Hesiod's WORKS AND DAYS COMPLETE

Translated with Notes by Evelyn-White. Elpenor's notes added for this online publication, with an asterisk (*)

Hesiod Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Hesiod in Print

31 Pages

Page 17

(ll. 504-535) Avoid the month Lenaeon [1321], wretched days, all of them fit to skin an ox, and the frosts which are cruel when Boreas blows over the earth. He blows across horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea and stirs it up, while earth and the forest howl. On many a high-leafed oak and thick pine he falls and brings them to the bounteous earth in mountain glens: then all the immense wood roars and the beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hide is covered with fur; for with his bitter blast he blows even through them although they are shaggy-breasted. He goes even through an ox's hide; it does not stop him. Also he blows through the goat's fine hair. But through the fleeces of sheep, because their wool is abundant, the keen wind Boreas pierces not at all; but it makes the old man curved as a wheel. And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One [1322] gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men [1323], and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes. Then the horned and unhorned denizens of the wood, with teeth chattering pitifully, flee through the copses and glades, and all, as they seek shelter, have this one care, to gain thick coverts or some hollow rock. Then, like the Three-legged One [1324] whose back is broken and whose head looks down upon the ground, like him, I say, they wander to escape the white snow.

(ll. 536-563) Then put on, as I bid you, a soft coat and a tunic to the feet to shield your body,--and you should weave thick woof on thin warp. In this clothe yourself so that your hair may keep still and not bristle and stand upon end all over your body.

[Footnote 1321: The latter part of January and earlier part of February.]

[Footnote 1322: i.e. the octopus or cuttle.]

[Footnote 1323: i.e. the darker-skinned people of Africa, the Egyptians or Aethiopians.]

[Footnote 1324: i.e. an old man walking with a staff (the 'third leg'-- as in the riddle of the Sphinx).]

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