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

 

CHAPTER 4. OVERTURE TO THE HERE AND NOW

vv. 383-413

 

            Perhaps because it is understood that he is speaking to a “just” audience (and one which has stayed with him this far), the poet rewards it with two marvelous lines. Keeping the word order of the original:

 

                        of-the-Pleiades, born(or: leaving?)-from-Atlas, at-their-rising

                         (you may) begin reaping; plowing, at-their-setting.[1]

(vv. 383-4)

(The “rising” and “setting” are not the daily events, but the yearly “heliacal” versions: As West explains, the rising is just enough before sunrise to be visible, and similarly the setting. He estimates the former in mid May for Hesiod’s time and place, the latter at the end of October.)[2]

            This is not about drudgery! The couplet, admired from ancient times, says in the first place that the Pleiades introduce the harvest, and we are even free to envisage the strength they derive from Atlas helping the plants rise along with them. Only at the end are we reminded, with “plowing,” that work as well as sympathetic magic has been needed.  (The plodding alma­nac that tradition claims these two verses initiate would reverse the order, to plowing and reap­ing.) The effect is assisted by pairing “rising” and “setting” at verse end. This poetry is achieved with just seven words (apart from an enclitic particle after “plowing” in the Greek). The first verse in particular, in three increasing cola, is a tour de force which appears to vary a standard three word line with normal caesura about less cosmic family relations (hero A is the “full-brother of-epitheted hero-B”). Another interesting point is that Plēïades evokes peleiades, “doves,” and indeed, later in the poem these stars will “flee” Orion, i.e., the hunter. The constellation’s first attested lyrical mention here perhaps begins the tradition invoking them, which otherwise extends from Alcman to Pindar among the Greeks, but also on to classical Arabic poetry.[3]

            If any indication of a fundamental break in the text was still needed after the striking vv. 381-2, this even more striking poetry ought to suffice: The transition 381-4 truly marks the beginning of the second part of the poem, even if, as noted in the last chapter, the previous hundred odd verses have anticipated it stylistically with their positive tone and infinitive used as imperative (as with archesthai, “begin,” here). The break also speaks against West’s view that the second half of the poem amounts to a series of ad hoc extensions to an original “prospect.” Presumably that would involve a transition without fanfare. Indeed, if one discounts the improbable hypothesis that we have two separate poems which are artificially fused, it seems to me that the previous mater­i­al must constitute something meant to lead to what follows, as Bradford Welles in parti­cu­lar holds. To be sure, as against his view of it being needed to justify drudgery, I take it that the signi­ficance of the introduction 106-382 is that one who heeds its prescriptions of just behavior is entitled to participate in what is to be described next: One who behaves properly in society can carry on the individual life to be detailed, without fear of anything not inherent in nature (includ­ing the gods insofar as they affect nature).[4]

            That said, I suggest that the initial lines’ citing the perhaps most important two activities for a farmer in particular, reaping and plowing, invites a more general, figurative interpretation of the couplet itself. Indeed, among the Arabic examples the important pre-Islamic poet Imru’ al-Qais says in one verse that a particularly long night was as if the stars were anchored to a mountain, and in the next line that it was as if the Pleiades hung by ropes from rocks. There “the Pleiades” clearly specifies “the stars” as a synechdoche. Perhaps Hesiod’s “reap and plow according to the orbit of the Pleiades” also has a general implication, along the lines of “guide your activities in accordance with events in the natural world.”[5]

            To see if such a concept will be fruitful, consider the sequel. First, as to these stars:

 

                        Well you know in nights as well as days for forty (days) they

                        are hidden, though again at the revolving of a year

                        they appear first at (the time for) the sharpening of iron.

                        See, this rule-song pertains on the plains, both for they who to the sea

                        would(?) dwell near, and for they who in deep valleys, from the

                        surging sea far away, (in a) rich place

                        live: sow naked, plow naked,

                        and reap naked, if you want all in their proper season

                        Demeter’s works to gather, as for you each

                        increases in its season, (and) in no way afterwards you need

                        to grovel at others’ estates, and accomplish nothing.[6]

(vv. 385-95)

(The invisibility lasts from when the Pleiades set so soon after the sun as to be impossible to see until the heliacal rising, i.e., from the end of March to mid May according to West. “Sow,” “plow,” and “reap” are infinitives.) Of noteworthy points in this segment, the stress on the Pleiades being hidden at night as well as day enhances our sense of relief when we hear that they appear at har­vest time. As Fritz Krafft says, there is a nice apposition of “deep valleys” to “rich place,” coupled with con­trast between “near” and “far” from the sea. To be sure, we should work, and do so “nak­ed.” A long (indeed, ancient) debate over that feature has focused on how literally it is meant, but I take it that something like our idiom “roll up your sleeves” (meaning get to work) is invoked. (That does not preclude Bona Quaglia’s rendering “under the sun,” with its hint of working openly for all to see, perhaps especially the gods.) It is possible that, before Hesiod, “sow nak­ed, plow nak­ed (or the reverse), and you will reap naked” was a popular saying, but if so he adapted it so as to make the apodosis, rather, the acquiring of “Demeter’s works.” And as West says, there is Near East wisdom to the effect that he who does not work goes begging “and gets nothing.”  Thus per­haps a Greek maxim to that effect has also been incorporated into the composition.[7]

            However, it is at least as significant that apart from other epic phrases, the underlined terms in the passage betray allusion to (at least a precursor of) a segment from the funeral games for Patroclus. Achilles offers a piece of iron as one of the prizes, saying of its winner:[8]

 

                        “Even if for him very much far away (are his) rich fields

                        he will have it five years moving around

                        for his needs; for indeed not for him, deprived, now, of iron,

                        will his shepherd or plowman (need to go) to town. ...”

(Il. 23.832-5)

(The stressed terms have the same verse positions in the Greek as in our case.) There is too much common detail for the similarity to be accidental, and I assert that the thoughtful original listen­er to our passage recalled this one. And such a listener might have been drawn to the gener­al idea that a plowman can get the prize in his “rich” land without warriors as middle­men if he “works naked.” If so, such thinking about more than the literal meanings of the words lends weight to the hypothesis stated above that the initial couplet of 383-4 is a figure.

            True, the poet next seems to allude to the earlier specific dispute with Perses:

 

                        As even now (you) to me come, while I to you will not give,

                        nor measure (or: by measuring) (it) out; work, childish Perses!

                        work: yes the gods have marked it out for humans through (the year),

                        lest ever with children and wife, grieving in your heart,

                        you seek sustenance from neighbors and they not care (to give to you).

                        For twice or thrice readily (or: perhaps) you’ll succeed, but if you bother them further

                        you will effect no actuality, and much in vain will you expound:

                        your “range of words” will be useless. ...[9]

(vv. 396-403)

However, the structure here is certainly appealing: The first line counterposes “to me come” to “to you give” (as is the order also in the Greek), and then toward the end “effect” is put in appos­i­tion with “expound.” (The point is enhanced if “measure” in 397 actually specifies “give” in 396, given that “useless ... words” in 403 specifies “effect” and “expound” in 402.) Otherwise, as Arri­ghetti points out, the epic phrase “grieving in heart” in 399 brings out the special poignancy of beg­ging with wife and children in a society where the wife was less responsible for the welfare of the chil­dren than in ours. Wit is not absent: “Range of words” is an epic figure for glibness.[10]

            And as to figurative aspects of the purportedly specific case of Perses, during the course of her study of his persona in relation to rival poetry, Marsilio relates “expound” in v. 402 to its pre­­dication of our poet himself elsewhere in the poem (280, 688), as if a competing counsel of general laziness is implied as a foil for our poet’s advice. If so, she notes, the acknow­ledg­ment that it is partially successful (“twice or thrice”) gives this competition a foot in the door, to render it a serious opponent. At the least, “work” in 397 (true imperative as at 299, not infinitive) and the noun “work” in 398 surely refer to more than reaping and plowing according to the Pleiades, and perhaps more than sowing/plowing/reaping “naked.”[11]

            And any doubt that matters broader than literal content are referenced disappears with:

 

                         ... But I bid you

                        to consider release from need and avoidance of hunger:

                        A house first of all and a woman and a plowing ox

                        -- a bought one, not a wife, and one who can follow (or attend?) the oxen --

                        and matters in your household all in order get (infinitive).[12]

(vv. 403-7)

(That is, “house,” “woman,” “ox,” and “matters in order” are all objects of “get.”)[13]

            Here continuation of the previous thought leads to the house-woman-ox trio of v. 405, fam­ous in later antiquity. What needs to be remarked, however, is just why it will have impressed Hesiod’s contemporaries: It again follows the majestic procession noted in the last chapter, “Nes­tor first of all ...” and the like in the Iliad and “gold first of all ...” in our 109-73. The Homeric cases are developed over several verses; the earlier one in this poem, several seg­ments, but here the poet condenses the impressive structure into a single line -- albeit with a further continuation in 407 after the parenthesis of 406. Thus Aristotle goes so far as to take this house-woman-ox as a succinct expression of “economics” (oikonomikē, from oikos, “house”), as opposed to “politics” (poli­ti­kē, the management of the larger community), since the house is the most important of one’s needs, while the woman and ox are representative of its human inhabi­tants and property, res­pectively. He does not recognize the proviso of 406 (which disrupts the flow of the poetry even though it must be judged authentic) that the woman is also property, but one need only modify his judgment to say that the trio stands for all material, not social needs.[14]

            Two lines then reiterate the nominal point: Do the foregoing

 

                        lest you (need to) ask another, but he refuse and you be needy,

                        and the season pass by and your result waste away.

(vv. 408-9)

West notes that “season pass by” is used poignantly (i.e., of youth) elsewhere in archaic liter­a­ture, so perhaps Hesiod uses an already given sentiment. West and Janko note a parallel of the final “result waste away” with an effect of the flood of the simile already suggested at 221-4 (as noted in the last chapter). (Here “result” is ergon in the sense of the fruits of work, used for some reason in the singular although surely the plural is meant.) The threefold rhythm of the verse effectively concludes the section.[15]

            However, a coda yields some general wisdom about not avoiding serious work.

 

                        Don’t delay til the morrow or the next day;

                        for not does the puttering man fill the barn,

                        nor the putting-off one: see(?) care increases the (fruit of) work,

                        while constantly the fitfully-working(?) man wrestles with ruin.[16]

(410-13)

Here the poet first gives an introductory verse which is a commonplace, but then, as if to run the gamut of the possibilities, he actually specifies two, or perhaps three, distinct modes: working with­­out purpose, delaying the needed work all at once, and possibly working in fits and starts. To effect this, while 411 at first looks like a nice proverb, epic enjambement adds a modi­fying phrase to fill the first hemistich of the third line, 412, and its second half effectively makes it a supple­men­t­ary proverb. If “fitfully-working” is the right reading, the last line then counter­poses intermittent activity of one type to constant activity of another which is less pleasing. “Puttering (literally, uselessly-working) man” and “fitfully-working man” play on an analogical pattern of nominative case “man” with compound epithet in this verse position, as in Homer’s “chariot-building man” and “sweet-hearted man.” All in all, a nice afterthought to the section.[17]

 

            To summarize, after an introduction establishing the basis for the good life (made longer by the false start of vv. 11-105), here begins a poem on the life itself. In this beginning in parti­cu­lar, a high level of poetry makes us think the life is a matter of heeding the stars, getting every­thing we need to pursue our productive labor, maintaining it properly, and avoiding finding ways not to do so; thus preventing disaster. It has to be said that, after the impressive initial coup­let, the stress has been rather negative here and there, at least when compared with the mini-essays on proper social behavior which led up to the passage. Nonetheless, we get a fair summary of a farmer’s being which, moreover, is implicitly compared with the typical epic per­son­ality by means of one significant allusion to a Homeric passage. What we have heard will not turn out to closely match the details of the good life given in the sequel (the Pleiades will not be cited specifically for plowing in the section which deals with it to follow, and the ox-woman will never be mentioned again). Still, it should be view­ed as introducing, not only the next circumscribed section (as Hamil­ton and others think), but the entire “agricultural” portion of the poem (Nicolai and others). That is, the passage 383-413 is a generality of which the sequel is a specification. Or, in artistic terms (and given that the “rule” of 388 is musical in nature), it is a good overture: It gets our attention.[18]  (to Chap. 5)

 

NOTES: