(ll. 802-804) Avoid fifth days: they are unkindly and terrible. On a fifth day, they say, the Erinyes assisted at the birth of Horcus (Oath) whom Eris (Strife) bare to trouble the forsworn. {[0-9]} (ll. 805-809) Look about you very carefully and throw out Demeter’s holy grain upon the well-rolled 1343 threshing floor on the seventh of the mid-month. Let the woodman cut beams for house building and plenty of ships’ timbers, such as are suitable for ships. On the fourth day begin to build narrow ships.
(ll. 810-813) The ninth of the mid-month improves towards evening; but the first ninth of all is quite harmless for men. It is a good day on which to beget or to be born both for a male and a female: it is never an wholly evil day.
(ll. 814-818) Again, few know that the twenty-seventh of the month is best for opening a wine-jar, and putting yokes on the necks of oxen and mules and swift-footed horses, and for hauling a swift ship of many thwarts down to the sparkling sea; few call it by its right name.
(ll. 819-821) On the fourth day open a jar. The fourth of the mid-month is a day holy above all. And again, few men know that the fourth day after the twentieth is best while it is morning: towards evening it is less good.
(ll. 822-828) These days are a great blessing to men on earth; but the rest are changeable, luckless, and bring nothing. Everyone praises a different day but few know their nature. Sometimes a day is a stepmother, sometimes a mother. That man is happy and lucky in them who knows all these things and does his work without offending the deathless gods, who discerns the omens of birds and avoids transgressions.
THE DIVINATION BY BIRDS
Proclus on Works and Days, 828: Some make the _Divination by Birds_, which Apollonius of Rhodes rejects as spurious, follow this verse (_Works and Days_, 828).
THE ASTRONOMY
Fragment #1—Athenaeus xi, p. 491 d: And the author of “The Astronomy”, which is attributed forsooth to Hesiod, always calls them (the Pleiades) Peleiades: ‘but mortals call them Peleiades’; and again, ‘the stormy Peleiades go down’; and again, ‘then the Peleiades hide away....’
Scholiast on Pindar, Nem. ii. 16: The Pleiades.... whose stars are these:—‘Lovely Teygata, and dark-faced Electra, and Alcyone, and bright Asterope, and Celaeno, and Maia, and Merope, whom glorious Atlas begot....’ ((LACUNA)) ‘In the mountains of Cyllene she (Maia) bare Hermes, the herald of the gods.’
Fragment #2—Scholiast on Aratus 254: But Zeus made them (the sisters of Hyas) into the stars which are called Hyades. Hesiod in his Book about Stars tells us their names as follows: ‘Nymphs like the Graces 1401, Phaesyle and Coronis and rich-crowned Cleeia and lovely Phaco and long-robed Eudora, whom the tribes of men upon the earth call Hyades.’
Fragment #3—Pseudo-Eratosthenes Catast. frag. 1: 1402 The Great Bear.]—Hesiod says she (Callisto) was the daughter of Lycaon and lived in Arcadia. She chose to occupy herself with wild-beasts in the mountains together with Artemis, and, when she was seduced by Zeus, continued some time undetected by the goddess, but afterwards, when she was already with child, was seen by her bathing and so discovered. Upon this, the goddess was enraged and changed her into a beast. Thus she became a bear and gave birth to a son called Arcas. But while she was in the mountains, she was hunted by some goat-herds and given up with her babe to Lycaon. Some while after, she thought fit to go into the forbidden precinct of Zeus, not knowing the law, and being pursued by her own son and the Arcadians, was about to be killed because of the said law; but Zeus delivered her because of her connection with him and put her among the stars, giving her the name Bear because of the misfortune which had befallen her.
Comm. Supplem. on Aratus, p. 547 M. 8: Of Bootes, also called the Bear-warden. The story goes that he is Arcas the son of Callisto and Zeus, and he lived in the country about Lycaeum. After Zeus had seduced Callisto, Lycaon, pretending not to know of the matter, entertained Zeus, as Hesiod says, and set before him on the table the babe which he had cut up.
Fragment #4—Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catast. fr. xxxii: Orion.]—Hesiod says that he was the son of Euryale, the daughter of Minos, and of Poseidon, and that there was given him as a gift the power of walking upon the waves as though upon land. When he was come to Chios, he outraged Merope, the daughter of Oenopion, being drunken; but Oenopion when he learned of it was greatly vexed at the outrage and blinded him and cast him out of the country. Then he came to Lemnos as a beggar and there met Hephaestus who took pity on him and gave him Cedalion his own servant to guide him. So Orion took Cedalion upon his shoulders and used to carry him about while he pointed out the roads. Then he came to the east and appears to have met Helius (the Sun) and to have been healed, and so returned back again to Oenopion to punish him; but Oenopion was hidden away by his people underground. Being disappointed, then, in his search for the king, Orion went away to Crete and spent his time hunting in company with Artemis and Leto. It seems that he threatened to kill every beast there was on earth; whereupon, in her anger, Earth sent up against him a scorpion of very great size by which he was stung and so perished. After this Zeus, at one prayer of Artemis and Leto, put him among the stars, because of his manliness, and the scorpion also as a memorial of him and of what had occurred.
Fragment #5—Diodorus iv. 85: Some say that great earthquakes occurred, which broke through the neck of land and formed the straits 1403, the sea parting the mainland from the island. But Hesiod, the poet, says just the opposite: that the sea was open, but Orion piled up the promontory by Peloris, and founded the close of Poseidon which is especially esteemed by the people thereabouts. When he had finished this, he went away to Euboea and settled there, and because of his renown was taken into the number of the stars in heaven, and won undying remembrance.
THE PRECEPTS OF CHIRON
Fragment #1—Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. vi. 19: ‘And now, pray, mark all these things well in a wise heart. First, whenever you come to your house, offer good sacrifices to the eternal gods.’
Fragment #2—Plutarch Mor. 1034 E: ‘Decide no suit until you have heard both sides speak.’
Fragment #3—Plutarch de Orac. defectu ii. 415 C: ‘A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag’s life is four times a crow’s, and a raven’s life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.’
Fragment #4—Quintilian, i. 15: Some consider that children under the age of seven should not receive a literary education... That Hesiod was of this opinion very many writers affirm who were earlier than the critic Aristophanes; for he was the first to reject the _Precepts_, in which book this maxim occurs, as a work of that poet.
THE GREAT WORKS
Fragment #1—Comm. on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. v. 8: The verse, however (the slaying of Rhadamanthys), is in Hesiod in the _Great Works_ and is as follows: ‘If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil increase; if men do to him as he has done, it will be true justice.’
Fragment #2—Proclus on Hesiod, Works and Days, 126: Some believe that the Silver Race (is to be attributed to) the earth, declaring that in the _Great Works_ Hesiod makes silver to be of the family of Earth.
THE IDAEAN DACTYLS
Fragment #1—Pliny, Natural History vii. 56, 197: Hesiod says that those who are called the Idaean Dactyls taught the smelting and tempering of iron in Crete.
Fragment #2—Clement, Stromateis i. 16. 75: Celmis, again, and Damnameneus, the first of the Idaean Dactyls, discovered iron in Cyprus; but bronze smelting was discovered by Delas, another Idaean, though Hesiod calls him Scythes 1501.
THE THEOGONY
(ll. 1-25) From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse’s Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet. Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis-holder and queenly Hera of Argos who walks on golden sandals and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-holder bright-eyed Athene, and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth-holder who shakes the earth, and reverend Themis and quick-glancing 1601 Aphrodite, and Hebe with the crown of gold, and fair Dione, Leto, Iapetus, and Cronos the crafty counsellor, Eos and great Helius and bright Selene, Earth too, and great Oceanus, and dark Night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me—the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis: