The artists Tyler Miles Lockett is doing a Hesiod read through on his discord server. I happened to have the book on hand. I've really tried to winnow down my library, but I've kept my Hesiod.
Hesiod lived between 750 and 650 BCE, around the time of the Buddha.
The Works and Days is a didactic poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. This work lays out the five Ages of Man.
Golden Age by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553)
“Do no let a fancy-assed woman deceive your mind by guilefully cajoling you while she pokes in your granary: whoever trusts a woman, trusts swindlers.”
I like that image of a woman poking around in the granary.
He's not a huge fan of women, Wikipedia calls him a misogynist. He says get a woman to run your home, but not a wife, buy her. He had slaves and other workers, so he wasn't grunting out the most difficult existence. Someone in the discord group is tempted to give him a pass 2600 years later.
So what is it about modern sensibilities that rejects what Hesiod says? I mean he goes from describing a gold digger, to saying all women are thieves. I mean it's materialistic outlook, that he projects onto women. They're the ones who are always materialistic. He's obviously tense about maintaining a quality of life, protecting it. He's no poet of love here.
There' a kind of wise tone, like Polonius in Hamlet. He's urging farmers to get their work in around the seasons. It's not a Protestant Work Ethic it's a farmer's work ethic.
He's connected to the cycles of the earth and he knows when to do this or that in the farming cycles.
Links:
Tyler Miles Locket Linktree
Works and Days (April 4-10)
THEOGONY (April 11-24)
HOMERIC HYMNS 1 - 3 (A25-M1)
Literature and History Episode 7
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