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

 

CHAPTER 5. AN ALTERNATIVE HUMAN

vv. 414-503

 

     {Note: Substantially the material of this chapter written in 2003 appeared subsequently in a form more oriented toward the specialist reader, in the article in Classical Antiquity listed in the writings page for 2004. That article is more up to date in terms of scholarship.}

 

            Continuing the musical analogy, one can describe the piece’s first “movement” after that overture as divided into sections of different character: a mini-overture (vv. 414-22); a cadence to search for a theme (423-47); after finding the latter, a fanfare to give a fresh start (448-57); a structured passage (458-92); and a reminiscence of the fanfare to close the structure (493-503).

 

Initial vision.

            The poet begins with one more type of introduction (after the proemium, the false start of vv. 11-105, the true introduction 106-382, and the overture to the poem proper 383-413). This one is highly specific, but becomes so through the intersection of many subjects. In a supposed­ly mundane segment we do not simply get the stars as at 383, part of the subject now known as astronomy, but as Arrighetti notes, that plus meteorology, physiology, zoology, and botany:

 

                        Just at-the-point-(of some cycle)-that ceases the force of the piercing sun

                        its sweltering heat, with the autumn rain

                        of mighty Zeus, and afterwards a mortal’s body turns

                        much lighter, for right then the star Sirius

                        (only) little over the head of nurtured-for-doom humans

                        goes by day -- though yes he partakes more of night;

                        then (or possibly: when) most worm-free is by-iron cut

                        wood, and it pours leaves to earth and stops making shoots;

                        well then (you may) cut wood, bearing in mind your task(s?) for the time.[1]

(414-22)

            This encyclopedic opening constitutes a transformation of epic at several levels, of which the most immediate is that localized images taken from the realm of heroes and gods are con­ver­t­ed to interaction of humans with nature: Idomeneus did not ‘‘cease his force” (in mid verse) in a battle, but in our v. 414 the poet makes such a cessation actually occur, while referring to nat­ure. (In the process he inserts “piercing” into the standard phrase “force of the sun,” thus putting “cease force” in mid verse here also.) Then, in 417 the original listener is surprised by the enjambed term “much lighter” after what had seemed to be “skin turns,” normally an epic hero’s skin changing color out of fear of an adversary.  The listener either thinks the use is irrational or realizes that chrōs must have its other Homeric sense of “body” or “flesh.” A star is “over the head” of waking humans in 418, rather than a daemon over that of a sleeping person (e.g., Dream over Agamem­non). “By-iron cut” in 420 is in an analogical system with the Achaeans’ concern that Achilles “might cut (his throat) with iron” (so G. Edwards), apart from other use of epic language. The recasting of such images into our radically different subject matter amounts to a strong contrast.[2]

            The second level is that, as was indicated briefly in the Introduction, the passage’s overall form recasts the Iliad’s own aesthetic comparison of culture and nature, as manifested in the epic simile. That justly admired structure was perhaps an innovation on the part of the particular poet who assem­b­led the poem we have from previous traditions about the Trojan War. (The Odyssey poet for his part is a connoisseur of the form, employing it sparingly, but with flair and wit. E.g., as Hermann Frän­kel highlighted long ago, Odysseus is a disheveled lion when he washes up on the beach at Phae­acia, not the “well-groomed lion of poetry” like Menelaus when he is stripping a dead Tro­jan’s armor.) As for the Works and Days author, Jürgen Blusch points out that he has no use for the nature simile per se since he is directly involved in nature. However, here he too uses a form where several lines describe a nature situation, followed by a one-line (Homer has at most two) apodosis, what the addressee (Hesiod) or hero (Homer) is to do or is doing. In each case detail can be added to flesh out the image (both because epic composition is parataxial in nature and because the hexameter line allows addition of thoughts only a hemistich long). Thus our poet goes to the trouble of explaining why one’s body turns lighter in terms of Sirius, even adding a hemistich about the star at night which does not seem strictly relevant, but does serve to make the image all-sided. (It may allude to Penelope’s unweaving of Laertes’s shroud at night to put off the suitors, in order to display the poet’s virtuosity.) The difference, and it is certainly a profound one, is that for the apodosis one is actually to do something in the here and now, not just recall a figure from the dim past. It is not necessary that the poet be conscious of the pro­ce­dure we see he follows for it to be relevant; still, a possible model is a simile where the referen­c­ed image itself is a man cutting down a tree to make a wheel (a product to be cited shortly here).[3]

