to be done and what avoided in the wintry season, he becomes more amusing. He warns against the error of supposing that this is the time for gossip at the smithy, there being plenty of work for an active man to do in the coldest weather. In fact, then is the time for household work, and for so employing your leisure
To grasp a tumid foot with hand from hunger lean;"—
—E. 690, 691.
a figurative expression for a state of starvation, which emaciates the hand and swells the foot by reason of weakness. As a proper pendant to this sound advice, Hesiod adds his much-admired description of winter, the storms and cold of which he could thoroughly speak of from the experience of a mountain residence in Bœotia. This episode is so poetic,—even if over-wrought in some portions,—that critics have suggested its being a later addition of a rhapsodist of the post-Hesiodic school; and there are two or three tokens (e.g., the mention of "Lenæon" as the month that answers to our Christmastide and beginning of January, whereas the Bœotians knew no such name, but called the period in question "Bucatius") which bespeak a later authorship. And yet a sensitiveness to cold, and a lively description of its phenomena, is quite in keeping with the poet's disparagement of Ascra; and further, it is quite possible that, à propos of Hesiod and his works, theories of interpolation have been suffered to overstep due limits. Inclination, and
