “Clouds:” Il. 23.874 (where a bird is also involved), Od. 16.624, h. Aph. 67. “Bearing in talons:” Il. 12.202 (= 220), Od. 15.161. “Stretched-winged bird(s):” Od. 5.65, Th. 525 (the eagle that devours Prometheus’s liver). Odysseus’s double epithet: Il. 11.482, plus five times in Od. To be sure, attempts to explain “spangled” have gone to the length of Verdenius’s suggestion of bloodstains on the woman who killed her son before becoming a nightingale (in a myth to which our poet will refer later). “Screech:” Il. 22.141 (also in the perfect; Hesiod’s ironic use was apparently first pointed out by M. Puelma, MH, 29, 1972, 93 n. 33).

[43] Erbse (14), following a useful review of the interpretations (12-14). As to these, some writers refer the segment to genres other than the fable: Verdenius (ad 203 irēx) thinks of similes relating warriors to predatory birds, while S. Lonsdale, Hermes, 92 (1989), 403 n. 2, says it has aspects of an omen, and (407-8) relates the hawk to the eagle of Penelope’s dream at Od. 19.536-53. The nightingale as the nobles: most recently, Nelson, CJ, 92 (1997), 235-47, and (1998, 76-8); as Perses, T. Hubbard, GRBS, 36 (1995), 161-71 (cf. Peabody, 246); as Hesiod, e.g., West. Verdenius is inconsistent (Hesiod: ad 203 aēdona; Perses: ad 213 Persē). Rather than seeing the birds as specific people, one might interpret the passage allegorically as representing a contest between epic and Hesiodic poetry, or between reality itself and poetry (as perhaps with Walt Whitman answering an accusing hawk with his “barbaric yawp.”).

[44] On “hey Perses, you,” Nelson (1998, 78-9) makes a point of asserting that ō Persē su d’ is not adversative here, since it is not at v. 274, nor with a similar apostrophe to the kings at 248. However, whether or not a standard phrase presents a contrast depends on the context (as with, e.g., “as it was before;” see above, n. 37). To be sure, our de does appear to be more like “while” than either “but” or “and” (although I see no need to say, with Verdenius, that it is a particle rather than a connective). On “valiant” for esthlos, I follow Verdenius; however, one naturally thinks of the upper class as most exemplifying the quality. On “calamities” in 216, there has been a long debate over just where the term atē means “delusion,” and where it means the “ruin” which results from such delusion. I can accept Verdenius’s argument for the latter here, particularly since it is in the plural (“meeting delusions” makes less sense than would meeting a single delusion, or Delusion in general), but this is the earliest attested use as such apart from Od. 12.372, and as will be discussed shortly, it is different when the concept is personified. On “pass” (parelthein), Verdenius rightly rejects West’s simple “pass by,” but his “arrive at” seems unnecessary: At least with other verbs the prefix par- can have the sense “along.” As West notes, heterēphi, “by the other way,” is an interesting survival of the so-called instrumental case (actually originally associative, at least in Sanskrit), retained from original Indo-European in Mycenaean Greek and thus found in Homer on occasion. “Just actions” in 217 is dikaia, an adjective made into a noun.

[45] Listening as to a god: Od. 7.11. “Lowly mortals:” Il. 22.31, 76, 24.525 Od. 11.19, 12.341, 15.408. The image of the road is probably ancient, since the etymology of dik’ is thought to involve showing a direction (surviving as “way” in the sense of custom at, e.g., Od. 4.691). “Fool learns:” Il. 17.32 (= 20.198), a long-noticed parallel (cf. already Rzach). Several scholars note as well that a warrior’s arm is also “weighed down by” a wound, 16.519. Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 197, construing “pass by” in v. 216, thinks this segment is parallel to the chariot race between Antilochus, Menelaus, and others (Il. 23.416-604), which speaks of “passing by” (with different verbs), “way” and “oath” (mentioned next here).

[46] Verdenius and some older authorities read “follows” as intransitive in v. 222. This is possible since transitive hepomai normally takes the dative, not the accusative as here. Still, contra Verdenius, we cannot avoid Justice being in part avenger since she “brings ill to humans.”

