How the Days Fit the Works in Hesiod's Works and Days

Abstract

How the Days Fit the Works in Hesiod’s Works And Days André Lardinois Ever since the nineteenth century, scholars have questioned the authenticity of the catalogue, at the end of Hesiod’s Works and Days, of favorable and unfavorable days (765–828; hereafter termed Days). Ul-rich von Wilamowitz–Moellendorff omitted the entire section from his 1928 edition, and Friedrich Solmsen bracketed it in the Oxford Classical Text.1 Even scholars who defend the passage, Martin West for example, are willing to concede that there is a misfit; West argues that the whole poem is a compilation of loose passages, and the Days is no exception.2 I argue here for the authenticity of the Days by demonstrating the connection of that passage to the poem’s other themes. By “authentic” I mean that the same poet who composed most of lines 1–764—minor interpolations, of course, cannot be excluded—also gave the Days its present form.3 It is possible that this poet worked from one or more preexisting calendars in verse, but if so, he went out of his way to integrate [End Page 319] them into the rest of the poem.4 This must have occurred before the end of the sixth century b.c.e., when Heraclitus refers to the passage as Hesiodic.5 In a celebrated article Hermann Fränkel has shown how the idea that humans are “ephemeral”—not in the modern sense of “short– lived,” but of “having to live from day to day”—pervades archaic Greek literature.6 I believe that Hesiod expresses the same thought in Works and Days, particularly through his inclusion of the calendar of good and bad days at the end of the poem. This final section on the Days is therefore crucial to our understanding of the poem. In my analysis the Days refers back to themes which are treated more fully in the earlier parts of the poem, just as these earlier parts already allude to the idea that humans have to live from day to day. In this way the various themes of the poem, as well as the cosmological spheres they represent, are interconnected. Before examining the various themes of Works and Days, however, let us review the different arguments for and against the authenticity of the Days. QUESTIONS ABOUT AUTHENTICITY Among recent critics, Solmsen (1963) and Walter Marg (1970, 383–86) have formulated the strongest objections against the authenticity of the Days. They point to (1) the irrational beliefs expressed in the passage, which would contradict the rational outlook of Hesiod in the rest of the poem, and (2) the fact that in the rest of the poem time is not reckoned by days of the lunar month but by the movement of the sun and the constellations. They further argue that (3) the passage on the Days is hard to reconcile with some of the instructions in the part of the poem dealing with agricultural work (286–617), (4) it is inconsistent with the [End Page 320] description of Hesiod’s farm in that earlier part of the poem, (5) lacks internal coherence, and (6) does not show Hesiod’s customary style and wit. West (1978, 346–50) has responded to most of these objections. To his arguments I here add some of my own and those of other recent critics. First of all, belief in lucky and unlucky days was widespread in antiquity,7 and similar “irrational” beliefs are found not only in W&D 724–59 (which Solmsen and Marg, following Wilamowitz, therefore want to athetize as well), but also in W&D 391–92, where Perses is instructed “to strip to sow, strip to plow, and strip to reap.” West rightly suspects that the reluctance of some critics to allow for irrational or superstitious beliefs in a classical poet like Hesiod lies behind the rejection of these lines in Works and Days.8 Solmsen himself expressed doubt about the significance of the fact that the Works largely measures time by the movement of the sun and the constellations (286–617), whereas the Days are arranged according to the lunar month. In the Works reference is made...