“Work foolish Perses, do the work that the gods have decreed for men…”

So continues the brow beating by song, as if a country music singer scolded and instructed his drunk, womanizing brother at the saloon…

Hesiod is lucky he made it out of Ascra alive. One wonders if reciting this poem to the wastrel sons of a host down in Lokri is what got him killed?

Hesiod admonished Perses to stop begging from his neighbors, who will eventually turn away. This conversation has been overhead by me many times as I have stood among dusky Baltimoreans.

“I suggest you reflect on clearing your debts and avoiding famine. First, a household, a woman and a plowing ox—not a wife, but a slave, one who could follow the flocks. The tools in the house must all be made ready… A man who puts off work wrestles with Blights.”

The latter condition of Blights, is capitalized to emphasize these as manifest heavenly powers, sendings, like the plagues of Egypt in Exodus, divine punishments for sloth.

“Holm-oak” is the best wood for fashioning a plow tree to be fixed with dowels to poles by a carpenter. Bay or elm are the best for worm free poles and oak the stock.

Two nine-year old male oxen are the best, and behind them should be set a slave of 40, who is still young enough to plow but too old to be capering with other young slaves when he should be down to business. Eight ounces of bread are to be his ration, it seems for breakfast.

“And no younger men is better besides him to sprinkle seed and avoid over-sowing,” indicating two mature bondmen are needed for plowing and sowing, with “A slave boy just behind with the mattock should make it hard work for the birds by covering up seed.”

“Command your slaves, ‘It will not always be summer,’ build your huts.’”

Of Lenaion, the depth of winter, Hesiod is at his lyric best, with 53 lines devoted to winter preparations and descriptions of the severity of the climate:

“...the North Wind blows, coming over horse-rearing Thrace, he blows over the sea and stirs it, and earth and woodland roar… The immense forest cries aloud and animals shiver and tuck their tails… he makes an old man bowl along… horned and hornless forest beasts, gnashing run off through the windy glades, all those, in want of shelter, seek deep lairs in caves, no other thought on their mind… as they try to avoid the white snow…”

“At that time oxen should have half, a man the full ration…”

The slaves and wife are beasts of burden with their food dolled out by the same hand. This puts the farmer at the mercy of those local barons who have armed men to round up slaves and discourage uprisings.

Hesiod leads Perses out of winter, through spring and into summer, “The slaves, drive them to thresh Demeter’s holy grain in a well ventilated place… When you have stored all of your crops, engage a man with no household [an overseer] and a woman without child, a bondwoman with child at her side is of less use. And keep a hound with sharp teeth, well fed, lest the lazy man steel your food. Bring in hay and rubbish so that your oxen and mules have enough to last. Then the slaves can unyoke the oxen and rest their poor legs.”

A nice paragraph on summer making the wine and milk sweeter, women more amorous, and men weaker, is a balanced piece of coping for the farmer, that encouraged the hardworking homesteader to stop in the heat of summer and enjoy a few days.

This is followed by brief advice on wine making, extensive advice on shipping and sailing, cautioning Perses that their father, “One day came here, making the long crossing from Aeolian Kyme, in his dark ship, not running from riches, not from wealth and prosperity, but from evil poverty, which Zeus dispenses to men. And he settled near Helicon, in a miserable village called Ascra, bad in winter, foul in summer, good at no time.”

Discouraging sailing, Hesiod realizes his brother would be tempted to be a merchant, gives what knowledge he has, warns against the perils of the sea, and notes, “But men do even that in their folly, because property is like life to wretched mortals.”

As with farming, family is still to be in season.

“In season bring a wife home,” [at about age 30, she on her fifth year into puberty, a virgin from nearby]… “For a man acquires nothing better than a good wife, nothing worse than a bad one, the food-sneaker, who burns a man without a fire, strong though he be and consigns him to premature old age.”

“Beware the punishment of the immortal blessed ones.”

What follows is an extensive work of taboos, witch tales, superstitions and common sense, to include holy days and lucky days. Perses, at this point was certainly yawning, restless with this lesson, looking at some slave girl’s plump butt. So, for his case, let us pass to the end of this pleasing poetic almanac of life lessons for surviving the accursed world of the Age of Iron:

He advising never mocking the poor, keeping a close tongue, and that speaking ill of folks invokes the evil goddess Gossip.

“These are the days best for men’s acts on earth. The others are days of changeable omen, doomless, yet not fortunate. Different men commend different days, but few know that among those chosen days, ‘sometimes a day is a stepmother, sometimes a mother.’”

“Well with god and fate is he who works with this knowledge, giving the immortals no cause for offense, observing the bird signs and avoiding transgressions.”

Hesiod was a wise, hard working, middle class man, who knew the fix was in, but hoped in his own words that heaven would not turn away and would enforce right over wrong on earth. He was not the first or the last good man to be dead wrong, for Hope remained in Pandora’s jar.

Thank you, Ode-singer, for keeping me company this week. I will finish with your brilliantly brutal The Shield of Achilles.