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

 

CHAPTER 7. CELEBRATION

vv. 564-614a

 

     {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 Transactions of the American Philological Association listed in the writings page for 2005. That article is more up to date in terms of scholarship.}

 

            The just finished “winter” discussion resulted in a victory more substantial than defeating a mere epic warrior -- who may be the son of a god as is Boreas, but unlike him cannot singly make the earth “groan” (only as one of large numbers of Achaeans marching on it in one case). Indeed, the third agricul­tural “movement” will turn out to be celebratory in tone. It con­sists of five generally light-hearted episodes or vignettes -- one is tempted to say “bagatelles” -- which, however, are organized into an overall ring form, spanning vv. 564-614a. (The segment 614b-17 refers to the agricultural section as a whole, although, together with 618, it constitutes a transition segment which it is convenient to treat in the next chapter.)[1]

 

April fool!

            The opening vignette at first looks like a lyrical expression of relief that winter is over, but closer attention reveals points which are curious to say the least:

 

                        Sixty (days) after the sun’s turnings (sic), when

                        Zeus finishes up winter days, well right then the star

                        Arcturus, abandoning the lively stream of Oceanus,

                        rises at twilight and first shines;

                        and after him the wailing-before-dawn (or: rightly-wailing) daughter of Pandion, the swallow,

rises                                                                       

                        to light for humans, just at the onset of spring.

                        Prune your vines ahead of her, for this is better.[2]

(vv. 564-70)

(The “sun’s turning” is the solstice as at 479, although here the plural is used illogically, because the poet is enamored of a parallel with “sun’s turnings” -- meaning something else -- in the Odyssey, and the singular will not fit the meter either here or in the expression’s recurrence at 663. “When” is eute, not the cyclical ēmos found at 414, discussed in Chapter 5 above.) From the “almanac” perspective, vv. 564-9 amount to a signal of a season, i.e., a bird call, if embellished by mythical references, but 570 presents a problem. The segment specifi­cally alludes to a belief that stars bathed in the earth-surrounding stream Oce­­anus during the day, and to the myth of the daughters of Pandion. Namely, these personages killed the son of one them (Procne) as revenge against her husband for raping the other (Philo­mela) and cutting her tongue out. They became birds while fleeing his wrath: Philomela, the swal­low; Procne, the nightingale, although the Roman version (the one followed in modern European poetry) for some reason reverses these roles. Homer also cites the myth, even using the phrase “just at the onset of spring.” In this connection, there may be a nuance in “rises to light,” i.e., an indica­tion that the swallow/Philomela comes back from the dead. But then the supposed prob­lem: This is follow­ed by citing only one task for the season, vine-pruning. What could this be about?[3]

            I submit that after the cuckoo bespeaks the uncertainty of the world in v. 486, no further voiced creature in an integrated work is going to be straightforward. And the cited myth is incongruous as such, since the actual swallow’s call bears no resemblance to “wailing,” a point noted by critics from Plato (who has Socrates deny that any bird sings at a time of deprivation of it qua bird) to Arrighetti (who is surprised that a keen nat­ure observer like Hesiod would involve himself in such a matter). Moreover, the per­sonifications of Arcturus and Philomela are exaggerated: Apart from the “substantial” epic expressions the poet employs to render them (“stream of Oceanus,” etc.), the sequences of particles “well right then” and “and after him/her” often set off the actions of epic characters.[4]

            In fact, the intent in the swallow’s personification is to evoke its mythical corpus as such, not to seriously portray the avatar of a wronged woman in one example thereof. Once again (after Pandora going beyond myth’s typical First Woman, and after the hawk giving the point of view of the nobles) the poet indulges his pen­chant for meta-myth. And at least here his tongue is firmly in his cheek, for the corpus which is thereby referenced amounts to the April Fools joke D’Arcy Thompson notes for one particular example of it, a person stealing food while people were distracted by watching swal­lows. As the next in the series of bird poets our poet translates, it warns of deception (or if one insists, decep­tion is what it symbolizes). The point of working “ahead of her” at v. 570 (cf. “ahead of him,” i.e., Boreas, 554) is to finish whatever must be done before something happens to beguile you. No more tasks are cited because the segment is not set in cyclic time (eute at 564), the poem’s tasks are only scaffolding in the first place, and the point has been made.[5]

            That is to say, if the swallow “wails” (either before dawn or rightly), it is for human folly.

 

If a snail can work, so can you.

            The second vignette’s wit is more obvious. Pruning vines is better for a time (v. 570);

 

                        but when (meaning: until) “carry-house” climbs up plants from the ground,

                        fleeing the Pleiades; right then (let there be) no more hoeing of vines;

                        rather, the sickles sharpen and the servants arouse;

                        (you too) “flee” (i.e., avoid) shady seats and (staying) in bed at dawn

                        in the harvest season, when the sun dries out (karphei) the skin;

                        push on then and bring the fruit (karpos) home,

                        getting up before daybreak, so that your livelihood is enough.[6]

(571-7)

(West observes that the hoeing of 572 and pruning at 570 go together, as Athanassakis verifies for modern Greece. “Carry-house” -- West’s excellent rendering of phereoikos, as opposed to the grammatically sanitized “house-carrier” -- is of course the snail.  “Fleeing the Pleiades” must mean fleeing the heat associated with their rising.) This segment presents a con­trast to the inact­i­vity of winter, in that the snail is no longer inside the house which was “fireless” at vv. 524-5, but is hauling the structure vertically upward, to escape heat rather than cold, a clever way to express the turnaround in conditions. This is also a signal, as Leclerc notices: for us to work as well, a point brought to our attention with a three-colon verse (deliberately composed as such as noted in the Introduction). To be sure, in the process of saying this we are told to avoid shady thōkoi in the heat, just as the “bronze” thōkos in the cold at 493, thus recalling the exhort­a­tion to organized effort there. In a nice touch, the karp- alliteration then emphasizes the fact that benefits accrue to all this effort.[7]

            Nelson thinks that here “Hesiod is scolding us for wasting too much time on (the vines),” but to me the poetry is fun. As such, it matches the fact that the work involved, while strenuous, is enjoyable: Its benefit is clearly in sight, unlike in the case of the plowing covered in the first movement. (Thus as John Petropoulos observes, the arduous harvest in modern Greece is accompanied by singing and telling jokes.)[8]

            But for a coda, the poet takes the occasion to offer something more profound, which also removes any residual sense that the work involved is drudgery. By way of association of ideas from the thought of getting up before dawn, we hear:

 

                        For Dawn yes claims a third portion of the work;

                        Dawn see furthers the way and also furthers the work;

                        Dawn, she whose appearing sets on the path many a

                        human, and puts the yoke on many an ox.[9]

(vv. 578-81)

(A third because dawn governs a third of the day; see West). This priamel-like structure, one of the more effective epanaphorae in Homer and Hesiod, is like a ritual paean to a deity, or at least a hero. Indeed, the details, especially the relative clause beginning in the third line, are suffici­ent­ly similar to the Nireus example in the Catalogue of Ships that allusion is quite possible:[10]

 

                        Nireus for his part, from Syme, led three trim ships;

                        Nireus, the son of Aglaea and King Charopus;

                        Nireus, who was the fairest man to come under Ilium

                        among the other Achaeans after faultless Achilles.

(Il. 2.671-4)

This is a peculiar segment in that (Kirk) Nireus is a minor figure but is decribed impressively. Our poet at least considers the form worthy. Apart from that, as West notes, the “way” which Dawn furthers has broad connotations; especially (as he does not), it acquires resonance from an allusion: In a repeated passage, Menelaus (later Odysseus) says he was told to seek out Proteus (Tiresias), “who can tell you(?) the way and the lengths of the passage,” where “of the passage” (kelethou) is the same as our “on the path” in the next line. The result is that our poet treats Dawn rather more reverently than does Homer, for all the “rosy-fingered” nature the latter sees in her. True, the talk of work for humans and oxen underscores the need for effort (and as such sets up a contrast with the segment to follow, aside from recalling the juxtaposition of live­stock and humans at 558-9 as West notes). But this effort is assimilated to praise of a quasi-deity: In effect there is a celebration which invokes Dawn as a stand-in for the harvest god.[11]

 

Recovering from a false note.

            The third vignette is virtually unaminously misunderstood. It is in two parts, first:

 

                        At-the-point-that (ēmos) the thistle blooms and the shrill cicada,

                        “sitting on its tree,” showers down its “clear song,”

                        in fast beats from under its wings in the season of exhausting summer,

                        then “goats are plumpest” and wine is best,

                        and lustiest women but see weakest men

                        are, since Sirius parches their head and knees,

                        and yes the skin is dried out under the heat. ...

(vv. 582-8)

What this passage “showers down” is irony. To be sure, during the course of a seminal work treating Hesiod’s later description of sailing as a figure for poetry, Ralph Rosen sees the cicada here as a metaphor for a poet, noting that our own poet assigns “clear song” to himself later in the work. However, following the common view that this passage is idyllic, Rosen says the insect is the poet of relaxation and of the time “to turn to esthetic pleasures.” Actually, it is a noxious pre­sence: What is really significant about “clear song” is that the Sirens give it in luring men to their doom. “Sitting on a tree” is a clear allusion to the “lily-voiced” cicadas with whom a Trojan council is compared, but instead of the lily we get the coarse thistle. (For good mea­­sure the poet throws in a play on “plump goats,” attested six times in Homer.) Then, pace those who approve the cita­tion of women in the mood, the point is just as negative as is discus­sion of wom­en elsewhere in the poem, since men are too tired to respond. The enjambed “are” in v. 587 breaks down what had started out as a nice “when .. then .. ” symmetric form, and we finally learn that men are miserable due to Sirius. All this is presented in a metri­cally sing-song fash­ion: Three of the six lines of 582-7 consist of dactyls for all of the first five feet. Thus, although one may think that something pleasant will result from whatever the cicada is enticing humans to do with its so-called song, that communication is issued “from under its wings,” i.e., surreptitious­ly. The commentators project the later Greeks’ love of the cicada back onto Hesiod, to make the entire passage 582-96 idyllic, but he demurs: To him the insect is a false poet.[12]

            More precisely, if we may take a clue from other treatments of it down through the years, the cicada’s actual symbolic value is intensity or desperation. Although there are certainly treat­ments of it is pleasant and mild, it can symbolize intensity to the point of death, as with Bashō:

 

Very soon to die:

No indication showing.

The cicada’s voice!

(transl. Keith Kevan)

In Lorca’s 1918 poem ¡Cigarra! (“Cicada!”), he says to the insect, e.g., derramando son te muer­es, “you die pouring out sound.” As for the Greeks, as West notes, the “shrill cicada” (ēcheta tet­tix) in v. 582 itself parallels the “loud-voiced herald” (ēputa kērux) who gives the Achaeans a fran­tic message from the Trojans. And although in one place Plato has Socrates praise cicadas, in another he explains the popular belief that the creature subsists only on dew, by saying that it is so involved in singing that it is anorexic. The idea that it is intense is also revealed if we com­bine the myth that Dawn’s lover Tithonus was transformed into a cicada with another which says that when he grew old she locked him away in a closet, where his voice was heard endlessly. Thus to our poet, the insect is really inviting us to join it in dying in the sun’s heat.[13]

            Among recent Hesiod authorities I have only found Robert Lamberton recognizing that the second part of the vignette is not within the cicada’s regime, but rather is a means of escape there­from. Form follows content when the poet says, in an example of “violent” enjambement,[14]

 

                         ... But then at once

                        let there be shade in the rocks and “wine of Biblos”

                        and cake made-by-milking(?) and milk from ceasing-to-lactate goats

                        and meat of a feeding-in-the-woods cow not yet calved

                        and (meat) of firstborn kids; and afterwards drink shining wine,

                        sitting in the shade, your heart satisfied from eating,

                        your face turned toward fresh-blowing Zephyr:

                        from a spring ever-flowing and free-running, and yes unmuddied,

                        pour out three (parts) of water, and throw (in) a fourth of wine.[15]

(vv. 588-96)

Although pairing of wine with kids at 592 recalls that with goats at 585 in the first part of the vig­nette (to retain a certain unity in spite of the disjunction), here celebration is definitely the order of the day. The gourmet appeal of the items of 589-92a for Hesiod’s audience is clear in spite of uncertainties in their identification, and is detailed by West (although I read the heifer of 591, not just as a domestic animal turned out to graze as he says, but as feral, to give its meat an even gamier taste in spite of being tender). Instead of Boreas we get his brother Zephyr (not called “fresh-blowing” in the Theogony, but at least there he is “cleansing”). However, it is the wine that makes a difference, especially since 592b-96 are enhanced by several parallels to citations of epic celebrants: “Drink wine” is common at verse end, and “and afterwards drink shining wine” (epi d’ aithopa pinemen oinon) in our context recalls “and (they/he poured) shining wine over” meat (epi d’ aithopa (w)oinon) in two places, as well as the Cyclops “afterwards drinking undiluted milk” (ep’ akrēton gala pinōn, i.e., after eating human “flesh,” krea, same as our “meat” a verse earlier). “Heart satisfied from eating” (kekorēmenon ētor edōdēs) is an analog of “sated (from wine) and from eating” (koressamenos kai edōdēs). For “pour out three of water” (tris hud­a­tos procheein); cf. “but washing (off blood) with water” while “pouring” tears (all’ hudati nizontes ... / ... cheontes), and as Edwards notes, “three times, then the fourth” is the standard pattern where­by a character attempts something three times, and succeeds in the fourth (already point­ed out above for the four past races of 109-73). Indeed, direct allusion is possible: Our verb “throw,” hiēmi, here used with the “fourth,” is related to the verb used with the “three” in one (repeat­ed) case: three times a character tried something but “released” his effort (methēke, from methiēmi = meta + hiēmi), then succeeded on the fourth. In any case, the convention surely puts an exclamation point on the passage.[16]

            That is to say, at this pivotal point of the movement (the third and central vignette), the celebration after defeating the monster Boreas is in full swing.

 

Make good use of helpers.

            The fourth episode is a disaster for the almanac construal. Its principal activity occurs in time before the nominal time of the last segment, and is not just something mentioned in a way some might call tangential (as perhaps spring and summer plowing in v. 462). The question of its actual role is difficult, but Wilamowitz’s rearrangement of the text solves some of its problems:[17]

 

                        Urge on your servants Demeter’s sacred grain

                        to thresh, when (eute) first the strength of Orion appears,

                        in a well aired place and on a well rolled threshing-floor;

                        carefully-bear it well into bins with a measure; then right after you store all your livelihood tightly

inside your house,                                                              

(597-601)

                        convey fodder and the chaff, so that it is for your

                        “oxen and mules” abundant. Thereupon afterwards

                        (let) your servants rest their own knees and unyoke the oxen-pair.

(606-8)

                        A hired-man(?) (who is) homeless get and a (female) laborer (who is) childless

                        seek, I bid you: a laborer with-calf-under is difficult;

                        and care for your “jagged-toothed dog” -- don’t spare (true imperative) its food --

                        lest at some point a day-sleeping man take away your property.[18]

(602-5)

 

(The caesura of 602 is bridged by poieisthai, “get,” but without making a threefold line.) “With calf under” of course refers to a nursing mother as if a cow; “day-sleeping man,” to a burglar.

            Although the transposition cannot be proven, if it is correct this fourth vignette is in two parts, as were the second and the third. In this one the first part consists of eight verses forming a closed structure, its first and last lines beginning with “servants” in the Greek. Apart from literal content, again (as at v. 558-9 on the effects of winter and rations) it conveys a similarity with contrast between humans, on the one hand, and “oxen and mules” (a standard epic expres­sion), on the other: Both are part of the universe, and in particular must be fed (600-1 with 606-7) as well as rested (608), but “after” in 600 conveys the point that securing food for humans takes priority over that for livestock. It seems possible that an important reason for including the passage is to provide a contrast of its labor with the idleness of the preceding summer, in turn contrasting with the labor of the harvest before that (West and Nelson), thus fulfilling Riedinger’s “inner ring” surrounding a “moment of repose.” In terms of epic apart from “oxen and mules,” 598-9 seem to allude to the fight of Paris and Menelaus: “First” Odysseus “measured” out a “place” for the battle, and after several verses of preliminaries they fought “in the measured place.” “Then right after” with “all” (600-1) recalls, first, Odysseus telling Telemachus to have the disloyal maids clean up the gore from the dead suitors, and “then right after” that to kill “all” of them too, followed by, second, Telemachus doing so.[19]

            But that segment leads to more on the subject: the second part of the passage in the reconstructed order. Just as was the “Dawn” addendum in the second vignette, the fourth vig­nette’s counterpart in the overall ring structure, the addition is in four lines. The poetry is impressive, again featuring a priamel-like sequence: a fraction of a line (through the arsis of the fourth foot) on the hired man; the rest of that line and all of the next on the female worker; and then two full lines on the “jagged-toothed dog” (a standard phrase, where the primary reference is protecting a flock from a lion). “And care for the jagged-toothed dog” is another alliteration on unvoiced velar stops (as at vv. 25, 486): kai kuna karcharodonta komein, to assist the emphasis. Evidently the thrust of the quatrain is: hire servants who are most useful to you, and service your security equipment properly as well. (To be sure, as part of the protagonist’s organization it per­haps would have been more logically put in the first movement, 414-503.) Of course all this is atemporal: Get workers with such features whenever you hire, and always feed your dog.[20]

 

Celebration indeed.

            After vignettes two through four, of which two and three, as well as four if the reconstruction is cor­rect, had two parts, the poet returns in vignette five to the single-part structure of vignette one. At the same time, as Riedin­ger says, he returns to its vines:

 

                        When (eute) “Orion” and Sirius come to mid

                        sky, and “rosy-fingered Dawn beholds” Arcturus,

                        hey Perses, then pick (true imperative) all your grapes (to bring) home;

                        show (deixai) them the sun for ten (deka) days and ten (deka) nights,

                        shade them over for five, and on the sixth draw to the jars

                        the gift(s?) of Dionysus the much-cheering.[21] ...

(vv. 609-14)

This passage is filled with epic recollections: There is an apparent allusion to the statement that “rosy-fingered Dawn took Orion” as a lover. Although West cavils that the sun is only operative half the time, “ten ... ten” is a convention whose most notable use is Homer saying that without the Muses he could not recite the Catalogue of Ships even with ten tongues and ten mouths (albeit our poet makes it more noticeable by adding the alliteration with “show”). “Gifts of much-cheering (polugētheos) Dionysus” recalls “gifts from great-hearted (megalētoros) Aeolus.” In this way, the end of the movement reminds us that we are to be contrasted with the people of epic.[22]

 

            Considering the movement as a whole, at least if the reconstructed order for the fourth episode is correct one can see that the ring structure Riedinger proposes is even more intricate than what he uncovers: The first and fifth vignette (his “exterior circle”), are in a sin­gle part; the second and fourth (“interior circle”), in two, with the second part of each containing the same num­ber of lines and a priamel-like structure. Moreover, Riedinger fails to connect the wine of the middle episode with the outer ones, and thus thinks the principal concern is grain: “This (con­cern) is for wheat, and on wheat alone depends the bios.” For her part, Nelson says the concern with vines was a distraction already in the first episode, just as in her view the Edgar/Edmund sub­plot in Lear distracts from the main plot. But whatever one might say about Shake­speare, in fact it is not only the central vignette of our piece which constitutes the “festi­val,” as Riedinger has it, but the entire section (which after all concludes with “gifts of Diony­sus”). Our poet’s implication is that the allegorized protagonist needs both bread and wine to be a complete human being.[23]

            To be sure, the formal structure should not blind us to forward movement. In particular, looking back on the entire “agricultural” portion, the mention of “Perses” at v. 611 for the first time since 397 in the overture does not just stress a need to get back to work after the picnic as Jenny Strauss Clay holds: It is to be seen in the context of the portion as a whole. The citation’s emphasis is marked, since the true imperative for the line’s verb deviates from the overall form. Thus West thinks the citation “gives ... a final reminder of the addressee’s identity” before the discussion ends. Even better, one can say that the virtual protagonist is fully a person now that his story has been told, and so his name can be emphasized.[24]

            And although given in the context of a ring structure with “autumn” at beginning and end, that story develops linearly: It tells of someone who wrests organization from clutter (vv. 414-503), at least battles a monster to a draw (504-63), and enjoys his modest success thereafter (564-614). Of course it does so along with a continual juxtaposition with epic, the overall result of which is to create a basically ironic effect whereby the true meaning of the key “virtue” con­cept aretē is not a matter of warriors winning battles and eventually dying in supposed glory, but is embodied in our protagonist’s life.[25]  (to Chap. 8)

 

NOTES: