The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Works and Days
• Theogony
• The Shield of Herakles
• Fragments
• Addenda
• On W. 113 Sqq.
• The Farmer’s Year In Hesiod.
• Agricultural Implements
• The Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days

PREFACE

No apology seems needed for a new English translation of Hesiod. I shall be glad if the present rendering lead to a more general study of an author who, if only for his antiquity, must always possess a particular interest.

In some few cases of great doubt and difficulty I have consciously given a merely provisional version. These need not be specified here, and I hope to have an opportunity elsewhere of a full discussion.

The Introduction aims at no more than supplying a certain amount of information, within definite limits, about the Hesiodic epos and the traditional Hesiod. A critical introduction was clearly beyond the scope of this book. In the Addenda I have given a preliminary and necessarily slight discussion of a few selected topics from the Works and Days.

The vexed question of the spelling of Greek proper names is particularly troublesome in Hesiod, since, as Quintilian says, ‘magna pars eius in nominibus est occupata.’ I have preferred some approximation to the Greek spelling rather than the Romanized forms, but I have not troubled about a too laborious consistency.

I have had the privilege of consulting my colleague the Astronomer Royal for Scotland (Professor Dyson) on some astronomical matters, and several of my brothers have given me the benefit of their criticism on various points of scholarship. But neither he nor they have any responsibility for errors into which I may have fallen.

My best thanks are due to the careful scholarship of the staff of the Clarendon Press.

• The University, Edinburgh

October 13, 1908.