[47] On Oath, see West ad Th. 231 (where he is made son of Strife). On the parallel with Zeus’s flood (Il. 16.387-8) see also especially M. Dickie, CP, 73 (1978), 98. I do believe the colon structure Sheehan (455) posits here pertains at 183, 486. It is also noticed that the language of “drag her” in the Greek is that of the hawk carrying off the nightingale at 208. “Veiled in mist:” Il. 14.282 (on the phrase’s antiquity, cf. Janko). Uproar is from the rape: e.g., Verdenius; from the protest, e.g., West.

[48] On Hesiod’s vs. Homer’s justice, see Arthur Adkins, Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), 70-3; Dickie (above, n. 47, 91-101); Havelock (above, n. 45, 193-217); Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus² (Berkeley, 1983), 35-6; M. Erler, SIFC, 5 (3rd ser.) (1987), 14-21; and, for some other references, Janko ad Il. 16.384-93.

[49] Hesiod commentators and translators virtually unanimously construe euruopa in v. 229 as “broad-seeing” (or “broad-browed” in earlier work), but for “-sounding,” see Kirk ad Il. 1.498-9. The poet himself perhaps intends Atē as “Ruin” in 231, as perhaps also at Th. 230 (where along with Lawlessness it is a child of Strife, also with Famine at 227); however, whether the audience thinks of that or of “Delusion” (the daemon’s clear identity at Il. 19.91-136), will depend on which passage the listener recalls. (Cf. above, n. 44.) “Enjoy the fruits of labors” is Frazer’s idiomatic rendering. Taking drus in 232 in its primitive sense of “oaks,” not “trees” generally, I assume “acorns” in 233 as in Homer, i.e., food for swine (although West discusses possible human consumption, noting balanos attested later for chestnuts and dates). “Top” is Verdenius’s construal of akrē; “outside,” West’s. Verdenius thinks katebebrithasin in 234 means the sheep are intensely covered “all over,” not weighed “down.” Contra “fathers” for “parents” in 235 (e.g., West), h. Dem. 240 seems to mean the latter. “Resembling” means the women’s offspring lack telltale signs of adultery to West; birth defects, to Renehan and Verdenius (disagreeing on inclusion of social defects), but the point seems moot since there are no offspring at all with which to compare in the negative half of the encomium given next. On the overall structure, Verdenius thinks “people blossom” specifies “city flourishes” in 227, but the thoughts seem parallel to me.

[50] Famine and Ruin: above (n. 49); Peace: Th. 902 (a daughter of Zeus, indeed along with Justice herself), although possibly a late addition.

[51] Erler (above, n. 48, 15-19). In addition to the phrases mentioned, “straight judgments” (vv. 225-6) are “given” to judges (rather than by them) at Il. 18.508. And aside from the standard expressions, although the nominative case makes “son-rearing” modify “Peace” rather than “land” in 228, there is an echo of it modifying “Ithaca” in Od. 9.27 (Verdenius). Analogical formations I have found include: (1) For mē ti parekbainousi dikaou, “in no way walk outside of the just,” 226, cf. mē se parekprophugēisin aethla, “(be skilful) lest prizes elude you (in a contest),” also ending Il. 23.314; and (2) for oud’ epi nēōn/ nisontai, “not in ships/ they go,” 236-7, cf. ou gar et’ autis/ nisomai, the shade of Patroclus tells Achilles, “for not again/ will I go” out from Hades, Il. 23.75-6. (To be sure, beginning a “not” phrase or clause in the 5th foot of the hexameter line, also at our 228, is standard epic technique.) Otherwise, the phrase messē de melissas, “honey in the middle,” 233, may be a direct allusion to meson aioloi ēe melissai, “(wasps which are) flexible in the middle or bees,” also ending Il. 12.167. Verdenius and others (including already Plato, Rep. 363b-c) note the thematic similarity to Od. 19.109-14. (Havelock, above, n. 45, 201-3, suggests that the Phaeacians’ situation in general is in our poet’s mind. Erler asserts Oriental influence on the Od. passage as part of his argument just cited.) Epic expressions also turn out to populate the negative sequel, 238-47.

[52] “Even yourselves” is how most construe kai autoi in v. 248 (repeated from 202), although West and Verdenius somehow think it means the gods about to be mentioned.

[53] On the boldness, see Verdenius. For grasping knees in supplication, see Kirk ad Il. 1.512-13. West thinks the kings have really been addressed all along. In the process of analyzing the poem in terms of its rhetorical modes, Jens-Uwe Schmidt, Adressat und Paraineseform (Göttingen, 1986), 33-41, says that they are primarily addressed throughout vv. 202-85. However, the only people actually addressed are the reciter’s audience, and to me it seems hyper-theoretical to invent a third category of virtual addressee in addition to them and to the formal addressees. “Unconcerned with the gaze of the gods:” Il. 16.388.

