Concept
Works and Days
Overview
Works and Days (Ancient Greek: Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, romanized: Érga kaì Hēmérai) is a didactic poem written by ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. It is in dactylic hexameter and contains 828 lines. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts.
Scholars have seen this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of colonial expeditions in search of new land. In the poem, Hesiod also offers his brother extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life. Works and Days is perhaps best known for its two mythological aetiologies for the toil and pain that define the human condition—the story of Prometheus and Pandora, and the so-called Myth of Five Ages.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
202, 489; Arcadian prophet, iii. 38; quoted, iv. 248, 335 _et seq._; malice of, iv. 331-371; v. 397. Herondas, apothegm of, i. 410. Herons, artifices of the, v. 176. Herophilus, opinion of, iii. 128, 163. Hesianax, his Third Book of African History, v. 465. Hesiod, quoted, Works and Days, i. 22, 65, 70, 138, 156, 178, 261, 296, 307, 325; Works and Days, ii. 24; spare diet recommended by, 27; and the dolphin, 36, 37…
Plutarch, Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 1
Names Works and Days several times.
As soon as writing came into fashion, wise men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct, sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms or wise sayings…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Works and Days is.
The poems of Homer have the most perfect metre, the hexameter, which is also called heroic. It is called hexameter because each line has six feet: one of these is of two long syllables, called spondee; the other, of three syllables, one long and two short, which is called dactyl. Both are isochronic. These in interchangeable order fill out the hexameter verse. It is called heroic because in it the deeds of the…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Works and Days is.
Philosophers who discussed Works and Days
Related ideas
- Hesiod
- Hero
- Human condition
- Latin
- Prometheus
- Agora
- Theogony
- Golden Age
- Zeus
- Ages of Man
- Didacticism
- Loeb Classical Library
- Dactylic hexameter
- Eris (mythology)
- Greek Heroic Age
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of history.