Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/131

And with the lapse of the revolving year,
When sharpen'd is the sickle, re-appear.
Law of the fields, and known to every swain
Who turns the fallow soil beside the main;
Or who, remote from billowy ocean's gales,
Tills the rich glebe of inland-winding vales.
Plough naked still,^[1] and naked sow the soil,
And naked reap; if kindly to thy toil

that different authors vary in fixing the duration of their occultation from about thirty-one days to above forty.

1. Plough naked still.] Virgil copies this direction, Georg. i:
   Plough naked swain! and naked sow the land,
   For lazy winter numbs the labouring hand.Dryden.
   
   
   Servius explains the meaning to be, that he should plough and sow “in fair weather, when it was so hot as to make clothing superfluous.” This seems to be very idle advice, and fixes on Virgil the imputation of a truism. An equally superfluous counsel is ascribed by Robinson and Grævius to Hesiod. We are correctly told that both γυμνος and nudus applied to men who had laid aside their upper garment, whether the pallia or toga, the Grecian cloak or the Roman gown; and thus is explained the passage in Matthew, xxiv. 18: “Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes:” but as no husbandman, whether Greek or Italian, unless insane, would dream of following the plough in a trailing cloak, Hesiod may safely be acquitted of so unnecessary a piece of advice. In the hot climates of Greece and Italy, it was probably the custom for active husbandmen to bare