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  • Notes on Hesiod's Works and Days, 383-828
  • E. F. Beall

Errata: In E. F. Beall's "Notes on Hesiod's Works and Days, 383- 828," AJP 122.2 (June 2001):155-71, the references to the works of Hoekstra and Solmsen were inadvertently switched in proofs to cite the wrong work of each author. Page 156, notes 5 and 9 should have referred to Hoekstra's "Hésiode, Les Travaux et les jours. . ."; page 158, note 14 should have referred to Solmsen's Hesiodi: Theogonia, Opera et Dies, Scutum. We regret the error. [End Page 154]

In the interests of stimulating critical attention to the works and days proper of the Works and Days, lines 383-828, I offer some remarks on selected problems of the text.1

1. The poem's addressee will need

(405-6)

West2 and others suspect 406,3 mostly becfause Aristotle does not observe it and sees the gunē as a wife (Oec. 1343a, Pol. 1252b),4 but several critics beginning with Scaliger (sixteenth century) have noted that this is no [End Page 155] basis for doubt. Although some merely impugn the philosopher's memory without evidence, Lanzi in his 1808 commentary and Erbse (1993, 24) make a substantive point: marriage upon starting farming (prōtista) is inconsistent with Hesiod's advice to wait until age thirty at 696-97.5 One can respond that Aristotle may have different recensions from ours here (one without 406 and 695-705) and elsewhere.6 But if the issue is whose recensions are best, then despite any feeling that Aristotle is "closer" to the originals, other epic citations hurt the case for his texts. For example,7 we read today that trembling (tromos) seized (hele) Hector upon meeting Achilles (Il. 22.136), and he fled for a time (to 22.225); yet Aristotle says (EE 1230a) that what seized (heile) him at the encounter was shame (aidōs), making him brave and able to face the danger. At first sight this conflates the actual line with an earlier one, 22.105 (= 6.442): Hector is ashamed (aideomai) for urging battle at another time.8 But possibly Aristotle has, rather, a version of the Iliad without character development, where Hector and Achilles get right to their contest. If so, our version is superior: the temporary flight allows introduction of a wealth of detail; see Richardson 1993, 121-32. With Hesiod, Metaphysics 984b omits Theogony 118, to make Gaea/Earth support not just all the gods of Olympus but simply "all," a role few would now agree the poem could intend for her. Lesser concerns about 406 being easily met,9 it may be kept in the text bequeathed to us. [End Page 156]

2.

10

(410-13)

Etōsioergos is often construed as "lazy" or the like. Thus West explains the word as the man's neglect of his ergon rendering it etōsios, "useless." But as Lehrs says against Voss's equivalent, "säumiger," etōsio-ergos is really frustra-laborans: acting uselessly, that is, without purpose; it is not causing uselessness via inaction.11 Thus, for example, Tandy and Neale: "works at vain tasks." Etōsioergos should be different from anaballomenos in 412, given ou . . . oude, contra West's forced interpretation of hendiadys. The "lazy" construal may stem from belief that gar indicates explanation of anaballesthai in 410, but this particle's causal thrust is inherently loose. Moreover, it can govern more than a clause or sentence (de Jong), and it is natural to take the entire segment 411-13 as the quasi-explanation of 410.12 In short, 411 and 412 single out two distinct modes of avoiding serious work, puttering and putting off, rather than simply attack the avoidance in broad strokes twice. It is also possible that 413 adds yet a third mode: Amboliergos might be "working sporadically" rather than delaying the required labor all at once. Anabolē in its sense of "thrown upward" can refer to an intermittent process (as a boiling liquid makes bubbles; Arist., Pr. 936b), so that the delay of any entity to which it was prefixed might be thought fragmented. [End Page 157...

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