            Third, the entire epic time scale is transformed. A longer period than a day was already suggested, at least for procrastination, with “or the next day” in v. 410, and in fact here we start thin­king in terms of years. To be sure, this is done by means of a trick: The adverb ēmos begin­ning 414 is not a general term for “when,” but as Alice Radin shows, is only used in epic if the refer­enced event is repeated in a temporal cycle. But the cycle attested in epic proper is always the day, and by itself this verse would appear to be a simple variation on several examples which speak of events “when the sun” is at some point in the sky; the only alteration would be to say that its force “ceases,” presumably because it is setting for the day. However, in another case of a runover structure creating surprise for the original listener, 415 speaks of autumn, and then and only then it becomes clear that the cycle that is meant is the year. Thus at one stroke the poet lets us know we are not dealing with Homer’s daily grind of battles and debates about them, but with a different, dare one say, more relaxed rhythm. During his study of structures in the agricultural portion, Riedinger observes in passing that it does not give precise times. But this is because, while the injunc­tion against delay for a day (or two) in 410-13 was good general advice, it would not be the end of the world for something like wood cutting. Indeed, the infinitive as “imperative” tamnein in 422 sug­gests not so much “cut!” as a gentle “you may cut” if it feels cool outside or if you see the leaves falling, so that you know the wood is more or less optimum. Marie-Christine Leclerc avers that Hesiod knows several types of “time,” and is so masterful as to approach an abstract concept of it, and while she does not notice the point about ēmos, it certainly bears her out.[4]

            In sum, while to be sure expressing it in the form of a concrete occasion, the poet offers a vision of a different (albeit competitive) world as a reward for the “just” person to whom the poem after v. 382 is addressed. Epic’s king of Crete may not reduce his force all day long, but the celes­ti­al sphere does so, particularly on a longer time scale, and advantage can be taken. This is also true of the natural forces which hover “over one’s head,” and so on. And such contrasts help to suggest a larger meaning than the literal. One possibility often proposed is that the agricultural portion as a whole offers the generalization “do things at the right time,” which is one aspect of the apodosis, 422. If one is viewing nature as a partner in the process of trans­for­m­ing it for human purposes, as suggested in the Introduction, that seems a stark formulation of the process of waiting for it to be amenable. But let us hear more.[5]

 

Toward a subject.

            Just as Homer often expands on the simile’s apodosis, our poet seems to specify:

 

                        A mortar of three feet (you can) cut, and a pestle of three cubits,

                        and a seven-foot axle; for now this is very suitable for you(?)

                        -- but if (you should have) eight feet, you can even cut a mallet off;

                        and a three-span felly-strip cut for a ten-palm wagon,

                        many curved pieces. ... [6]

(vv. 423-7)

(A “cubit” is 1½ feet. A “span” is three-fourths of a foot; a “palm,” one-fourth, so four felly-strips will be required.) To be sure, the subject is changed in mid verse:[7]

 

                         ... And bring a plowbeam when you find it

                        home, (whether after) searching over hill or over field,

                        of holm oak; for that is the strongest for plowing with oxen,

                        when “Athena’s servant,” fixing it to the plow

                        with pegs, and pulling it up, fits it to the oxen-pole

                        (or possibly: with pegs, and driving it in, i.e., to the plow, fits it to the pole).[8]

(427-31)

            But here one sees that, notwithstanding any interpretation of the agricultural portion as an almanac, the poet “cuts” the short discussion of the wagon after only the axle and wheel rim, even though he will later say the conveyance is an intricate matter: evidently he is now more interested in the plow. Before getting to that he does create a nice structure: Each of the boundaries of the earlier seg­ment, vv. 423 and 426, has two parallel phrases surrounding the verb in mid verse, with adjec­tives after the nouns in the former and before them in the latter (word order as in the Greek), while the second hemistich of 424, resembling epic’s “this is better” phrases, validates the pat­tern. Concerning the adjectives, while Javier de Hoz observes that Hesiod’s farm imple­ments generally lack epithets, and while Arrighetti sees him as more concerned with measure­ment than Homer, one can say that he actually kills two birds with one stone: he fills out the line spaces (in epic taken up by decorative epithets), and in doing so gives useful specifications, “three-foot” mortar, etc.[9]

            Still, it is the plowbeam that is really interesting. The pragmatic issue is that, as West notes (giving a useful diagram), the middle part of the overall plow structure, i.e., the plowbeam, is where breakage is most likely; hence it requires the strongest wood. But the poetry serves its importance: A clause extending from the second hemistich of 427 through the first foot of 429 begins with a vision of the result, the plowbeam, and ends it with the discovery which will make this result possible, holm oak. One may compare the hunt for it with a situation in the Iliad where in one place Athena, and in another Aeneas, are also “searching” (same verse position), namely, seeking the famed bowman Pandarus. Each finds him in the next line, as the poetic “culmina­tion” (Kirk). Whether or not our poet is actually thinking of this example, to him the culmination, falling in the emphatic first position of the line, is (the adjective for) the result, the wood which is sought so broadly to actually render it (which was rare according to Plutarch). Finally, using the indirect expression “servant of Athena” for the carpenter apparently inverts an attested relation whereby she inspires the latter as an autonomous craftsman. Although it is common to treat our case as a simple metaphor, archaic Greece tended to take the Olympian gods seriously, so that the original audience probably felt the phrase actually had a numinous aspect.[10]

            Apart from these nuances, there are two or three possible direct epic allusions: As in the case of the transition from proper treatment of gods to that of family (vv. 326-7, discussed in Chap­ter 3 above), there is a model in getting from the wagon parts to the search activity: As G. Edwards notes, Eumaeus is asked “(where) do you carry (Odysseus’s) bent bow?” (kampula toxa phereis), with which can be compared our “curved pieces. Bring” (epikampula kukla. Pherein). And apart from that bow, our poet seems to have Hera’s chariot in mind: It has “curved wheels” (kampula kukla), is “eight-spoked” (same verse position as our “eight feet” in Homer’s only use of an okta- compound), and has a rim “fitted to” it (Homer’s only use of the verb). “Athena’s serv­ant” might cause some listeners to think of “Ares’s minions,” i.e., warriors.[11]

            Here it has to be said that, pace the theorists of “working at the right time,” that idea has been relegated to a detail. The poetry draws us, rather, to the concrete (and atemporal) images of, first, wooden objects, then a search for an important piece of wood, and finally a craftsman carrying out Athena’s expertise. That is to say, the “just” person to whom the poem after v. 382 is addressed is allowed to be a woodworker (with all the skill that implies, just as the structure of 423-6 is skillful), although then we learn that this woodworker has human dimensions, the ability to experience the joy of discovery. Dare I suggest that the modern idea of “pride in your work,” without feeling that it is drudgery, is already implicit? Of course, you are not completely auto­no­mous, and at times must rely on someone with real expertise (here seen as an attribute of divini­ty). But all in all, the passage seems to evoke a general aspiration allowed to the listener, assum­ed to be just. And it is allowed whatever that listener thinks may accrue to the epic hero.

            As to formal thematics, in emphatically “finding” the plowbeam the poet has also found his subject: plowing. The discussion next continues to cover what is pragmatically optimum for some associated entities: “the best plough, the fittest ox, the most efficient farm labourer,” as Kumaniecki puts it. Still, we are not done with the plow itself:[12]

 

                        (However,) make two plows, taking pains for your estate,

                        (or: take pains to make two plows for your estate),

                        one with its own beam, the other in parts (i.e., as just said), since this is much better:

                        if you should break one, you can set the other to your oxen.

                        Laurel or elm handles are the most pestfree.

