Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/53

Rh a family is thrifty there will be the greater aggregate increase of property. Such is the advice, he remarks in concluding the first part of his poem, which he has to offer to any one who desires wealth; to observe these rules and cautions, and to devote himself to the systematic routine of the farming operations, which, to his mind, constitute the highroad to getting rich.

From the very outset of the second part of the 'Works and Days,' a more definite and practical character attaches to Hesiod's precepts touching agriculture. Hitherto his exhortation to his brother had harped on the one string of "work, work;" and now, as agriculture was the Bœotian's work, he proceeds to prescribe and illustrate the modus operandi, and the seasons best adapted for each operation. This is really the didactic portion of Hesiod's Georgics, if we may so call his poem on agriculture; and it is curiously interesting to study, by the light he affords, the theory and practice of very old-world farming.

As apparently he was ignorant of any calendar of months by which the time of year might be described, he has recourse to the rising and setting of the stars, whose annual motion was known to him, to indicate the seasons of the year. Thus the husbandman is bidden to begin cutting his corn at the rising of the Pleiads (in May), and his ploughing when they set (in November). They are invisible for forty days and nights, during which time, as he tells us later on, sailing, which with the Bœotian was second in importance to agriculture (inasmuch as it subserved the exportation of his produce), was suspended, and works