The Poems of Hesiod

by Hesiod

  Trust and mistrust alike ruin a man.

  And do not let a woman with a nice

  butt coax and wheedle and trick your mind! She only wants to poke

  around in your barn. Trust a woman, and you trust a thief.

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  There should

  be only one son to nourish his father’s house, so that wealth may increase

  in the halls. And may he die an old man, leaving behind a grandson.

  Still, Zeus may easily leave abundant wealth for even more: more hands,

  more work, and more profit. But if you wish in your heart for wealth,

  do this, and heap labor on labor.

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  Begin your harvest when the Pleiadês,

  daughters of Atlas, are rising, and your plowing when they are about to set.326

  They are hidden for forty days and nights, but when the year rolls around,

  they appear when you first sharpen the iron.328 This is the rule of the plains,

  for those who live near the water, and for those who live far from the swelling

  sea, in the wooded valleys, in the rich land: Sow naked, plow naked, harvest

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  naked, if you wish to reap all the works of Demeter at harvest time,

  so that every crop may ripen at the right time, and that you may not

  afterward lack and have to beg in vain from your neighbors—just as now

  you have come to me!

  Figure 16. A naked plowman. He holds a flail in his left hand and the plow handle in his right hand while a yoke of oxen drags the plow. Sometimes plowmen are represented naked; sometimes they are shown clothed. Perhaps there is a magical basis to naked plowing, or it could refer simply to the weather. Athenian blackfigure wine cup, ca. 530 B.C. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Ploughman_Louvre_F77.jpg)

  But I shall not give you anything more,

  nor measure out anything extra. Work, you little fool, Persês! Do what

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  the gods have assigned for human beings, so that in anguish of spirit

  you do not ever have to seek, along with your children and your wife,

  the means of life from your neighbors, who do not care about you.

  You might succeed twice, or even three times, but if you bother them

  again, you will accomplish nothing. All your speech will be in vain,

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  and the range of your words will be for nothing. But I urge you to take

  consideration for how you will pay your debts and avoid famine.

  First of all, get a house and a woman and an ox for plowing

  —a slave woman who might follow the oxen, not a wife—and put

  everything in your house in order, so that you do not have to ask another

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  who might refuse you while you are in want, and the season come and go

  and your labor be for nothing. Do not put your work off until tomorrow

  or the day after. For the sluggard does not fill his barn, nor does one who

  postpones his labor. Industry makes work go easier. He who is always

  putting off his work is flirting with disaster.

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  When the strength

  of the piercing sun lets up from its sweaty heat, and powerful Zeus

  brings the autumnal rains, and the skin of mortal men is much relieved;

  when the star Sirius goes over the head of humans, born to misery,

  a little by day, but takes up more of the night—at that time354 wood

  cut with the iron is most resistant to worms, when trees shed their leaves

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  to the ground and cease to send out shoots. At this time, remember

  to cut your wood: It is the appropriate season.

  Cut a mortar three feet

  long, and a pestle four and a half feet long, and an axle seven feet long:

  This way things will fit together very well. But if you make the axle eight

  feet long, you can cut a mallet head from it. Cut a two-foot wheel

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  for a four-foot cart.361

  There are many timbers bent at an angle.

  Bring home a plow tree of wood when you find it, looking out

  for one of oak in the mountains or the plowed fields. For this

  is the strongest for cattle to plow with when one of Athena’s

  servants has drawn it near and fixed it to the pole, fastening it with

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  pegs to the stock.366

  Get two plows ready, working on them in your house,

  one with a natural plow tree branching from the stock; the other

  with the plow tree fixed with pegs. This is by far the better way,

  for if you break one, you can attach the other to the oxen. Poles

  made of laurel or elm are most resistant to worms. The stock should

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  be made of oak, and the plow tree of holm oak.371

  Get two oxen

  nine years old, bulls, for their strength is not easily exhausted, being

  in their prime. They are the best for work. They will not quarrel

  in the furrow, break the plow, and so leave the labor there unfinished.

  Let a vigorous chap of forty years follow them after eating a four-piece

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  eight-part loaf,376 who takes care with the work and drives a straight

  furrow, someone who no longer gapes after his fellows but keeps

  his mind on the task. And another man beside him, no younger

  than he, is better for scattering the seed and avoiding oversowing;379

  for a younger man is all aflutter for his fellows.

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  Take note when you hear

  the voice of the crane that each year cries high from the clouds:

  She gives the sign for plowing and indicates the rainy season

  of winter383 but bites the heart of the man without oxen. Then fatten

  your curving-horned oxen who are inside, for it is easy to say,

  “Give me a couple of oxen and a wagon,”385 and it is easy to refuse:

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  “I have work enough for my own oxen.” The man with a rich imagination

  thinks that he will just assemble a wagon—the fool! He does not know

  that there are a hundred boards to a wagon. Take care to store these

  up beforehand in your house.

  Whenever the time for plowing first

  becomes clear for mortals, then hasten, your slaves and you yourself, to plow

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  in season, in rain and in good weather, and get out early in the morning,

  so that your fields will be filled. Turn your soil in the spring: Land

  plowed after lying fallow in the summer will not disappoint you.393

  Sow the fallow land while the field is still friable.394 Fallow land

  is an averter of ruin, a soother of children.395 Pray to Zeus who is beneath

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  the earth396 and to holy Demeter when first you begin to plow to make

  the sacred grain of Demeter heavy and ripe—while holding in your hand

  the end of the handle, you bring your goad down on the back of the oxen

  as they draw on the plow by means of a leather strap. Let a slave follow

  you a little behind, holding a hoe to make trouble for the birds by hiding

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  the seed. Good management is best for mortal men; bad management

  is the worst. Thus may your ears of wheat bend to the ground

  at maturity if the Olympian himself grants you a noble fulfillment,

  and you may drive out the spider webs from your storage vessels.

  And I think that you will rejoice as you take hold of your sustenance

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  kept indoors. You will come to the bright sprin
g with plenty in store,

  nor will you gape at others. Rather, another man will be in need of you.

  But if you plow the shining ground at the solstice, you will reap

  sitting down, covered in dust, grasping only a little with your hand, tying

  the bundle with the stalks at both ends, not at all happy, and you will

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  carry it off in a basket.411 Few will admire you. Yet the mind of Zeus,

  who holds the goatskin fetish, is different at different times, and it is hard

  for mortal men to recognize it.

  If you do plow late, you may try

  this remedy: When the cuckoo first cries in the leaves of the oak

  and delights mortals on the unbounded earth, if Zeus rains on the third

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  day415–16 and does not let up until the depth of rain neither exceeds

  the imprint of an ox’s foot nor falls short of it—then the late plower

  can compete with the early plower. Bear all this firmly in your mind,

  and do not fail to note when the bright spring comes, and the rainy season.419

  Pass by the bronzeworker’s bench and his comfy couch in the winter

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  time, when the cold holds back a man from work, when the industrious

  man can greatly profit his household, so that the idleness of a bad

  winter doesn’t catch you in poverty, and you must rub a swollen foot

  with a thin hand.424

  An idle man waiting on empty hope, lacking

  the means of life, speaks many an evil thought to his mind.

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  But no good hope provides for a man in need who sits on his couch,

  to whom the means of life are lacking. While it is still midsummer,

  point out to your slaves: It will not always be summer, build barns!

  Avoid the month of Lenaion,429 evil days, ox flayers all, and the frosts

  deadly on the earth when North Wind blows, who stirs upon the broad

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  sea when he blows over horse-nourishing THRACE, and the earth

  and forests roar. Falling on the many high-leafed oaks and thick

  pines in the groves of the mountain, he brings them down to the bountiful

  earth, and all the immense forest groans. The animals shudder and tuck

  their tails beneath their genitals, even those whose flesh is shadowed

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  with fur. Being chill, he blows right through them, although they are

  shaggy-breasted. And he goes through the hide of the ox, which cannot

  stop him. And he blows through the shaggy goat, but the strength

  of North Wind does not blow through the fleece of sheep, which

  is abundant, though he makes the old man roll swiftly along

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  like a wheel.441

  Figure 17. A winged, aggressive North Wind (Boreas) rapes Oreithyia, an Athenian princess, a famous myth; Aeschylus wrote a lost play about the mythical event. Detail from a South Italian red-figure wine pitcher, ca. 360 B.C. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Boreas_Oreithyia_Louvre_K35.jpg)

  But he does not penetrate through the tender skin

  of young girls, who abide with their dear mother inside the house,

  not yet knowing the works of golden Aphrodite, who washes well

  her soft skin, and anoints it with oil, and lies down in the innermost

  chamber of the house on a winter’s day, when the boneless one445

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  gnaws his foot in his fireless house and dismal home. The sun

  shows no pastures to which he can set out, but goes back and forth

  over the people and city of the dark-skinned men, and shines late

  over all the Hellenes.449

  Then the horned and hornless forest dwellers,

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  woefully gnashing their teeth, flee through the wooded thickets,

  caring in their hearts only that they may find shelter in a secure

  hiding place and a rocky cavern. Then, like a three-footed mortal

  whose back is broken, who bends his head to the ground454—like him

  they wander, trying to avoid the white snow.

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  At this time put

  on a soft cloak and a shirt that reaches to your feet as a protection

  for the body, as I urge you. And weave plenty of weft on a puny

  warp,458 and wrap this around you so that your hair may not tremble

  and stand up straight, shivering all around your body. On your feet

  bind close-fitting boots made from a slaughtered ox, thickly lined

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  with felt inside. When the cold season comes, stitch together skins

  of newborn kids with the sinew of an ox, so that you can put

  it around your back and keep off the rain. On your head, place

  a well-made felt cap so that your ears don’t get wet; for the dawn

  is cold when North Wind comes. At dawn a mist is spread

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  over the wheat-bearing earth from the starry sky on the works

  of blessed men—a mist that arises from the ever-flowing rivers,

  raised high over the earth by the blast of the wind. Sometimes

  it turns to rain toward evening, sometimes to wind, when the Thracian

  North Wind tumbles the thick clouds. Finish your work, and go home

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  ahead of him. Don’t let a dark cloud from the sky wrap around you,

  and make your skin wet, and soak your clothes, but avoid it.

  For this is the harshest month, wintry, bad for livestock, bad

  for human beings.

  Let your cattle have half-rations, but give

  your man more: for the long nights are a help.475 Observe these

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  rules until the year is complete, weighing the length of the nights

  and days against each other until earth, the mother of all, again

  bears her various fruit.

  When Zeus has finished the sixtieth winter

  day after the solstice, then the star Arcturus leaves the sacred flow

  of Ocean and shines first brilliantly at dusk.480 After him

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  the dawn-bewailing daughter of Pandion,481 the swallow, rises

  into the light for human beings at the beginning of spring.

  Before she comes, prune the vines: This is best. But when

  the house carrier climbs up from the earth through the leaves,

  fleeing the Pleiades,485 then it is no longer time to dig around

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  the vines. Sharpen your sickles, and rouse up your slaves.

  Avoid shady seats and sleeping until dawn in the harvest season,

  when the sun dries up your skin. Then hasten and bring home

  your crops, rising early, so that you may have enough to eat.

  For morning removes a third part of your work: Morning furthers

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  one in his journey, and furthers one in his work too—morning,

  which appears and sets many on their way and places the yoke

  on many oxen.

  When the golden thistle appears, and the chirping cicada

  sits in a tree and pours forth his shrill song continually from beneath

  his wings in the season of exhausting heat,495 then goats are fattest,

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  and wine is the best. Women are most filled with lust, but men

  are weakest, for Sirius dries up the head and knees,497 and the skin