                        Oak the plow (should be); holm oak, the plowbeam. ...[13]

(vv. 432-6)

I see little to recommend this segment qua verse (and as the commentators note, the first three lines are out of logical order), but it shows the importance the poet attaches to the implement: The plow reinforced with holm oak is not likely to break, but if so, as Nicolai says, a cheap unjointed one will do in an emergency. (I suppose it would simply be a piece of wood found to be shapely, used more or less as it is.) In any case, Kumaniecki’s “fittest ox(en)” are more interesting. Again beginning a new thought in mid verse, we hear:[14]

 

                         ... And an ox-pair nine-years-old,

                        male, procure, for their (plural, not dual) strength is not weakened,

                        having a measure of young-adulthood; this-pair is best for work;

                        not will it for its part, through fighting, the plow down into the furrow

                        drag, and leave the work wasted then and there.[15]

(436-40)

(I.e., leave the work wasted because the plow breaks.) As West observes, epic has phrases for both five- and nine-year old animals. But in fact, five-year-olds are used for sacrifice, while nine years connotes maturity as quality (unguents applied to Patroclus’s body, the ox’s hide from which Aeolus’s bag of winds is made). That nuance of the use enhances the overt point here that the beasts will not fight and cause disaster. To be sure, some critics (e.g., Solmsen) have impugned the portion of 437-8 between the two caesurae, thinking that with cattle, nine years seems old to use the standard expression “their strength is not weakened,” and noting that “measure of young-adulthood” is normally counterposed to childhood, not the aged. However, the text is well attested; I find it easiest to assume that the composer has gotten so involved in alluding to heroic phrases that he does not think out all the implications. For all that, war-like epic language is used to oppose the fighting even of beasts, reasonably effectively in spite of itself: E.g., “not ... fighting” has the analogue “no (one) could vie with” Odysseus, and “drag ... leave” with the two oxen compares with two horses who, “breaking (the pole connecting them to the chariot,) ... left it.” Perhaps a feeling is also evoked that one should make use of animals, rather than burn a “hundred” of them in a frantic effort to placate the gods.[16]

            The “most efficient farm labourer” is cleverly devised:

 

                        And along with (the ox-team) a vigorous forty-year-old can follow(,)

                        eating a loaf four-times-kneaded, in-eight-portions,

                        who would tend to his work and drive a straight furrow,

                        never peering around for company, but on work

                        keeping his mind; anyone younger than him also (would) not (be) better

                        at distributing seeds and avoiding oversowing;

                        for a younger man would be agitated for company.[17]

(vv. 441-7)

Here the poet adapts a repeated verse from the Catalogue of Ships (“and along with them/him forty black ships followed”), to inaugurate what at first looks like four-square advice to the effect that the plowman is also to be mature. So is the sower (possibly a second man, possibly the same one on a separate occasion). But what is a thought about eating (surely effected during a break from work) doing in the middle of one about plowing? The answer is a little joke with word sounds in proceeding from 441 to 442. The audience hears ar- at the beginning of 442, and expects arotrōi “(can follow with) the plow,” but in yet another instance of surprise upon encoun­ter­ing a sequel verse (cf. those involving enjambement noted earlier), it learns that the full word is arton, “loaf” in the accusative. In this way the poet sneaks in a statement on what the man is to have for rations. Apart from that, there is a nuance in that “peering around” is what Manuel Fernández-Galiano calls a “graphic verb,” often used of a hero or animal looking for victims.[18]

            To summarize: During her comparison of our nominal farmer and the practitioner of poetry himself, Marsilio says that some part of the section (vv. 422-36 to her) amounts to a “process of preparation.” Indeed, whatever one might say about the poet, the “farmer” has emerged as a model human, concerned with competence in himself (or herself?) and in others engaged for his efforts, but who also has an appreciation of what is involved in religious and aes­­thetic terms. He is indeed prepared for what is nominally plowing. And at every stage he has been implicitly juxtaposed with the epic hero, in particular his productive activity with war.[19]

            Here it is to be observed that, whereas woodworking is peripheral activity to an actual farmer, our poem’s concern with it has indeed run its course after it served to usher in some subtleties: it has given way to the matter of plowing. In this process form and content have developed in tandem. That is, association of ideas in Verdenius’s 1962 sense has led from the content of wood, to wood for a plow, to plowing itself; and from the form of scattered although individually important thoughts, to something whose form will prove to feature a considerable degree of order. In short, human order must bootstrap its way out of natural disorder.

            But what really is this “plowing” that is thus readied?

 

The crane: speaking of work.

            Indeed, the next segment speaks of plowing, but also of other activities:

 

                        Take note when you hear the voice of the crane,

                        of the screeching yearly from high in the clouds:

                        This brings the sign for plowing, and the season of winter

                        the rainy, it points to (that), and it bites the heart of the ox-less man.

                        Right then fatten your curved-horned(?) oxen, kept indoors.

                        For it is easy to make the speech: “lend me two oxen and a wagon,”

                        but easy to refuse: “but there is already work for my oxen.”

                        Or a man thinks, rich in his head, he’ll build a wagon,

                        the fool, he does not know this: a wagon has a hundred pieces.

                        Take care beforehand to make these your own.[20]

(vv. 448-57)

(I.e., familiarize yourself with the parts before trying to build anything from them.)

            Although virtually all commentators reduce the crane whose screech begins this fanfare to the stated “brings the sign,” as stated in the Introduction I believe our poet thinks of it as also a poet, which he can translate since the Muses permit him “unlimited song” (v. 662). And this shows another structural role of vv. 202-12 in his introduction, where the nightingale is actually called “poet:” Namely, that especially excellent bird voice introduces those of the poem proper.[21]

            And although the literalist approach is to say that the “sign for plowing” simply speaks to the subject at hand, and that the rest of the segment is one of Hesiod’s homely digres­sions on the need to work, the crane’s impression is too striking for one not to believe that the mes­sage associated with her includes the so-called digression: She speaks from “high in the clouds,” whence Zeus sends thunder in Homer, and “hear” (epakousēis) turns out to participate in an analogical system with “hear the voice” (op’ akous-, i.e., with a different word for “voice” than ours), applied in evocative fashion (Agamemnon and Achilles promising doom to Trojans, the Sirens saying no one has pas­sed by without hearing their voice). Then the “sharp” image of the crane/cry biting the heart is con­nec­t­ed with the signal proper via enjambement from v. 450 to 451. The actual message of 452-7 is impressive: “Indoors” in 452 is a haunting motif in the poem. Then there are four lines, each structured as a preliminary clause, followed either by a quo­ta­tion (453, 454), a quasi-quota­tion (what the man thinks, 455), or the implication of one (what he should think, 456). The mid­dle of this quatrain is a pair of three-colon lines to vary the rhythm, where­up­on the trenchant final verse, again employ­ing the evocative “fool does not know” con­vention (as at 40), brings the dis­cus­sion down to earth in normal rhythm. The last line implies that preparation for work is as weighty as work itself. In a word, the crane wants us to be indus­trious, and intel­­­li­gently so. Indeed, the mythology of the crane, in Greece and elsewhere, can be read as indi­ca­ting a symbol of industrious­ness. (The Greeks even used their word for “crane,” geranos, for a lifting dev­ice, just as we do.) One should at least not be surprised that after the bird has been men­tioned for whatever reason, that fact would cause our poet to expound on such a matter.[22]

 

The organized human.

            The crane’s fanfare can be considered a prelude to what will prove to be a thorough essay on the subject that is nominally plowing. The essay will be organized into (1) a statement on the need to plow (vv. 458-72), shading into (2) another on the benefits of doing so in a timely fashion (473-8); (3) another on the disadvantages of not doing so (479-82); (4) a proviso that we may be lucky even if we delay plowing (483-90); and (5) a generality to heed all this well (491-2). To begin:

 

                        Above all, right when (eute, not ēmos) plowing is indicated for mortals,

                        right then rouse yourself and your servants alike

                        plowing dry or damp (soil) at the time for plowing,

                        pressing on hard early, so that your fields will brim.

