[74] Spare the middle wine.] Hesiod says that we should use the middle of the cask more sparingly, that we might enjoy the best wine the longer. It was the ancient opinion that wine was best in the middle, oil at the top, and honey at the bottom. Grævius.
This opinion of Hesiod is discussed by Plutarch in his Symposiacs, iii. 7, and by Macrobius in his Saturnalia, vii. 12.
[75] As in laughter.] Και τε κασιγνητω γελασας επι μαρτυρα θεσθαι. The interpreters say,
But I should place the comma after fratre, and join ludens with testem adhibeto. “Even in a compact with your brother, have a witness: you may do it laughingly, or as if in jest.”
[76] With garment gather’d in a knot behind.] πυγοστολος, adorning the hinder parts, seems to refer to some meretricious distinction of dress. Solon compelled women of loose character to appear in public in flowered robes. Solomon in that beautiful chapter of the Proverbs has a similar allusion. “There met him a woman with the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart.” Ch. vii. 10.
[77] Prattling with gay speech.] With her much fair speech she caused him to yield: with the flattering of her lips she forced him. Proverbs, vii. 21.
In the words of Hesiod there is made mention of one rising of the Pleiads, which is heliacal, and of a double setting: the time of the rising may be referred to the 11th of May. The first setting, which indicated ploughing-time, was cosmical; when, as the sun rises, the Pleiads sink below the opposite horizon, which, in the time of Hesiod, happened about the beginning of November. The second setting is somewhat obscurely designated in the line
and is the heliacal setting, which happened the third of April, and after which the Pleiads were immerged in the sun’s splendour forty days. Hesiod, however, speaks as if he confounded the two settings, for no one would suppose but that the first-mentioned setting was that after which the Pleiads are said to be hidden previous to the harvest. But his words are to be explained with more indulgence, since he could not be ignorant of the time that intervened between the season of ploughing and that of harvest. Le Clerc.
[79] ’Tis time to sow.] In the original, begin ploughing; by which is meant the last ploughing, when they turned up the soil to receive the seed. Thus Virgil, Georg. 1:
Heyne observes, “they sink below the region of the West, at the same time that the sun emerges from the East;” the cosmical setting described by Hesiod. The receding of the bright star of the crown of Ariadne, which Virgil mentions, is its receding from the sun; that is, its heliacal rising.
The heliacal rising is a star’s emersion out of the sun’s rays; that is, a star rises heliacally when, having been in conjunction with the sun, the sun passes it and recedes from it. The star then emerges out of the sun’s rays so far that it becomes again visible, after having been for some time lost in the superiority of day-light. The time of day in which the star rises heliacally is at the dawn of day; it is then seen for a few minutes near the horizon, just out of the reach of the morning light; and it rises in a double sense from the horizon and from the sun’s rays. Afterwards, as the sun’s distance increases, it is seen more and more every morning.
The heliacal rising and setting is then, properly, an apparition and occultation. With respect to the Pleiads, it appears that different authors vary in fixing the duration of their occultation from about thirty-one days to above forty.
In a note by Holdsworth on Warton’s Georgics, it is observed that the heliacal setting of these stars is pointed out by the word abscondantur. But this is a contradiction; for Eoæ absconduntur is the same as occidunt matutinæ, set in the morning; but the time of day in which a star sets heliacally is in the evening, just after sun-set, when it is seen only for a few minutes in the west near the horizon, on the edge of the sun’s splendour, into which in a few days more it sinks.
[80] Plough naked still.] Virgil copies this direction, Georg. i:
Servius explains the meaning to be, that he should plough and sow “in fair weather, when it was so hot as to make clothing superfluous.” This seems to be very idle advice, and fixes on Virgil the imputation of a truism. An equally superfluous counsel is ascribed by Robinson and Grævius to Hesiod. We are correctly told that both γυμνος and nudus applied to men who had laid aside their upper garment, whether the pallia or toga, the Grecian cloak or the Roman gown; and thus is explained the passage in Matthew, xxiv. 18: “Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes:” but as no husbandman, whether Greek or Italian, unless insane, would dream of following the plough in a trailing cloak, Hesiod may safely be acquitted of so unnecessary a piece of advice. In the hot climates of Greece and Italy, it was probably the custom for active husbandmen to bare the upper part of their bodies. Virgil does not say “Plough in fine weather and not in winter;” but “Plough with your best diligence, for winter will soon be here:” equivalent to Hesiod’s “Summer will not last for ever.”
[81] The idler never shall his garners fill.] He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough. Proverbs, xxviii. 19.
[82] Trees bud no more.] The sap of the trees, which causes them to germinate, is then at rest. Trees when moist with sap are subject to worms, and the timber in consequence would be liable to putrefaction. Vitruvius also recommends that timber be felled in the autumn.
[83] A mortar of three feet.] The purposes to which ancient marbles are applied by the Turks may serve to explain the use of the mortar, which Hesiod mentions as part of the apparatus of the husbandman. “Capitals, when of large dimensions, are turned upside down, and being hollowed out are placed in the middle of the street, and used publicly for bruising wheat and rice, as in a mortar.” Dallaway’s Constantinople.
[84] Of bending figure.] So also Virgil, Georg. i. 169:
Dr. Martyn, in his comparison of Virgil’s plough with that of Hesiod, has fallen into the mistake of the old interpreters who render γοην dentale, the share-beam: whereas γυην is burim, the plough-tail, to which the share-beam joins.
[85] Thy artist join the whole.] In the original “the servant of Minerva,” that is, the carpenter. Minerva presided over all crafts, and was the patroness of works in iron and wood.
The loaf here mentioned is similar to the quadra of the Romans: so denominated from its being marked four-square by incisions at equal distances. See Athenæus, iii. 29.
By “a quadruple loaf containing eight portions,” Hesiod, perhaps, means a loaf double the usual size; similar, probably, to that mentioned by Theocritus, Idyl. xxiv. 135:
[87] The shrill crane’s migratory cry.] The cranes generally leave Europe for a more southern climate about the latter end of autumn; and return in the beginning of summer. Their cry is the loudest among birds; and although they soar to such a height as to be invisible, it is distinctly heard. It is often a prognostic of rain: as from the immense altitude of their ascent they are peculiarly susceptible of the motions and changes of the atmosphere: but Tzetzes is mistaken in supposing that the migratory cry of the crane denotes only its sensibility of cold. These migrations are performed in the night-time, and in numerous bodies; and the clangous scream, alluded to by Hesiod, is of use to govern their course. By this cry they are kept together; are directed to descend upon the corn-fields, the favourite scene of their depredations, and to betake themselves again to flight in case of alarm. Though they soar above the reach of sight they can, themselves, clearly distinguish every thing upon the earth beneath them. See “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” Virgil notices the crane’s instinct as to rain, Georg. i. 375:
[88] Of ploughing-time the sign.] Of the first ploughing Hesiod says, ειαρι πολειν: turn the soil in spring; of the second, θερεος νεωμενη, ploughed again in summer; the summer tilth: of the third αροτον: by which he invariably means the seed-ploughing, when they both ploughed up and sowed the ground. Salmasius in Solinum, 509.
Robinson quotes a passage of Aristophanes: Birds, 711:
The ploughing first mentioned by Hesiod is, then, actually the last. It appears that he recommends ground to be twi-fallowed: or prepared twice by ploughing before the seed-ploughing. Virgil directs it to be tri-fallowed, Georg. i. 47:
Fallowing, or ploughing the soil while at rest from yielding a crop, prepares it for the growth of seed by pulverizing it, exposing it to the influences of the atmosphere, and destroying the weeds: and is of essential use in recovering land that had been impoverished and exhausted by a succession of the same crops. The practice of fallows seems, however, to be now in a great degree superseded by that of an interchange of other crops in rotation; and the succession of green or leguminous plants alternately with the white crops or grain: the frequent hoeings, in this mode of tillage, cleaning the soil no less effectually than fallowings.
[89] Rich in his own conceit.] The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men who can render a reason. Proverbs, xxvi. 16.
[90] These let thy timely care provide before.] See Virgil, Georg. i. 167:
[91] Jove subterrene.] Guietus supposes that the husband of Proserpine is invoked from the consanguinity between Pluto, Proserpine, and Ceres. But this is not the only reason. Grævius properly remarks, that the earth, and all under the earth, were subject to Pluto, as the air was to Jupiter: Pluto, therefore, was supposed the giver of those treasures which the earth produces: whether of metals or grain. He was in fact the same with Plutus: and both names are formed from the Greek word πλουτος, wealth.
[92] And scare the birds away.] So Virgil, Georg. i. 156:
[93] Nor thou on others’ heaps a gazer be.] Virgil, Georg. i. 158:
[94] And few shall pass thee then with honouring eye.] The Psalmist alludes to a blessing given by the passers-by at harvest: while comparing the wicked to grass withering on the house-top: “Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom: neither do they which go by say, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you.” Psalm cxxix. 7, 8.
[95] The brazier’s forge.] Θακος was properly a seat or bench: and λεσχη, conversation, chit-chat—but they came to be applied to the places where loungers sat and talked: hence the former meant a shop, and the latter a portico, piazza, or public exchange, whither idlers of all kinds resorted. It should seem from Homer that beggars took up their night’s lodging in such places: Odyssey xvii. Melantho, taking Ulysses for a mendicant, says to him,
[96] To gripe thy tumid foot.] Aristotle remarks that, in famished persons, the upper parts of the body are dried up, and the lower extremities become tumid. Scaliger.
[97] Make now your nests.] Grævius finds out that καλιαι may mean huts and barns, as well as nests: and in the true spirit of a verbal commentator, explodes the old interpretation of “facite nidos” and substitutes “exstruite casas:” in which he is followed, like the leader of the flock, by all the modern editors. These viri doctissimi are for ever stumbling on school-boy absurdities in their labour to be critical and sagacious: “they strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” Are the labourers to set about building huts and barns in the middle of harvest? Who does not see that “make nests,” as old Chapman properly renders it, is a mere proverbial figure? “Make hay while the sun shines.”
[98] Those frosts.] Hesiod is said, in this description, to have imitated Orpheus: as if two poets could not describe the appearances and effects of winter, without copying from each other.
[99] Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof.] Hesiod introduces the privacy and retiredness of a virgin’s apartment in the house of her mother, as conveying the idea of more complete shelter.
[100] With shining ointment.] Ointment always accompanied the bath. Thus Homer describes the bathing of Nausicaa and her maids in the sixth book of the Odyssey:
And afterwards of Ulysses:
[101] Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet.] Athenæus, book vii. explodes the notion of the polypus gnawing its own feet, and states that its feet are so injured by the congers or sea-eels. Pliny accounts for the mutilation in rather a marvellous manner. “They are ravenously fond of oysters: these, at the touch, close their shell, and cutting off the claws of the polypus take their food from their plunderer. The polypi, therefore, lie in wait for them when they are open; and placing a little stone, so as not to touch the body of the oyster, and so as not to be ejected by the muscular motion of the shell, assail them in security and extract the flesh. The oyster contracts itself, but to no purpose, having been thus wedged open.” Lib. ix. c. 30.
The same story has been told, with greater probability, of the monkey. “The name of polypi has been peculiarly ascribed to these animals by the ancients, because of the number of feelers or feet of which they are all possessed, and with which they have a slow progressive motion: but the moderns have given the name of polypus to a reptile that lives in fresh water, by no means so large or observable. These are found at the bottom of wet ditches, or attached to the under-surface of the broad-leaved plants that grow and swim on the waters. The same difference holds between these and the sea-water polypi, as between all the productions of the land and the ocean. The marine vegetables and animals grow to a monstrous size. The eel, the pike, or the bream of fresh waters is but small: in the sea they grow to an enormous magnitude. It is so between the polypi of both elements. Those of the sea are found from two feet in length to three or four: and Pliny has even described one, the arms of which were no less than thirty feet long. The polypus contracts itself more or less in proportion as it is touched, or as the water is agitated in which they are seen. Warmth animates them, and cold benumbs them: but it requires a degree of cold approaching congelation, before they are reduced to perfect inactivity. The arms, when the animal is not disturbed, and the season is not unfavourable, are thrown about in various directions in order to seize and entangle its prey. Sometimes three or four of the arms are thus employed; while the rest are contracted, like the horns of a snail, within the animal’s body. It seems capable of giving what length it pleases to these arms: it contracts and extends them at pleasure; and stretches them only in proportion to the remoteness of the object it would seize. Some of these animals so strongly resemble a flowering vegetable in their forms, that they have been mistaken for such by many naturalists. Mr. Hughes, the author of the Natural History of Barbadoes, has described a species of this animal, but has mistaken its nature, and called it a sensitive flowering plant. He observed it to take refuge in the holes of rocks, and, when undisturbed, to spread forth a number of ramifications, each terminated by a flowery petal, which shrunk at the approach of the hand, and withdrew into the hole from which it had before been seen to issue. This plant, however, was no other than an animal of the polypus kind: which is not only to be found in Barbadoes, but also on many parts of the coast of Cornwall, and along the shores of the Continent.” Goldsmith, Animated Nature, vol. vi.
The Polypus is mentioned by Homer, Odys. v.:
[102] Like aged men.] In the original, τριποδι βροτᾶ, a three-footed mortal: that is, a man with a crutch: a metaphor suggested, probably, by the ænigma of the Sphinx.
“What is that, which is two-footed, three-footed, and four-footed, yet one and the same? Œdipus declared that the thing propounded to him was man: for that a man, while an infant, went on four: when grown up, on two; and when old, on three: as using a staff through feebleness.” Diodorus, Bibl. 4.
[103] On a scant warp.] The nap is formed by the threads of the woof: Hesiod therefore directs the woof to be thick and strong, that the nap may the better exclude wet.
[104] A strong-dying ox.] This expression is borrowed from Chapman. Thus we find in Homer, “a thong from a slaughtered ox.” This is illustrated by Plutarch in his Symposiacs, 2. by the fact that the skins of slaughtered beasts are tougher, less flaccid, and less liable to be broken than those of animals which have died of age or distemper. The ancients, says Grævius, made their shoes of the raw hide.
Πιλοι, in Latin udones, were woollen socks; worn, when abroad, inside the shoes; or as substitutes for shoes, in the manner of slippers, when within doors and in the bed-chamber. Le Clerc.
[105] And kid-skins ’gainst the rigid season sew.] This was a sort of rough cloak of skins common to the country people of Greece.
Grævius quotes Varro as authority for a similar covering being worn among the Romans: by soldiers in camp, by mariners, and poor people.
[106] A well-wrought-cap.] In very ancient times the cap answered no other purpose for the head than the sock, which was worn inside the shoe, did for the foot. The helmets were lined with it. Of this kind was that of the helmet which Ulysses, Odys. x. received from Merion:
Eustathius tells us, that in after-times they gave the same term, πιλος, to any covering for the head, and thus they ascribed to Ulysses a cap such as they then used. Thus as the club is the badge of Hercules, so is the cap of Ulysses: as appears from coins and other antiques. The ancient Greeks did not use any covering for the head: and it was from them that the Romans borrowed the custom of going bare-headed. They used caps only on journeys; in excessive heat or cold; or in rainy weather. These caps the Latins called petasos: they were a kind of broad-brimmed hat, like that which is observed in the figures of Mercury. Otherwise, when in the city, they merely wrapped their heads in the lappet of the gown. Grævius.
[107] The wintry tropic.] The winter solstice, according to the table of Petavius, happened in Hesiod’s time on the 30th of December. The acronychal rising of Arcturus took place in the 14th degree of Pisces, which corresponds in the calendar with the 5th of March. Le Clerc.
The acronychal rising of a star is when it rises at the beginning of night: the acronychal setting is when it sets at the end of night. But there are two acronychal risings and settings: the one when the star rises exactly as the sun sets, and sets exactly as the sun rises. This is the true acronychal rising and setting, but it is invisible by reason of the day-light. The other is the visible or apparent acronychal rising and setting; which is, when the star is actually seen in the horizon.
[108] The green artichoke.] Σκολυμος is not the thistle, as has been commonly supposed. Pliny says of it, lib. xxii. c. 22, “The scolymos is also received for food in the East. The stalk is never more than a cubit in height, with scaly leaves, and a black root of a sweet taste.” It is, therefore, the artichoke.
[109] The loud cicada.] The interpreters translate ηχετα canora, and λιγυρην dulcem; and hence an idea is prevalent that Hesiod speaks of the cicada as having a sweet note; but of these epithets the first is properly vocal or sonorous, and the second shrill or stridulous. Anacreon calls the insect “wise in music,” but he seems to think the note musical from its cheerful association with summer:
Virgil applies to it the characteristics of hoarse and querulous. Ecl. ii. Georgic. iii.
“Of this genus the most common European species is the cicada plebeia of Linnæus. This is the insect so often commemorated by the ancient poets; and generally confounded by the major part of translators with the grasshopper. It is a native of the warmer parts of Europe, and particularly of Italy and Greece: appearing in the latter months of summer, and continuing its shrill chirping during the greatest part of the day: generally sitting among the leaves of trees. Notwithstanding the romantic attestations in honour of the cicada, it is certain that modern ears are offended rather than pleased with its voice; which is so very strong and stridulous, that it fatigues by its incessant repetition; and a single cicada, hung up in a cage, has been found to drown the voice of a whole company. The male cicada alone exerts this powerful note, the female being entirely mute. That a sound so piercing should proceed from so small a body may well excite our astonishment; and the curious apparatus, by which it is produced, has justly claimed the attention of the most celebrated investigators. Reaumur and Roësel, in particular, have endeavoured to ascertain the nature of the mechanism by which the noise is produced; and have found that it proceeds from a pair of concave membranes, seated on each side of the first joints of the abdomen: the large concavities of the abdomen, immediately under the two broad lamellæ in the male insect, are also faced by a thin, pellucid, iridescent membrane, serving to increase and reverberate the sound; and a strong muscular apparatus is exerted for the purpose of moving the necessary organs.” Shaw, General Zoology, vol. vi.
The same naturalist specifies several large and elegant insects in this division of the genus cicada. One with the body of a polished black colour, marked with scarlet rings: another of a green hue, with transparent wings, veined also with green; and a third of a fine black varied beneath with yellow streaks, and the wings black towards the base.
[110] Then the plump goat.] This is imitated by Virgil, Georg. i. 341:
[111] But weak of man the heat-enfeebled reins.] Aristotle is of the same opinion. The curious reader may consult the Dictionnaire de Bayle, iv. 222. Note A.
[112] Byblian wine.] This was so called from a region of Thrace: it was a thin wine, and not intoxicating. See Athenæus, i. 31. It is mentioned by Theocritus, Idyl. xiv. 15:
[113] Orion’s beamy strength.] In the table of Petavius the bright star of the foot of Orion makes its heliacal rise in the 18th degree of Cancer: that is, on the 12th of July. Le Clerc.
[114] On gusty ground.] So Varro, de Re Rusticâ, lib. i. c. 51. “The threshing-floor should be in a field, on higher ground, where the wind might blow over it.” See also Columella, lib. xi. c. 20.
Θητα αοικον ποιεισθαι is rendered by Grævius comparare sibi servum domo carentem: and Schrevelius explains the passage to mean that “you should seek out a servant who, having no house of his own to look after, could direct his whole attention to your concerns.” So when the harvest is over, and the corn laid up in the granaries, he is to look out for a labourer! Was there ever a direction so unmeaning as this? I translate the words, (meo periculo) “servum operarium è domo dimitte.”
[116] Keep, too, a sharp-tooth’d dog.] Virgil has a more poetical passage on the same subject, Georg. iii. 404:
By this is understood the heliacal rising of Arcturus, which happened in the time of Hesiod about the 21st of September. Le Clerc.
This is the morning, or cosmical, setting of the Pleiads; which, according to Petavius, happened some time in November. Le Clerc.
[119] Then varying winds.] Virgil cautions the navigator against the appearances of the sun, Georg. i. 455:
[120] Black ocean.] Οινοπι ποντω, wine-coloured. This evidently means black: as the Greek poets apply the epithet black to wine. Hesiod has αιθοπα οινοι, black coloured wine. The sense of this latter epithet is deduced from the blackness caused by burning: as αιθω is to burn.
[121] In summer irksome.] This inconvenience arose from the site of the place: as the scholiasts Proclus and Tzetzes relate: for by the neighbourhood of so high a mountain as Helicon, the breezes, which might have alleviated the summer heat, were intercepted: and in winter, the rays of the sun were excluded from the village; which was also exposed to torrents from the melting of the snow. Robinson.
[122] Decline a slender bark.] Αινειν, commend. This passage is quoted by Plutarch in illustration of words used in a different sense from what they seem to import. Praise means refuse. The same idiom occurs in Virgil’s second Georgic:
[123] O’er the sea’s broad way.] From the following extracts it will not appear extraordinary that this prodigious voyage of Hesiod should have afforded him but little opportunity of acquiring a practical knowledge of navigation. On an inspection of the map we must, however, concede that the passage from Aulis direct to Chalcis is somewhat wider than the part of the strait crossed by a draw-bridge.
“Elle (Chalcis) est située dans un endroit où à la faveur de deux promontoires qui s’avançent de part et d’autre, les côtes de l’île touchent presque à celles de Bèotie.
“Ce leger intervalle, qu’on appelle Euripe, est en partie comblé par une digue. A chacune de ses extrémités est une tour pour le défendre, et un pont-lever pour laisser passer un vaisseau.” Barthelemy, Voyages d’Anacharsis, tom. ii. p. 82.
[124] Where first their tuneful inspiration flow’d.] That is, on mount Helicon. Both Le Clerc and Robinson unaccountably refer the term ενθα, where, to Chalcis: and regard this passage as contradictory to that in the proem to the Theogony: whereas the one confirms the other.
If no verses be wanting here, Hesiod truly needs not boast of his skill in nautical affairs. For what can be more absurd than to confine all navigation within fifty days, and those beginning from the summer-solstice; especially as the summer solstice fell on the 3d of July? I should suppose that there was a deficiency of two verses to this effect:
The similarity of the lines may have caused the copyist’s omission of the two former. I am aware that the art of navigation was in that age imperfect: but if sea-faring men had learnt from experience that navigation was safe fifty days after the summer solstice, they could have learnt from the same teacher that it was equally safe fifty days before it: namely, in the months of May and June. Le Clerc.
[126] Men, too, may sail in spring.] What the poet says here of a spring voyage, I understand of that which may be made in the month of April: which is not much less liable to gales and storms than even the winter months. Certainly it was in April that the fig-tree began to be in leaf. Le Clerc.