Moral Instruction and Good Advice

HESIOD, Works and Days (ca. 800 B.C.E.)

Hesiod, along with Homer, is one of the earliest known sources for Greek civilization. His Theogony covers the history of the gods, while his Works and Days addresses how humans should act. Along with moral instructions, Hesiod also provides recommendations on how to manage farms and households. The text is addressed to his younger brother, Perses, who cheated Hesiod out of his inheritance. When Hesiod took the matter to the judges, Perses bribed them to decide in his favor.

But you, Perses, listen to right and do not foster violence; for violence is bad for a poor man. Even the prosperous cannot easily bear its burden, but is weighed down under it when he has fallen into delusion. The better path is to go by on the other side towards justice. . . .

But they who give straight judgments to strangers and to the men of the land, and go not aside from what is just, their city flourishes, and the people prosper in it: Peace, the nurse of children, is abroad in their land, and all-seeing Zeus1 never decrees cruel war against them. Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but lightheartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit. . . .

And there is virgin Justice, the daughter of Zeus, who is honored and reverenced among the gods who dwell on Olympus, and whenever anyone hurts her with lying slander, she sits beside her father, Zeus the son of Cronos, and tells him of men’s wicked heart, until the people pay for the mad folly of their princes who, evilly minded, pervert judgment and give sentence crookedly. Keep watch against this, you princes, and make straight your judgments, you who devour bribes; put crooked judgments altogether from your thoughts. . . .

To you, foolish Perses, I will speak good sense. Badness can be got easily . . . : the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows: long and steep is the path that leads to her, and it is rough at the first; but when a man has reached the top, then is she easy to reach, though before that she was hard.

That man is altogether best who considers all things himself and marks what will be better afterwards and at the end; and he, again, is good who listens to a good adviser; but whoever neither thinks for himself nor keeps in mind what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man. But do you at any rate, always remembering my charge, work, high-born Perses, that Hunger may hate you, and venerable Demeter2 richly crowned may love you and fill your barn with food; for Hunger is altogether a good comrade for the sluggard. Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labor of the bees, eating without working; but let it be your care to order your work properly, that in the right season your barns may be full of victual. Through work men grow rich in flocks and substance, and working they are much better loved by the immortals. Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. . . .

Let the wage promised to a friend be fixed; . . . and get a witness; for trust and mistrust, alike ruin men. . . .

First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox for the plough — a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the oxen as well — and make everything ready at home, so that you may not have to ask of another, and he refuse you, and so, because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to nothing. Do not put your work off till tomorrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.

From Hesiod, Homer, and Hugh Gerald Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), pp. 19–33.