[54] As Verdenius notes, the guardians “of humans” in v. 253 are not also “of Zeus,” but are sent “from Zeus.” (The Greek double genitive refers to two different types of relation; KG, I 337.) “Watching over” is implicitly repeated as the subject in 253 even though the objects are of different kinds, given the position of the connective te (West and Verdenius, citing Denniston, 519).

[55] West ad 249 ff (noting also Od. 17.485-7, where gods watch for good and bad actions).

[56] Verdenius, rather, reads “the” in v. 256 as appositional: “and she is an unmarried woman, Dike,” with no reference to the earlier citation. However, the audience will recall it.

[57] It has been suggested that “Justice born of Zeus” in v. 256 is, rather, an etymological statement since “Justice” is Dikē and “of-Zeus” is Dios (for references, see Arrighetti, 1998, 397 n. 2). However, the phrase parallels “Helen born of Zeus” (six times in Homer), where that is not a possibility. Thetis: Il. 1.500; Ares: 5.869. The assigning of collective punishment is anticipated at 240, where people of the unjust city generally suffer.

[58] “Yes” in v. 265 accepts the MS variant with te (with West, contra Solmsen).

[59] Achilles: Il. 1.159; Thersites: 2.211-77. Havelock, above, n. 45, 208, thinks “gift-eater” alludes directly to another of Achilles’s barbs, “people-eater,” 1.231, while Verdenius ad 39 thinks Hesiod’s models are that (dēmoboros) and sitophoros, “bread-eater.” (Actually, the phonetically closest epic term to dōrophagos is the Odyssey’s Lōtophagoi, “Lotus-eaters.”) Helios: Il. 3.277 = Od. 11.109 = 12.323. West and Verdenius stress that Hesiod is too advanced for the primitive belief that the sun is the eye of a god, but that does not mean the parallel fails to recall such an image

[60] Verdenius says adikōteros in v. 272, properly “more unjustly,” has the same effect as the simple adikōs, “unjustly,” but that construal ignores the effect of juxtaposition with “greater,” thus weakening the irony. It is common to construe eolpa in 273, “I trust,” as “I hope” (since formally it is the perfect of elpō); e.g., most recently Lauriola (above, Chap. 2, n. 26, 17). However, to me the term seems to be a figure of speech, e.g., Achilles to Aeneas: “I trust” it will not be easy for you to kill me, Il. 20.186. Against the MS variant “who delights in thunder,” West says “the counselor” better suits the context. But as he also says, one cannot always expect a logical epithet; moreover, thunder could cow the unjust into submission.

[61] “Birds” in v. 277 is not ornai, but oiōnai, often meaning “birds of prey.” Preferring that construal, Verdenius thinks it illogical to say they eat one another. However (Erbse, 14-15 n. 8), the thought seems to be that it is the entire animal kingdom which feeds upon itself.

[62] To be sure, as Renehan, Gnomon, 59 (1987), 579, quotes in detail during his review of Verdenius (1985), Benjamin Franklin once concluded that it was reasonable for humans to eat fish, since the latter ate each other. On vv. 202-85 as a formal unit, see most recently Arrighetti (ad 103-285, 213). (The connection between the animals at the ends is also noticed in works of more general scope; e.g., Adkins, 30-1.) Differently, the fable is still outside the structure to Marsilio (2000, xx) for whatever reason, while Nelson (1998, 78) rejects the point on the basis of her views that the hawk is Zeus and that Hesiod distinguished animals in fable from those in reality.

[63] For references to the debate, see above, n. 48. The Od. citations are 11.218, 14.59, 19.43, and 24.255, respectively. Other epic parallels: For epilētheo pampan, “entirely forget,” cf. epilētheon hapantōn, “(a drug brings) forgetfulness of all (things),” also ending Od. 4.221., and epelēsen hapantōn, “(sleep causes) forgetting all,” 20.85. As West notes, Laertes fears that Odysseus has been eaten by fishes, beasts, or birds, in that order (Od. 14.291-2, but with different verse positions, so I suspect Homer and Hesiod alike worked from some popular phrase not in epic meter). Esthein allēlous, “feed upon one another,” follows a pattern of line-beginning phrases of a verb with allēl-, especially in battle (e.g., “vied with one another,” Il. 5.452 = 12.425).

