Works and Days, Hesiod

“I mean you well, Perses, you great idiot, and I will tell you. Look, badness is easy to have, you can take it by handfuls without effort. The road that way is smooth and starts here beside you. But between us and virtue the immortals have put what will make us sweat. The road to virtue is long and goes steep up hill, hard climbing at first, but the last of it, when you get to the summit (if you get there) is easy going after the hard part.”

In November we return to archaic Greece and take up the works of the very first author in European history: Hesiod. Contemporary with the much better known Homer but more definitely historical, Hesiod left us two examples of didactic poetry, that is, poems intended to impart knowledge on some topic or provide moral instruction. These are Theogony and Works and Days.

The first is a genealogy of the Greek gods. In the second Hesiod takes his lazy and grasping brother Perses to task and delivers, along with practical agricultural tips and a whole lot of superstition, also some pretty fine advice:

"Little business has a man with disputes and debates who has not food for the year laid up at home in its ripeness, produce of the earth, Demeter's grain. When you have got an abundance of that you can promote disputes and conflict over other men's property."

or this:

"Rumour is a dangerous thing, light and easy to pick up, but hard to support and difficult to get rid of. No rumour ever dies that many folk rumour. She too is somehow a goddess."

I am reading the Oxford World's Classics edition, which was translated by M.L. West. You can buy it here (paid link) if you like:
Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford World's Classics)

Almost every bound edition of Hesiod contains both Theogony and Works and Days; we are focusing on the latter because it speaks directly to the purpose of this club, but feel free to read both for our discussion. They're short anyway. We'll see you all at the usual place on the usual night!