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REMAINS OF HESIOD.
These days obey the all-wise Jove's behest:
The first new moon, the fourth, the seventh is blest:
Phœbus, on this, from mild Latona born,
The golden-sworded god, beheld the morn.
The eighth, nor less the ninth, with favouring skies,
Speeds of th' increasing month each rustic enterprise;
And on th' eleventh let thy flocks be shorn,
And on the twelfth be reap'd thy laughing corn:
Both days are good: yet is the twelfth confest
More fortunate, with fairer omen blest.
The first new moon, the fourth, the seventh is blest:
Phœbus, on this, from mild Latona born,
The golden-sworded god, beheld the morn.
The eighth, nor less the ninth, with favouring skies,
Speeds of th' increasing month each rustic enterprise;
And on th' eleventh let thy flocks be shorn,
And on the twelfth be reap'd thy laughing corn:
Both days are good: yet is the twelfth confest
More fortunate, with fairer omen blest.
- ↑ What time the people to the courts repair.] The forenoon was distinguished by the time of the court of judicature sitting, as in this passage of Hesiod; the afternoon by the time of its breaking up, as in the following of Homer:At what hour the judge,
After decision made of numerous strifes
Between young candidates for honour, leaves
The forum, for refreshment’s sake at home.
Cowper, Odyss. xii.
of days. The first was called μηνος αρχομενου or ισταμενου; the second, μηνος μησουντος; and the third, μηνος φθινοντος, παυομενου, or ληγοντος: the beginning month, the middle month, the declining or ending month. The words were put in the genitive case because some day was placed before them. Thus the middle-first or first of the second decade was the eleventh of the whole month; and the first of the end, or of the last decade, was the twenty-first: the twenty-ninth was called εικας μεγαλη, the great twentieth. The French Republican calendar was formed on the Greek model.