(458-61)

Among epic language used here, evocative expressions include “press on hard” (in battle), and “brim” (floods in similes). Most importantly, there are two merisms: “you and your servants” of course means everyone, and “dry or damp” must mean to carry out whatever is meant by “plow­ing” regardless of the conditions.[23]

            That was not specific to some time-cycle point, and against the interpretation that this section is about autumn tasks we are next told to plow in spring and summer:

 

                        Turn (earth) in spring, and plowed again in summer it will not cheat you;

                        fallow: sow it when the ground is still light (i.e., slightly moist);

                        fallow is a protector, the soother of children.[24]

(vv. 462-4)

Here the second and third lines reveal that the plowed ground cited in the first means fallow land; and whatever “soother of children” may mean (Arrighetti’s view that it stands for saving them from famine seems as sensible as any), the poet gives a paean to the subject, almost another threefold epanaphora. To Nelson, the “chronological jump” from the presumed subject of fall tasks reflects “despair” when the farmer she assumes is linearly portrayed in this section suddenly realizes that the ground he wants to sow has not been properly prepared. How­ever, I read the fallow as matter which lies unused (atemporally), but is a background which is potenti­ally helpful, thus implying nature in general. This properly tended nature is in contrast to epic heroes who “cheat” or “deceive” (the Greek is the same) one another, also at verse end.[25]

            The first part of the essay then concludes memorably:

 

                        Pray to Zeus of the ground and to Demeter the pure

                        to weigh down to fruition Demeter’s sacred grain

                        right at the beginning of plowing, when, the (plow) handle’s end

                        gripping with your hand, you touch the back of the oxen with a switch,

                        (the oxen) tugging with-the-strap(?) at the yoke-pin; and behind you what is a little

                        servant, holding a mattock, can make toil for the birds,

                        hiding the seeds; for orderliness is best

                        for mortal humans, and “bad management” worst.[26]

(vv. 465-72)

The commentators have been concerned with an apparent contradiction between you plowing and a servant doing so at 441-5. But Hesiod undoubtedly wishes his work to resonate with listeners both with and without the wherewithal to own or hire helpers.  More to the point, it is here that the poet evokes the direct experience of plowing. He does so sufficiently impressively for Plutarch to draw a lesson from it: If you must pray, you should do so in the context of your own activity aimed at the goal. However that may be, in the first line “Zeus of the ground” (i.e., “God” insofar as he governs plant growth) and “Demeter the pure” form parallel noun-epi­thet phrases. The passage flows lyrically from there as it speaks with realism about the use of the equipment involved in plowing (plow, switch and oxen), complete with the nice touch of trans­ferring the oxen’s exertion to that of the birds. As Nelson observes, the appearance of the child at 469-70 is surprising, thus making the imagery so striking that it helps one to feel, not just see, the handle’s end, switch, and effect of the animals’ response. And a key epic parallel main­tains contrast with war: “The handle’s end/ gripping with your hand” behind two oxen compares with Achilles’s driver mounting “two horses” (i.e., his chariot), “the shining whip/ gripping in his hand.”[27]

            Most importantly, “proper plowing” is revealed as a figure for the concept of the organi­z­ed life itself: The “management” generalization shows that that nominal activity points beyond, not only the autumn season (v. 462), but also the literal, just as the essay’s opening lines (458-61) had anticipated. Meanwhile, the effect of driving oxen rather than war horses is: Such a life is best, whatever might be achieved in the world of heroes.

            Then to the second part of the piece:

 

                        Thus in fullness the (grain) tassels will bow to earth

                        if afterwards the Olympian himself grants a good result;

                        from your bins you may drive the cobwebs; and I trust you

                        will be delighted in taking the means of life, in it being indoors:

                        In plenty you will reach gray(?) spring, and not before others

                        appear -- rather, toward you another man will be -- in need.[28]

(vv. 473-8)

Actually, as usual continuity with the antecedent is maintained, this time by the -ness suffix in “fullness,” the same Greek (-osynē) as -ment in “management” in 471-2. As to the segment itself, we get the picturesque image of the grain stalks bowing to earth (acknowledging their pro­vi­der), Zeus willing (i.e., if it rains reasonably: “the Olympian” is someone on high, not the earlier “Zeus of the ground”). However, “driving (cobwebs) from the bins” (before filling them) is more seri­ous: ek angeōn elaseias is to be compared with formations like ek Troiēs elasantas, “driving (Achaeans) from Troy.” Indeed, “grants good” is similar to Homer having Zeus or another god “grant glory” in battle. And epic characters often “reach (something)” with the phrase straddling the caesura as here, if in space rather than time. Thus here it is clearer than at 452 that the “indoors” motif evokes security not only from hunger, but at a different level, from Homer’s war.[29]

            But again, this says that good management in general leads to prosperity. And the implied contrast with war not doing so gains in strength.

            In the third part of the essay, comic use of epic phrases furthers the figure by hinting that improper “plowing” makes one as ridiculous as heroes in their worst moments.

 

                        If at the sun’s turning (i.e., not until the winter solstice) you plow the divine ground,

                        you will reap sitting, holding little in your hand,

                        binding (the stalks) crosswise, dust-covered, not greatly rejoicing,

                        and will carry them in a basket: few will admire you.

(vv. 479-82)

You presumably sit because the stalks are short, but there is at least a connotation of “sitting” idle with nothing to harvest (as the seventeenth century commentator Graevius thought was the direct meaning). West says crosswise binding prevents it slipping off short stalks, but in the notes to his translation Apostolos Athanassakis suggests a ruse to fool neighbors into thinking the bundle is large. The basket’s meaning is clear: with a good harvest one would instead fill a cart. But as to all this, in one place Homer has “the divine ground” sprout flowers evocatively (although we may also recall that epic characters “await the divine Dawn”). The Trojans fled when Achilles routed them, “dust-covered” (same position), while “not greatly rejoicing” is the negative of a standard expression, used especially of Laertes’s feeling at seeing his son Odys­seus and grandson Telemachus together at last. Most notably, as West and others notice, “few will admire you” inverts a situation where a horseman performs tricks, “and many admire him.” There may also be a parallel with a line in the Catalogue of Ships: Nireus led a contingent, “but few people followed him.” In general, we infer, the poorly organized man is a clown.[30]

            However, the fourth part says, all that is too simple. In yet another case of a transition taking place in association with an epic allusion, the horseman just noted jumps “now onto one, now onto another” horse, whereas:

 

                        But now one way, now another, (goes) the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus:

                        it is difficult for mortal men to know.

                        If you happen to plow late there may be this remedy for you:

                        At-the-point-that (ēmos) the cuckoo cuckoos in the leaves of the oak

                        first, and cheers mortals over the boundless earth,

                        at that point Zeus may rain on the third day (after the first call) without stopping,

                        so neither overreaching nor falling short of (the depth of) an ox’s hoof(print);

                        thus the late plower might compete with the early plower.[31]

(vv. 483-90)

In Pucci’s Derridean approach, the text’s “inconsistency” of Zeus’s mind here reflects the Muses famously telling both truth and lies, while Nelson’s linearly-portrayed farmer is suddenly given hope. But in terms of poetry, it is a matter of the message from the second of the bird-poets introduced by the nightingale: the cuc­koo. He enters in a remarkable verse: The cyclical adverb begins the long colon “at the point that the cuckoo cuckoos,” containing only long syllables in the Greek, which employs the allitera­tion on the velar stop (kokkux kokkuzei) characteristic of our poet (as at 25, 183, 604), and which is followed by a short colon consisting of a lyrical phrase. As for this bird-poet’s message, in a word: the mind of Zeus is cuckoo. “Cheering mortals” (because it is spring) is all well and good, but as in literature generally the bird also stands for the problem­at­ic, and that is the real point. That is to say, Hesiod dislikes the lazy, but the inexorable “mind of aegis-bearing Zeus” (in epic stronger than man’s mind, and even a god’s) can be so devi­ant, says the cuckoo, as to bring rain in a way as to benefit them. And although Arrighetti, for one, simply says the rain mea­surement of 489 is “rustic,” it sounds like something a talking animal in, say, a fable might offer. Finally, “compete” seems a wry reference to heroes attempting to do so.[32]

            It is not just that meteorology is an inexact science: Pucci is at least right that the poet here evokes ambiguity in the world order itself. The “plowing” section, a figure for the well-organi­z­ed person achieving his (or her?) goals, has built into it in a figure for the fact that we live in an uncertain world. Later (v. 661) the poet will say for effect that he can actually tell “the mind of aegis-bear­ing Zeus,” but no such exaggeration is imagined here; rather, the unpre­dictability of the human condition is given an expression as profound as one has any right to expect for the times.

            We finally experience the fifth part of the essay as a denoument:

 

                        Store (true imperative) all this in your heart; nor should you forget

                        either gray(?) spring coming or the seasonable rain,[33]

(491-2)

The emphatic first clause repeats the sentiment of 27 and 297 (with slightly different Greek verbs), i.e., from both introductions, mythos and logos, but the rest simply says: forget neither the possibility of disruption of the world order, nor its likely regular state.

 

The crane redux.

            The poet does not like the cuckoo’s message, and so he next conveys the more pala­ta­ble teaching of industry, previously given by the crane, once more. This results in a formal ring structure for the section comprising vv. 448-503, with an overture preceding the “plowing” essay and a coda following it, to wit:

 

                        Go past the “bronze session” and the warm hostel

                        in the winter season, a time when the cold from working men (or: a man)

                        restrains: then the “unhesitant man” can greatly increase his estate;

                        let not of an evil winter Helplessness(?) overtake you

                        together with Poverty: a thin hand would squeeze a thick foot.

                        Often the “non-working man,” awaiting empty Expectation,

                        needing sustenance, speaks badness to his heart,

                        but Expectation does not accompany a man in need well,

                        as he sits in the hostel, for whom there is not enough livelihood.

                        (Rather,) point out to your servants while it is still mid summer:

                        “Not always summer will it be: build your shelters.”[34]

(493-503)

One can only suppose that the “bronze session” was an institution like our “coffee klatch,” a place and time for gossip and the like, perhaps “bronze” because it took place at the smith’s shop. It is generally believed that the swollen foot is a consequence of malnourishment, although Françoise Bader and others think the clause is a euphemism for masturbation. The “unhesitant man” (aok­nos anēr) appears to be a play on the “non-sleeping man” (aüpnos anēr), who could earn double wages in the land of the Lestrygonians where it was always light. Achil­les lumps together the “non-doing man” and the man who does much, alike doomed to death.[35]

            Nelson, feeling that there has been a “pretense” of chronology in the preceding section, concedes that it is “abandoned” here in mixing summer and winter. But that is part of the reason I reject the standard assignment of this segment to the next section. Evidently commentators adopt that opinion because both mention winter; however, the fact that the overall figure is speci­fied in vv. 493-503 by something rhetorically involving winter is better understood as preparing an association of ideas, to lead into the section which does purport to deal with winter. This prepara­tion ends effectively, with a three-colon verse, probably deliberately composed as such (the long form of “will be” is used to bridge the caesura). As to the figure itself, the segment calls for Indus­try just as did vv. 448-457, and its final line specifies that this be carried out intelligently, just as had 457 about learning the wagon parts. I.e., consistent with the underlying theme of organ­iza­tion, the ideal human is one who plans ahead.[36]

 

            To summarize this chapter, after an opening vision the poem gropes toward a true sub­ject. This might be thought to parallel the process of beginning the poem as a whole (apart from the formal proemium) with a false start prior to the true introduction; both developments illustrate a world view to the effect that order can only (and must) arise from disorder. As to the order itself, when the subject is actually expounded what emerges is the part of an allegory of the human con­dition which gives the basic definition of the human. Namely, he (or she?) is a person who engag­es in productive activity, something involving both labor and intelligence, and not destruc­tive activi­ty such as killing one another in war.[37]

            With that we are ready for more details of the allegory.  (to Chap. 6)

 

NOTES: