Listening to the Spider: reading Hesiod’s Works and Days
Preface
(2006)
This commentary on Hesiod’s Works and
Days was composed over a period of years ending in 2003, and consequently
reflects the state of scholarship at that time. I have corrected some
typographical errors and the like, but have not updated it. It has not been
published previously, although I have subsequently put portions of it in a form
more suitable for professional classicists than the audience to be described
below, publishing these as articles in classics journals. (The specific
articles will be noted below as the material is encountered.)
The
occasion for the work was and is as follows. The Greeks counted as one of their
literary masterworks a poem they called Erga
kai Hēmerai,
“Works and Days,” which had come down to them ascribed to Hēsiodos,
“Hesiod.” However, while a small number of
connoisseurs have agreed with their assessment, most educated people today --
or, rather, most of those who have heard of the piece in the first place -- do
not recognize it as serious poetry; rather, they think of a rambling collection
of tales and maxims, set in dactylic hexameter only because that form was
available at the time of composition. Professional classicists themselves have
typically used the work as historical evidence for culture through its
mentions of particular customs and institutions. Among the smaller number who study
it for its contribution to culture, most interest has been in the area
of myth interpretation, the exegesis of narratives found in roughly the first
two hundred lines (such as the so-called Pandora’s Box story), pursued in a
manner which isolates them from an overall work some four times that long.
It
should be clear to anyone who takes literary history seriously that this way of
viewing the poem is unacceptable. Moreover, although the Greeks
could not have known it, the work appears to be unique among what was composed
in ancient times not only by them, but over the entire European-Asian-North
African land mass. During the course of studying the literature of the archaic
periods of ancient societies, I was repeatedly drawn back to Hesiod’s poem as a
key text in what Karl Jaspers called the “axial” movement. It became my
conviction that the literary work which best demonstrates the transition in
outlook from the dogmatized primitivism characteristic of the Bronze Age to
that which is variously characterized as rational or democratic is not the
fragments of the Presocratic philosophers, nor the (rather parallel) Indian
Upanishads, nor the Jahwist strand of the Hebrew
Pentateuch (nor, certainly, the Iliad and Odyssey ascribed to
“Homer,” nor the other poem of “Hesiod” called the Theogony), but
precisely the Works and Days. That is to say, this piece more than any
other exemplifies the beginnings of the movement the modern West associates
with ancient Greece and rightly or wrongly views as its heritage in distinction
from developments in the Orient.
Upon
arriving at this conclusion on the basis of studying the poem from a more or
less generalist standpoint, I felt it necessary to treat it in a more
penetrating fashion, and in particular as an actual classicist with a literary
bent would do if he or she recognized it to be as worthy as the Homeric poems,
Aeschylus, Pindar, etc. To be sure, this meant
studying it as a poem with beginning, middle and end, which must have been
experienced by the early Greeks as such, which might make use of tropes and
images, and which might possess a subtext as well as a text. I wanted to
understand it first, not as versified prose which may or may not be of interest
for its ideas abstracted from its hexameter form, nor for the evidence it gives
for the beginning of their times, but as poetry, believing that only after that
should one tackle such issues as its cultural role. Eventually I learned that
some less well known Hesiod scholars have entertained similar opinions, and have
published work largely for a specialist audience illuminating the work in its
generality or parts of it in detail.
But
if the poem was indeed unique in “axial age” literary production it is not only
the concern of classicists, whereas up to now there has been no reasonably
detailed discussion of the entire Works and Days as poetry that is
accessible to a relatively broad audience. Thus the work contained herein,
which has the form of a running literary commentary on the poem, is addressed
to the following sort of reader. He or she has an interest in ancient
literature, or in literature or literary history generally, and recognizes that
a single treatment of any literary work qua literature cannot be definitive in
the nature of the case, but agrees that this circumstance alone does not negate
the value of an attempt. The poem is discussed in terms of its English
translation, and Greek has been kept to a minimum in the text -- essentially
used where it is necessary to explicate effects dependent on the sounds of
words. When used it is transliterated. Due to a certain basic relationship of
the poem to “Homer’s” Iliad and Odyssey (to be explained in the Introduction),
the reader will need to be familiar with their story lines and major
characters, and to have access to at least a good translation of each (with
verse numbering corresponding to the Oxford Classical Text edited by Monro and Allen). Textual parallels between our poem and
these are also stated in translation even though derived from the original.
Of
course, this work includes material not previously published in a form
addressed to professional classicists, and thus should interest them as well.
Ideally
in such a work for either audience one would put the literary criticism in the
text; the philology in the footnotes. However, that model breaks down in
dealing with a poem which is widely misunderstood by the general reader and the
specialist alike as a result of its centuries-long superficial treatment as
actual literature. I have confined many citations of scholarly controversies
over details to the notes, but in cases where fundamental issues are involved
have found it necessary to deal with them in the text. Thus the work probably
does not quite achieve the level of readability for a popular audience attained
by some recent books on the basic elements of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
whose residual scholarly controversies are relatively minor after enjoying much
more study over the years, nor that of Robert Lamberton’s
1988 introduction to the “Hesiod” of this poem and of the Theogony. (But
it should compete favorably in this respect with some avant garde literary
treatments of the Homeric poems appearing in recent years, albeit those were
largely written within the classics profession paradigm.) On this I ask the
reader’s indulgence.
However,
actual text locations in ancient works (except the Works and Days
itself) and the like have been relegated to the notes. There I cite
commentators on the various hexameter poems, listed in the Bibliography,
by author and verse number. Other works listed there are cited by author and
page number, and also by year of publication if the author is listed more than
once. A number of works cited in the notes, mostly for technical points, are
not included in the Bibliography; rather, the necessary publication information
is given where cited.
The
notes are not confined to a purely justificatory role, but also offer
references to further reading for those willing to brave more material about
given points made or cited in the text, be they classicists or no.
Obviously,
I am indebted to every scholar listed in the Bibliography, both living and
dead. Beyond that, in any work with a long history such as this one the number
of people who have rendered assistance of one sort of another will be too large
for all to be mentioned by name. (Indeed, if I attempted to do so I would
undoubtedly forget to include some.) In the period leading up to the manuscript
of 2003 I profited from extended correspondence with Graziano
Arrighetti and Richard Janko.
Since then I have particularly benefited from discussions of my work and theirs
with Rosanna Lauriola and Maria Marsilio. Over a
longer period my debt has been large to two other people: to Bruce Martin, the
Research Facilities Officer at the Library of Congress, for help in dealing
with that institution over the years I have used it; and to my colleague,
friend, and fellow study desk occupant Shirley Schwarz, for general solidarity
with respect to the problems of doing scholarly research and, most recently,
for her assistance in setting up this website.
This
work will give English translations of most verses of the first half of the
Works and Days, and of all of the second, during the course of treating them.
(To be sure, in some cases I will disagree with standard construals of terms,
as justified in the notes.) However, it is not my purpose to give a rendering
which qualifies as good English poetry, but rather to make the original
accessible to the reader with little or no Greek. In particular, English syntax
is violated in many cases of multi-verse structures, since I translate verse by
verse. I also feel that serious uncertainties in the text are not to be papered
over simply by making a choice and ignoring other possibilities; thus
alternatives are cited, or question marks are inserted in the translation,
where I believe it is still legitimate to say that we are unsure of the
construal. All this means that the reader will undoubtedly want to use the work
together with a conventional translation of the poem (with verse numbering that
of the Greek text for easy reference).
Of
published English translations, the following are listed in the Bibliography. Athanassakis (1983, but now in a second edition dating from
2004) and Frazier (1983) are basic. (The former is stately in tone and includes
useful commentary in notes at the end, while the latter is closer to the
Greek.) Otherwise, Wender (1973) is a sensitive
rendering of slightly earlier vintage. The great Greek translator
Of
course, given that Europe has historically been the center of classical
studies, there are more opportunities available to the person familiar with a
language other than English, if less difficult than ancient Greek. Without
presuming to judge them as poetry in the target language, the following
translations of the Works and Days are of use simply to follow the text.
Most important is now the Italian of Arrighetti (1998), with facing Greek text,
introductions, useful notes on a number of textual controversies, and a
bibliography. In Italian there is also Colonna (1967). The fact is scandalous,
but Mazon’s (1960, originally 1928) rendering is
still the only French translation generally available in the
Recently new
translations of the poem have appeared, as well as reissues of old ones. First,
as indicated above the good reputation enjoyed by that of Athanassakis
has resulted in a second edition (Hesiod Theogony, Works and Days, Shield,
But an interesting
new translation actually in verse is the result of a collaboration between a
classicist (Catherine Schlegel) and a poet (Henry Weinfield):
Theogony and Works and Days (
Among non-English translations, although
I have not seen it there is a recent
French work that is probably of interest: La Théogonie; Les Travaux et les jours;
Le Bouclier; Le Catalogue des femmes, fragments; Autres fragments; suivis de La
Dispute d'Homère et d'Hésiode, transl. Philippe
Brunet, comm. Marie-Christine Leclerc (certainly an
important Hesiod scholar) (
(go to Introduction)
(back to top)
(back to start of Addendum
on translations)
(back to start of March, 2007
addition)
