Hesiod's Works and Days: A Translation and Commentary for the Social Sciences - Hardcover

Hesiod

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520203836 ISBN 13: 9780520203839

Verlag: University of California Press, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

This new, annotated translation of Hesiod's Works and Days is a collaboration between David W. Tandy, a classicist, and Walter Neale, an economist and economic historian. Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet whose Works and Days discusses agricultural practices and society in general. Classicists and ancient historians have turned to Works and Days for its insights on Greek mythology and religion. The poem also sheds light on economic history and ancient agriculture, and is a good resource for social scientists interested in these areas. This translation emphasizes the activities and problems of a practicing agriculturist as well as the larger, changing political and economic institutions of the early archaic period.

The authors provide a clear, accurate translation along with notes aimed at a broad audience. The introductory essay discusses the changing economic, political and trading world of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., while the notes present the range and possible meanings of important Greek terms and references in the poem and highlight areas of ambiguity in our understanding of Works and Days.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David W. Tandy is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and coeditor of From Political Economy to Anthropology: Situating Economic Life in Past Societies (1994). Walter C. Neale is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of Developing Rural India: Policies, Politics, and Progress (1990).

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Works and Days: A Translation and Commentary for the Social Sciences

By Hesiod

University of California Press

Copyright 1997 Hesiod
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520203836
Introduction

Works and Days is a Greek poem of 828 hexameter verses1 that was composed in the early seventh century B.C.E. by a man named Hesiod who had a special interest in matters pertaining to agriculture: when to plant what, how to manage labor resources, and above all how to achieve productive independence (autarky) and thus to avoid hunger. In the poem Hesiod offers instruction and advice to his brother, Perses.

Hesiod's poem is important to scholars because it sheds light on the universal plight of the peasantry throughout human history; conversely, studies in peasantry help us to understand Hesiod

The earliest poetry of the Greeks was composed orally in a meter we call dactylic hexameter, each line made up of six measures (dactyls) of one long syllable followed by either two shorts or one long (the sixth measure is always either long-long or long-short). Hence the number of syllables in a line can range from twelve (very rare) to seventeen, the average being close to fifteen. Both Homer and Hesiod composed in dactylic hexameter.

and his world. Classicists and ancient historians tend to study Hesiod; other historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists tend to study peasants. In this work we would like to bring the ancient Greek poet-farmer more clearly into focus for social scientists and to bring some specific tools and assumptions about social organization and forms of economic integration into focus for classicists and ancient historians.

Over the years, most of the work on Hesiod, quite understandably, has been undertaken by ancient historians (with emphasis on religion and myth) and by philologists. Hesiod has always dwelt in the shadow of Homer. In fact, a standardized text of Hesiod did not appear until 1902 (Rzach 1958 [1902]). The great (and prolific) classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff published his edition and commentary on Works and Days in 1928, but it is not unfair to characterize this work as condescending to Hesiod and occasionally peculiar (see, for example, Wilamowitz's brief discussion of Hesiod's status in Ascra, referred to below, p. 26). Most of the best work on Hesiod in the first half of the twentieth century was undertaken by Germans, culminating in Friedrich Solmsen's influential Hesiod and Aeschylus (1949) and the magisterial third chapter of Hermann Frnkel's Dichtung und Philosophie des frhen Griechentums (1951). The generally philological focus of Hesiodic studies is exemplified by the collection of essays in the Fondation Hardt series (Reverdin 1962). Among the essays are Solmsen's "Hesiodic Motifs in Plato," Verdenius's "Aufbau und Absicht der Erga ," and von Fritz's "Das Hesiodische in den Werken Hesiods."

Solmsen's Oxford text displaced that of Alois Rzach as the standard in 1970 (now Solmsen 1990). Martin West's indispensable

edition of Works and Days (1978), with introduction and commentary, focuses on the dependence of the poem on the wisdom literature of the East; W. J. Verdenius's commentary (1985) on the first 382 lines focuses carefully on the text itself. Examples of more recent work along these narrowly philological lines are Robert Lamberton's Hesiod (1988) and Richard Hamilton's Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry (1989), both of which emphasize the literary merits and structure of the poem. Both are excellent studies. Although their intended audiences and their quality vary, the numerous recent translations (Lattimore 1959; Wender 1973; Athanassakis 1983; Frazier 1983; West 1988; Lombardo 1993) attest to increased interest in Hesiod. There are also very interesting new approaches to Hesiod within the discipline of classics, which we will comment on below.

Of course, Hesiod has also been studied by nonclassiciststo wit, sociologists, anthropologists, and economistsand we intend to report much of that work. Some have looked at Hesiod for a kind of validation of observations about other peasant types (e.g., Francis 1945; Redfield 1956, 107ff.). It is valuable to compare the Hesiod of Works and Days and the prophet Amos of the Old Testament (Andrews 1943). Karl Polanyi (1977, chap. 11) looked at Hesiod with an eye on the rise of the individual in early Greece.

Social scientists may find it helpful to view Works and Days as information and advice on the world and how to live in it, the

information and advice being divided into three parts. The first part (1201) is a brief history of the relations of humans with the gods, including a narrative of the degenerative series of five races, culminating in the present-day Iron Race, into which Hesiod wishes he had never been born. Hesiod offers a clear statement to the effect that living today is not as good as it used to be. There are specific but never clearly stated references to a legal problem: it seems not unlikely, perhaps even probable, that Hesiod's brother, Perses, has either brought or is bringing an action against him. If so, such circumstances help us to understand Hesiod's situation and advice later in the poem; but the first part of the poem by itself reveals little about the organization of Hesiod's society or the conduct of daily life there.

From the poem's center (202764) one can derive a good deal of information about the organization of the society in which Hesiod lived. One can also argue ideas about what that society had been and how it was changing; but such constructs can be no more than untestable hypotheses. About what went before Hesiod we have some material evidence in the archaeological record, but textual evidence for the preceding period is limited to the Homeric epics, and interpretation of these also requires care and involves disputes. In Works and Days Hesiod makes remarks about what went before, but we have no way of knowing whether Hesiod's picture of the past was accurate, a nostalgic picture of the "good old days" (perhaps not unlike Homer's world of heroes in the epics), or some unknown and unknowable mixture of the two. In this introduction and in the notes in the text we present some hypotheses that we think are as plausible as others, or more plau-

sible, but we want to stress that these are to be regarded as interpretations, not as explanations of the text.

The last part of the poem (765828) bears little structural relation to what precedes it, and makes no mention of the details of Hesiod's world; it consists largely of advice about what to do month by month and day by day. To modern social scientists this part of the poem will appear to contain more magic than sensible advice for the farmer's quotidian rounds, but within the magic one finds much evidence about what people were doing when, and some further evidence about social organization. Again, while the import of some lines is clear (e.g., when people went on trading trips), one can only guessor, much better, refrain from guessingabout other matters (e.g., what sort of goods were traded, and where). Throughout this part of the poem, as well as throughout the second part, we have offered many hypotheses; but, again, in each case, we have tried to indicate that we are offering possible interpretations, not...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520203836
• ISBN 13: 9780520203839
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 149
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar