by Hesiod
Works and Days belongs to an Eastern literary genre that modern scholars call Wisdom Literature, a genre well represented in Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Aramaic, and Hebrew documents. From the Egyptian Middle and New Kingdoms, about 2200 B.C. to 1500 B.C., we can count fifty or sixty such books, though many survive only in fragments, including the famous Teachings of Amenemopê of around 1200 B.C. The purpose of these books was to train scribes and officials in correct behavior. The biblical book Proverbs was much influenced by such books; it is in part a translation of the Egyptian Teachings of Amenemopê.
This form of literature consists mostly of gnomes and proverbs: short, pithy expressions of general truths that teach proper behavior in the realm of ethics, interpersonal relationships, and etiquette, promising divine favor and professional success to those who follow these truths. Often a wisdom book is set in the mouth of a wise father or other person of authority instructing a son in proper behavior, much as Hesiod’s poem is directed to his brother, Persês. Many scholars have wondered about the historicity of Persês—was he a real person with whom Hesiod had a conflict? We cannot finally answer this question, but the form of a wiser relative instructing a duller one is certainly traditional and inherited.
In Egypt, wisdom literature is much preoccupied with the concept of Maat, “truth” or “justice,” but also implying balance, order, and universal law. Maat was personified as a goddess, represented as a woman wearing a feather. Similarly, Hesiod’s poems proclaim the need for Justice in human life.
Typical sentiments in Egyptian wisdom literature are as follows:1
When you go down to the sea of Maat [Justice],
and sail on it with a fair wind,
no squall shall strip away your sail,
nor will your boat be idle.
Figure 13. Maat. Relief in the inner shrine of the Hathor Temple, Deir el-Medina (“monastery of the city”), called in ancient Egyptian “the place of Maat,” near Luxor, in Upper Egypt. Deir el-Medina was the workman’s village where laborers on the royal tombs lived. The temple to Hathor was converted to a Christian church and has survived intact. Here on the right the goddess, wearing the Maat feather, offers a lotus staff to Ptolemy IV (reigned 221–201 B.C.). She holds an ankh, “life,” in her left hand. Ptolemy raises his hand in adoration. He wears a linen skirt and holds a Maat feather in his left hand. Above are registers with various gods, all wearing the Maat feather. Above the goddess the inscriptions read “Words to be spoken by Maat, mistress of the West [that is, the Underworld] who governs the motions of the scale.” Below, the words read “There is no end of it [that is, Maat] for the great lord [that is, Ptolemy.”] (Photo: Olaf Tausch; https://upload.wikimeia.org/wikipeia/commons/6/6c/Temple_of_Deir_el-Medina_13.JPG)
No accident will affect your mast,
your yards will not break.
You will not founder when you touch land;
no flood will carry you away.
You will not taste the river’s evils;
you will not see a frightened face.
Fish will come darting to you;
fatted foul, surround you.
For you are a father to the orphan,
husband to the widow,
brother to the rejected woman,
apron to the motherless.
He who lessens falsehood fosters truth;
he who fosters the good reduces evil,
as satiety’s coming removes hunger,
and clothing removes nakedness;
as the sky is serene after a storm,
warming all who shiver;
as fire cooks what is raw,
as water quenches thirst.
Now see for yourself:
the arbitrator is a robber;
the peacemaker makes grief.
He who should soothe makes sore,
but he who cheats diminishes Maat!
Rightly filled, Maat neither falls short nor brims over.
Speak Maat; do Maat,
for it is mighty;
it is great; it endures.
Its worth is tried.
It leads one to reveredness.
Hesiod’s preoccupation with the avoidance of evil deeds and with work as the foundation of Justice owes much to these ancient Eastern teachings, but it is important to remember that Eastern wisdom literature was never oral. It was always couched in writing, used by scribes in training to hone their moral nature while they learned the difficult art of writing in the complex Eastern systems of writing. Yet such moral teachings, and the very form of wisdom literature as something taught by one family member to another, reached somehow into the realm of oral tradition and was transmitted to Greece, as exemplified in Hesiod’s Works and Days.
Works and Days
Come here, you Muses of PIERIA,1 who give glory
through your song. Sing a hymn to Zeus, who is our
father, great Zeus, through whom men become either
famous or unknown, celebrated or decried.
For easily Zeus, who thunders on high, who lives
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in high mansions, makes men strong, or easily brings
strong men down; easily he lessens the distinguished
and enhances the obscure; easily he straightens the crooked
and dries up the proud.
Hear me now, watching and seeing,
and make true judgments that abide by justice, and I will
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speak truth to Persês. For not only one kind of Strife
is on the earth, but there are two:12 The one you may
praise, once you encountered her; the other is worthy
of blame. In nature they are entirely different.
The one
encourages war and evil battle, wretched; no man loves her,
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but by necessity, through the will of the deathless ones,
they honor the oppressive Strife. But the other Strife dark
Night begot first, and Zeus, the son of Kronos, who sits
on high, dwelling in the upper sky, placed her in the roots
of earth: She is far better for men. She rouses even the shiftless
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to accomplishment. For when a man who is not working
sees another who has grown rich, who is eager to plow
and to plant and to place his house in order, this neighbor
works to rival his neighbor who hastens to wealth. This Strife
is good for mortals. So the ceramicist is angered by the ceramicist,
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and the carpenter by the carpenter, and the beggar envies the beggar;
and the singer, the singer.
O Persês, lay these things up in your heart,
so that the evil Strife does not hold your heart back from labor
as you gawk and obsess with quarrels in the agora. For he has
little concern with quarrels and things that take place in the agora,
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he who holds in his house the abundant and ripe sustenance
of the things that the earth bears, the grain of Demeter.32 When you
have plenty of that, you can engage in quarrels and conflict
for the sake of another’s possessions—you will have no second
chance to do this.35
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But without further ado let us settle our dispute
with straight judgments that come from Zeus, the best ones.
For we have already divided our estate, but you carried off
much more, greatly feeding the pride of the bribe-devouring
elders, who wish to make this their judgment—the fools!
Nor do they know how much more the half is than the whole,
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nor how great an advantage is in mallow and the asphodel.41
For the gods have hidden sustenance from men, or you might
easily work enough in one day to provide you for an entire year even
without
working. Quickly you would put up your rudder in the smoke,44
and the work of oxen and the tireless mules would come to an end.
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For Zeus hid it when he was angered in his heart because wily
Prometheus deceived him. For this reason he devised painful sorrows
for mankind—he hid away fire. Then the noble son of Iapetos stole
it again for humankind from Zeus the Counselor, hiding it from Zeus,
who delights in the thunderbolt, in a hollow fennel stalk.50
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In anger Zeus
the cloud-gatherer spoke to him: “O son of Iapetos, who surpass
all in cunning, you rejoice because you have stolen fire, because
you have deceived my mind, but you have contrived for yourself
and for men to come a gigantic evil. I will give them in retribution
for the fire an evil in which all will take delight in their spirit while
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embracing their own evil.”
So he spoke. And the father of men and gods
laughed out loud. He ordered the famed Hephaistos immediately
to mix earth with water and to place inside the voice and strength
of a human being, and to make the lovely desirable shape of a young
girl with a face like the immortal goddesses. And he commanded Athena
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to teach her crafts, how to weave elaborately embroidered cloth,
and he ordered golden Aphrodite to pour out on her head charm that
inspires cruel desire, and care that devours the limbs. And he urged
Hermes the messenger, the killer of Argos,64 to put in her the mind
of a bitch and a scheming nature.
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So he spoke. And they obeyed King
Zeus, the son of Kronos. Straightaway the clever Lame God made her
from earth in the image of a modest young girl, following the plans
of the son of Kronos. And the goddess glancing-eyed Athena gave
her a girdle and ornaments, and the goddess Graces and queenly
Persuasion placed on her skin golden necklaces, and the Hours
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with beautiful locks crowned her with spring flowers.71 Pallas Athena
fitted all the ornaments to her body. And in her breast the messenger,
the killer of Argos, fashioned lies and wheedling words and a thievish
nature through the will of loud-thundering Zeus. And the messenger
of the gods placed in her a voice, and he named the woman Pandora,
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because all who live on OLYMPOS had given her a gift, an evil for men
who devour grain.77
When he had accomplished his savage and desperate
deception, the father sent the famous killer of Argos, the swift messenger
of the gods, to take it to Epimetheus as a gift. And Epimetheus did not
remember how Prometheus had told him never to accept a gift from
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Olympian Zeus but to send it back, unless some evil befall humankind.
But only after he had taken it, when he already had the evil, did he understand.
Before this the tribes of men lived on the earth separate and apart
from evil and apart from harsh labor and grievous sickness, which brings
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death upon men; for in misery men soon grow old.
But the woman took off
the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered its contents abroad,
and she devised terrible pains for humankind. Hope alone remained
within in the unbreakable house beneath the lip of the jar, and did not
fly out the door.89 Before that she stopped the lid of the jar through
the will of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, the gatherer of clouds.
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But ten thousand woes roam through humankind; for the earth is filled
with evil things, and the sea is filled. Sickness afflicts humans in the day,
and at night sickness courses through mortals, of their own accord
bringing evils in silence, because Zeus the Counselor took away their voice.
Thus there is no way at all to escape the mind of Zeus.
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Figure 14. Pandora born from the earth, crowned and veiled, with hands upraised. Above her flies an Eros indicating her power of sexual attraction. The figure beside her is either Hephaistos with his sculptor’s hammer or Epimetheus, who receives her as a bride as he tills the earth, smashing the clods with a hammer. Zeus stands to the far left, holding a royal scepter and wearing an olive wreath, and beside him is Hermes with the herald’s wand of snakes entwined on a staff, winged helmet, and winged boots. Athenian red-figure painting, ca. 450 B.C. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
If you wish,
I will tell another story, correctly and with skill, and you should lay
it up in your heart—how gods and mortal humans have a common origin.
First of all, the deathless ones, who have their homes on Mount Olympos,
fashioned a Golden Race of mortal humans.99 These lived in the time
of Kronos, when he was king in the sky. They lived like gods, without
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a care in their hearts, far away from pain and suffering. Nor was there
terrible old age, but always they were the same in their feet and their hands,
delighting in festivities away from every evil. They died as if overcome
by sleep. All things noble were with them. The rich earth bore them
its fruit abundantly and unstinting all by itself. They lived off their fields
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as they pleased, in peace, with many good things, rich in flocks, friends
to the blessed gods.
But after the earth covered over this race,
they are called noble spirits upon the earth through the will of great
Zeus, defenders from evil, guardians of mortal humans, who watch over
judgments and wicked deeds, coursing everywhere over the earth, clothed
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in a mist, giving out wealth; for they received this kingly honor as well.
Then after this those who have their homes on Olympos made a second
race, of silver, far worse, not like the Golden Race in appearance or mind.
A child was raised by his doting mother for one hundred years—a complete
fool, gamboling in his own house! But when they came to maturity
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and reached the full measure of youth, they lived for just a short while,
suffering pains through their foolishness. For the Silver Race were not able
to keep away from stupid violence against one another, nor did they wish
to cherish the deathless gods, nor perform sacrifice on the sacred altars
of the blessed ones, as is right for human beings in every community.
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Then Zeus the son of Kronos hid them in anger because they did not respect
the blessed gods who inhabit Olympos.
But when the earth hid this race too
—they are called the holy ones beneath the earth by mortals, in second
place,124 but honor is nevertheless owed to these as well—father Zeus made
a third race of mortal men, of bronze, not at all like the Silver Race,
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begotten by the ash-tree nymphs, fearsome and powerful. They were
concerned only with the groans and violence of Ares. Nor did they
eat bread, but they had a mighty spirit made of adamant, unbendable.
Their strength was great, and unconquerable arms grew from their
shoulders upon their powerful limbs. Their armor was of bronze,
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bronze their houses, and they worked with bronze tools. They did not
have
black iron. And overcome by their own hands, they went into
the dank house of chilly Hades, nameless. Black death took them,
though they were mighty, and they left the brilliant light of the sun.