[64] Erbse (16), although others who see the first half as introducing the second (e.g., Heath) continue to interpret vv. 286-382 as closely associated with their antecedent. As will be discussed later, commentators who do not see such forward motion commonly make comparisons in particular between the material which comes next (or at least 341-82) and the portion which follows the “sailing” section much later in the poem, taking them to be of the same genre and playing different but comparable roles in the poem. My treatment will take a different approach.

[65] “What is” in vv. 287, 289 is formally the definite article, but see Verdenius. The latter defends MS oligē, “short,” in 288, although West and others take leiē, “smooth,” from Plato and other ancients’ testimony. (Arrighetti adds that “short” and “long” are nicely opposed.) Against the view of some that the elided subject of 292 is aretē (or Verdenius’s, that it and “way” are merged), that entity seems to be a state, not a process which may or may not be difficult.

[66] For references to discussions of aretē, see Verdenius ad v. 289. Scylla and Charybdis: Od. 12.57-8; cliffs of Ithaca: 14.1.

[67] Arrighetti: ad 286-298.

[68] Verdenius says the “logical” position of the ensuing segment would be before the preceding one. That would be from the point of view of the modern who likes to see the theory of a thing given before its details. However, the more concrete-minded Hesiod is within his rights to begin in medias res. Indeed, as Verdenius allows, the advice is more effective where it is.

[69] “Best of all” is literally “all-best.” I render ta epeita (the first attested use of the particle as a noun) as “what is thereafter” because the concept “future” looks too far forward, is too abstract, and does not inherently contain the aspect of conditioning by the antecedent.

[70] Pro- and Epi-metheus: most recently, Nelson (1998, 65-6). On the issue with Nestor’s age, see Arrighetti ad 293-297 (cf. Verdenius ad 295 pithētai). West’s examples of patterns omit what is probably the most important: Pindar’s priamel in Olympian 1, where water and gold are stated to be superior (i.e., in their respective spheres of importance), but heroic deeds are beyond everything. In such cases “A” and “B” usually have the same length, while the poet expands on “C.” This could suggest that the minority of scholars who reject 294, a gloss on v. 293, may be right. (Verdenius stresses in its defense that Hesiod is interested in the long term elsewhere, but he is interested in a good deal else that is implicit in “thinks out everything” without seeing a need to spell it out here.)

[71] To cite another Greek author, in Herodotus “we” serves both functions, according to D. Chamberlain, CA, 20 (2001), 5-6. “God-born:” West, Verdenius, Arrighetti and their references.

[72] Gender-differentiated anēr, not anthrōpos, is indeed specified in vv. 302, 303, 308. Kothouros in 304 could mean a number of things other than “without sting” (e.g., “stump-tailed”); see West or more recently, G. Rechenauer, QUCC, 44 (n.s.) (1993), 27-48. Some manuscripts (and all known ancient papyri) lack 310, and most editors bracket it. West (simply quoted by Verdenius) argues against it on the grounds of what he thinks would agree with the context. Still, Arrighetti does defend the line, arguing against West’s particulars. “Whatever ... is” in 314 is West’s reading with eēistha. Solmsen and Verdenius read eēstha, so that the phrase is “such as your circumstances were,” thus more specifically relevant to Perses.

[73] For “aretē and kudos accompany,” cf. “timē and kudos accompany” the Achaeans (also ending Il. 17.251, with timē approximately meaning “honor”), “charis and kudos (Hermes) grants” (Od. 15.320, with charis approximately “grace,” while “grant” is opazei, compared with opēdei for “accompany”). Women as drones: Th. 594-602. On the Hesiod of the first half of the poem as apologist for drudgery, see especially Welles. As to the restriction to males, L. Sussman, Arethusa, 11 (1978), 31, speaks of “Hesiod’s exclusion of women from the economy,” given that the latter is based on plow agriculture (cf. T. Howe, TAPA, 89, 1958, 62-3). Still, women’s tasks will be cited later in the poem, and I will suggest below that they were meant as part of the audience.

[74] For “is close to” in v. 319, as against West’s “is a feature of,” see Verdenius.

[75] Telemachus: Od. 17.347. Zeus acts “easily:” vv. 5-8 (quoted in Chap. 1 above); Nireus: Il. 2.671-4 (see also 2.282-5, our 578-81). The effect is like that of a priamel in style if not in thought (cf. Richardson ad Il. 23.312-18). (Also striking is a fourfold anaphora with terms of increasing length, on the important Achaean war dead left at Troy, Od. 3.109-112; cf. S. West.)

[76] As Verdenius notes, “with hands” and “by force” in v. 321 do not constitute a pleonasm, despite some translators. West seems right to personify the entities in 324, although others do not. Verdenius thinks “waste” in 325 explains “obscure,” and I suppose thinks the segment’s final clause in 326 is merely consecutive; however, I believe “drives away,” “obscure,” and “waste” govern coordinate clauses which set off and thereby enhance the concluding thought.

[77] Patroclus’s father: Il. 11.787 (both phrases in our verse positions); Nestor: 1.249; wounded warriors: Od. 11.536-7; a simile’s fire “wastes estates,” also ending Il. 17.738. Also, while the verb mauroō is not Homeric, other verbs take its position with “gods,” and in particular, the “blithely” living gods hated Lycurgus, Il. 6.138. “For a little time” can be compared with “not for a long time,” Od. 12.407, 15.494.

[78] Thus it is not only a matter of the coupling of suppliant and guest West and others stress. Verdenius thinks xeinos is “stranger” rather than “guest” in our case, but apart from the fact that “guest” is meant in the Odyssey case and in our v. 183, a stranger is usually someone’s guest, while a guest may not be a stranger, and Hesiod is presumably trying to be general.

[79] “Likewise” refers at least to the gods punishment, v. 325 (Verdenius), and presumably also to the shamelessness of 324. I assume disjunction for the repeated hos te, “and/or he who” (cf. Athanassakis): Any of the sins individually will incur the punishment. Verdenius wants an MS variant with the optative for the brother’s bed in 328, “might climb” (cf. Tandy and Neale), but his Odyssey example of an optative amid subjunctives is not a matter of coordinated thoughts like ours; if our author did use the optative he disrupted the rhetoric. No one but Verdenius is entirely happy with 329, which gives a heavy-handed explication of its antecedent, and I add that whoever said it (Hesiod or an interpolator who must have been ancient given its attestations) disrupted a nice epanaphora with increased length for the final member (cf. above, n. 75); however, I suppose a dim-witted listener could misunderstand 328 without the clarification. The consort is not necessarily a formal wife (Verdenius). Orphanos in 330 can mean lacking both parents (so Od. 20.68), but Verdenius argues that lack of the father (probably having been the offender’s brother while alive, so that nephews and nieces are meant) is what is in view here. Still, I see no need to specify the “parent” on the threshold in the next line to “father,” as most do.

[80] Some epic parallels: In a myth the king’s wife wanted to have sex “secretly” with Bellerophon, Il. 6.161; “coupling with consort:” Od. 23.346 (Odysseus with Penelope); as Verdenius notes, “bluster (chalepainoi) with wrangling words” against someone speaking the truth (Od. 18.415 = 23.323), compared with our “upbraid with harsh (chalepoi) words;” but also “upbraids” and “harsh” in different clauses but our verse positions (Eumaeus’s fears this coming from his current master Telemachus, Od. 17.189); and a herald speaking “words” to the “aging” Priam to rouse him (Il. 3.249, our verse positions). “Threshold of old age:” e.g., Il. 22.60, Od. 15.348, h. Aph. 106. Hesiod’s dikē is narrowly juridicial to, in particular, M. Gagarin, CP, 68 (1973), 81-94.

[81] Verdenius says v. 335 begins a new segment; Solmsen has it conclude the last.

[82] Verdenius wants to read the particle dē for the connective de in v. 338, thus making the clause parenthetical, but “right at other times” makes little sense. “Holy” for hieros in 339 is proper here given the context, if it will prove erroneous later in the poem. “See” (toi) in 340 could in principle be, rather, “toward you,” but the pronoun is not needed since the verb in the next line is 2d person. Kleros in 341 is properly what is divided in an inheritance as at 37 (cf. West), but could have the general sense of “property” here (cf. Janko ad Il. 15.494-9).

[83] There may also be a shift in prosody: A so-called anomaly of the later vv. 383-828 is that the line with “masculine” caesura (at the arsis of the fifth foot) is much more frequent than in epic proper (60% as compared with, e.g., 39% for the Iliad); see most recently L. Sbardella, in Struttura e Storia dell’Esametro Greco, 2 vols. (Rome, 1995), I 121-33, but I calculate the frequency in 286-382 to be almost as high: 55%. Sbardella and others have thought the variation is related to the “didactic” nature of the poem coming to the fore at a certain point. On the artistry of our proverbs, see Paul Friedländer’s 1913 article reprinted in Heitsch (223-38), Verdenius (1962, 143-8), Benardete (164-5), Bona Quaglia (193-215), Martin (25-7).

[84] Verdenius (ad 336) answers concerns on the relation of the religious and social matters.

[85] “Near” (enguthi) in v. 343 is difficult to specify as strictly “next door” as Frazer thinks. (The same term is used in 700 for the location of one’s potential wife, for whom one presumably needs some choice.) On “see” in 344, I disagree with West and Verdenius that toi means “for you” here. The particle is natural after gar, “for,” as at Il. 5.265, 10.250, 24.172, Th. 94, our 302, 777. “Untoward” in v. 344 is allo, properly “other;” West, Renehan, and Verdenius cite precedents for taking it to be euphemism for “bad.” The latter two writers are persuasive that West’s construal “on your estate,” is incorrect, but not that he is wrong in rejecting an MS variant (adopted by, e.g., Solmsen) meaning “in the village.” (Cf. our idiom, “something is afoot in the land.”) “Ungirded” in 345 means around the midriff; it can be in the sense of battle armor (e.g., Il. 11.15) or clothing (e.g., 14.72). “Has honor” in 346 means, e.g., not subject to gossip (Verdenius and others); it is not “has value” (West and others). As at 231 for different reasons (see above, n. 49), I am not sure the audience will fail to think of “delusion” rather than “ruin,” since the cited thought seems more natural with delusion, whatever the poet’s actual intent.

[86] “Lives/lies near” (here and at vv. 288, 700): Od. 7.29; “bad pain:” e.g., 5.179; “great profit” (here and at 41): 4.444, Th. 871; “receives honor:” e.g., Il. 1.278; “well ... “well:” Il. 2.382 (but such an anaphora is general, as with “full ... full” at 100; “all ... all” at 267, albeit there the second member is delayed due to the three-colon nature of the line); “if possible:” e.g., Il. 6.229; “evil profit:” e.g., Od. 23.217. At least some of the kin are in-laws (as in fact the term pēoi means in Homer), who live about as close as do neighbors given where your wife is to come from (700). And if distance were the only problem, as with, e.g., Prov. 27:10, one imagines the poet would have said that directly.

[87] On the connection of v. 353 to its antecedent, see Verdenius ad 353 philein.

[88] “Another son” in v. 378 is usually taken to be a second son (e.g., Renehan), or perhaps a grandson (West), but some (e.g., Bona Quaglia, 211 n. 38; Verdenius, who cites such language use in later Greek) construe “leaving behind another (than you, i.e.,) a son,” so that the thought only restates or perhaps specifies 376-7. I do not see why Renehan (above, n. 62, 579) thinks this “impossible,” although it does seem to leave us without a credible transition to the thought of 379-80: Verdenius says that segment has been added to meet the objection that when you are old you are a drain on your children, but that is too obtuse.

[89] In Gen. 22:2 the Hebrew literally means “beloved son,” but, e.g., the King James renders it idiomatically as “only son.” West holds that vv. 379-80 provide for an “exception to a general rule” (inconsistently, since he has just said a grandson, not a second son, is the subject), but I see no hint of “but in case that” in the Greek of 378.

[90] The standard phrase thumos en phresin hēisin in v. 381, which I render idiomatically as “in your heart of hearts,” actually speaks of two different concepts of will, the thumos and the phrēn, the first conceived of as seated in the second. On the digamma (w), see the Appendix.

[91] Nelson’s (1998, 132) statement here, however, seems difficult to reconcile with her agreement with Gagarin (cf. above, n. 80) two pages earlier that Hesiod’s dikē is narrow. Gotshalk: Homer and Hesiod, Myth and Philosophy (Lanham, MD, 2000), 246-8. In general, his treatment (211-48) is fairly detailed for the part of the poem up to v. 341, and follows conventional philological assumptions (albeit he, 236-7, goes even further in including the “fifth race” with the past races, by taking 173a-e seriously as part of a “restored” text; cf. above, n. 27).

[92] Erbse (16); cf. above, n. 64.