CHAPTER II.
THE WORKS AND DAYS.
The meaning of the title prefixed to Hesiod's great didactic poem appears to be properly "Farming Operations," "Lucky and Unlucky Days," or, in short, "The Husbandman's Calendar;" but if the ethical scope of it be taken into account, it might, as Colonel Mure has remarked, be not inaptly described as "A Letter of Remonstrance and Advice to a Brother." And inasmuch as its object is to exhort that brother to amend his ways, and take to increasing his substance by agriculture, rather than dreaming of schemes to enhance it by frequenting and corrupting the lawcourts, the two descriptions are not inconsistent with each other. It has been imputed as blame to the poem that it hangs loosely together, that its connection is obscure and vague,—in short, that its constituent parts, larger and smaller, are seldom fitly jointed and compacted. But some allowance is surely to be made for occasional tokens of inartistic workmanship in so early a poet, engaged upon a task where he had neither pattern nor master to refer to; and besides
