There Are Standards
‘Works and Days’, by Hesiod, reviewed.
Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod’s second and lesser known book, is starkly different from his first. The Theogony deals with the birth of the gods, and the violent, incestuous means by which Zeus, paragon of order in the Greek imagination, finally ascends to the throne, Works and Days deals with practical and moral matters, even if mythology is mixed in.
The book is addressed to Perses, Hesiod’s brother, who has shades of the prodigal son of Luke. He has squandered his wealth, returned home to the family with his tail between his legs, and bribed some judges to make a call in his favour. Unlike the father of the parable, Hesiod will not give anything to his wasteful brother, and decides to teach him about the virtues of work instead. (Quite right, you might say.) Works and Days thus has the tone of a scalding, or a sermon.
Unlike the father of the parable, Hesiod’s will not give anything to his wasteful brother. He decides to teach him about the virtues of work instead.
Hesiod waxes moral on his ideas of work and justice, citing the tales of Prometheus, Epimetheus and Pandora, who opened the jar holding all the world’s evils. Hesiod then describes the Myth of the Ages: the five eras of mankind, starting with the race of gold men and ending with us, so useless that we are bound to be wiped out by Zeus at some point.
If the theme of his Theogony is how cosmic order emerges from chaos, Works and Days centres on the affairs of human beings and, in particular, morality. This might seem odd, given quite how amoral and violent the gods are. But for the Greeks, the gods were not all-loving ideals but reflections of human foibles. They helped the Greeks to understand both themselves and the caprices of the world. Law and justice, family and community, duty, peace and war — all of these are important aspects of human life. Hesiod reminds his ‘idiot’ brother that there are standards we should strive to meet.
For the Ancient Greeks, the gods were not all-loving ideals but reflections of human foibles.
Hesiod leans on the same stock phrases he does in the Theogony, and that the other epic poets, most noticeably Homer, use to keep themselves on track as they tell their tales by heart. These formulaic qualities do not detract from the rich description, courtesy of M.L. West, that we find at times in Works and Days: ‘When the golden thistle is in flower, and the noisy cicada sitting in the tree pours down its clear song thick and fast from under its wings in the fatiguing summer season, then goats are fattest and wine is best, women are most lustful, but men are weakest, because Sirius parches their head and knees, and their skin is dried out with the heat.’
What is striking is quite how timeless some of Hesiod’s advice is. Naturally, some of it is hopelessly outdated, as well as just a bit odd (do not urinate while facing the sun, etc.) But much of his counsel concerning the virtues of thrift and hard work are as valid as ever. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. This, and its directly addressing an individual, makes Works and Days a more personal, more endearing sort of book than The Theogony, even if it lacks the grandeur of its prequel.
