Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/106

84 84 HISTORY OP THE provident wife ; and provide yourself with a plentiful, but not too nume- rous an offspring, and you will be blessed with prosperity." With these and similar rules of economy (of which many are, perhaps, rather adapted to the wants of daily life than noble and elevated) the first part of the poem concludes ; its object being to improve the character and habits of Perses, to deter him from seeking riches by litigation, and to incite him to a life of labour as the only source of permanent prosperity. Mythical narratives, fables, descriptions, and moral apophthegms, partly of a proverbial kind, are ingeniously chosen and combined so as to illustrate and enforce the principal idea. In the second part, Hesiod shows Perses the succession in which his labours must follow if he determines to lead a life of industry. Observing the natural order of the seasons, he begins with the time of ploughing and sowing, and treats of the implements used in these processes, the plough and the beasts which draw it. He then proceeds to show how a prudent husbandman may employ the winter at home, when the labours of the field are at a stand ; adding a description of the storms and cold of a Boeotian winter, which several modern critics have (though probably without sufficient ground) considered as exaggerated, and have therefore doubted its genuineness. With the first appearanae of spring follows the dressing and cutting of the vines, and, at the rising of the Pleiades (in the first half of our May), the reaping of the grain. The poet then tells us how the hottest season should be employed, when the corn is threshed. The vintage, which immediately precedes the ploughing, concludes the circle of these rural occupations. But as the poet's object was not to describe the charms of a country life, but to teach all the means of honest gain which were then open to the Ascraean countryman, he next proceeds, after having completed the subject of husbandry, to treat with equal detail that of navigation. Here we perceive how, in the time of Hesiod, the Boeotian farmer himself shipped the overplus of his corn and wine, and transported it to countries where these products were less abundant. If the poet had had any other kind of trade in view, he would have been more explicit upon the subject of the goods to be exported, and would have stated how a husbandman like Perses was to procure them. Hesiod recommends for a voyage of this kind the late part of the summer, on the 50th day after the summer solstice, when there was no work to be done in the field, and when the weather in the Greek seas is the most certain. All these precepts relating to the works of industry interrupt, some- what suddenly, the succession of economical rules for the management of a family*. The poet now speaks of the time of life when a man ed. Gdttling) could be placed before ^Uuvoyivhi 2s ora/; i"n (376). Then all the pru- dential maxims relating to neighbours, friends, wife, and children, would be explained before the labours of agriculture, and the subsequent rules of domestic economy would all refer to the maxim, tS I' ottiv aQu.vd.Tcav a««^y ■z-t$vu,yfiivo$ tlvai.
 * It would be a great improvement if the verses relating to marriage (697 — 705,