1. This naive indictment of Hesiod, shared by most scholars well into the third quarter of this century, has succeeded only in setting Hesiodic research back by fifty years.

2. Lamberton, R., Hesiod (New Haven 1988), 144Google Scholar, has a choice selection of such judgements from Kirk and West, which he rightly dismisses. Unfortunately, Solmsen, F., who edited the widely used Oxford Classical Text (Hesiodi Theogonia, Opera et Dies, Scutum² [Oxford 1983])Google Scholar, was highly susceptible to such opinions. He questions the authenticity of 77t.775–806, for example, because the passage has to his ear ‘a smooth elegance quite alien to the genuine Hesiod’: see ‘The Earliest Stages in the History of Hesiod’s Text’, HSCP 86 (1982), 16.Google Scholar

3. Trypanis, C. A., ‘Greek Poetry’, in Preminger, A.et al (eds), Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, enlarged edition (Princeton NJ 1974), 326.Google Scholar

4. Clarke, H., Homer’s Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey (Newark 1981)Google Scholar, traces the intricate interplay between such Homer criticism and wider literary critical trends.

5. As Anderson, Warren in Matthew Arnold and the Classical Tradition (Ann Arbor 1965), 82–86Google Scholar, points out, Arnold’s impressions were based on a number of inaccuracies. Goodheart, E., The Skeptic Disposition (Princeton 1984), 3fGoogle Scholar., shows how New Criticism continued to stress an Arnoldian reliance on literary ‘judgement’, resulting in an ‘antitheoretical animus’ that ‘persists in certain English critics who can’t resist a sneer every time they utter the word “theory” ’.

6. I shall address in my conclusion the implications of the relative dating of this proem, which Lamberton, Robert, in ‘Plutarch, Hesiod, and the Mouseia of Thespiai’, ICS 13 (1988), 491–504Google Scholar, has recently argued is late.

7. For the semantics of ennepe, see Martin, R., The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca NY 1989), 238Google Scholar; for muthos, ibid 1–42. Other forms of this formula describe commands of Zeus (il 11.186) and Nestor (il 11.839).

8. Nagy, G., Pindar’s Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore 1990), 21Google Scholar, makes the same point (contra West) with reference to debate on the development of actual epic performance.

9. See Martin (n.7 above), 39, where I use the same translation of muthoi. One of the several erroneous claims by Arieti, J. in a review, AJP 113 (1992), 87–90Google Scholar, is that I identified muthoi as ‘set speeches’ instead of stories in this scene.

10. E.g. Od. 17.347 - WD 317; the phraseology shared by Od. 8.170–73 and Th. 88–92, on which see Martin, R., ‘Hesiod, Odysseus and the Instruction of Princes’, TAPA 114 (1984), 29–48Google Scholar. Cf. other examples cited by Edwards, G. P., The Language of Hesiod in its Traditional Context (Oxford 1971), 166–89Google Scholar, and Cantarella, R., ‘Elementi primitivi nella poesia Esiodea’, Rivista Indo-greco-italica 15 (1931), 12f.Google Scholar

11. On the usefulness of Anacharsis, see Hartog, F., The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, tr. Lloyd, J. (Berkeley 1988), 64–82Google Scholar, and Kindstrand, J., Anacharsis: The Legend and the Apophthegmata (Uppsala 1981).Google Scholar

12. To extend the argument to the Scutum would require a demonstration that the poem is as much ‘Hesiod’s’ as the WD and Theogony, an assertion I am not prepared to make.

13. West, M. L. (ed.), Hesiod Works and Days (Oxford 1978), 3–22.1Google Scholar miss in his listing any compositions from the Americas and East Asia. In what follows, if I should seem to confront most often West’s positions, it is because he is usually a learned and recent formulator of any Hesiodic problem. As an example of complications suggested by comparative material, note his remarks on genre-crossing within hymnic and admonitory compositions (ibid 7).

14. This is linked to the Idealist strain in modern German classical criticism and thus again ultimately to Romantic views: see Griffith’s, M. excellent analysis, ‘Personality in Hesiod’, CA 2(1983),37–41.Google Scholar

15. West (n.13 above), 34; yet even West (15) cites Mahabharata 3.148f. without claiming that Hanumat or his brother, whom he there advises, is ‘real’. Signs of the usual father-figure/‘son’ dramatic frame are evident in the WD use of nēpios-addresses: see Pellizer, E., ‘Modelli compositivi e ‘topoi’ sapienziali nelle “Opere e i giorni” di Esiodo’, in Studi Omerici e Esiodei (Rome 1972), 38–42Google Scholar. Griffith (n.14 above), 55–57, treats the brother-motif as a subtle innovation in the traditional dramatic framing of wisdom works.

16. West (n.13 above), 34.

17. Green, P., ‘Works and Days 1–285: Hesiod’s Invisible Audience’, in H. Evjen (ed.), MNHMAI: Classical Studies in Memory of Karl K. Hulley (Chico 1984), 22Google Scholar; Knox, B.M.W., Essays Ancient and Modern (Baltimore 1989), 7Google Scholar. Stein, E., Autorbewusstsein in der frühen griechischen Literatur (Tübingen 1990), 26Google Scholar, uses the ‘real’ father argument to claim that Perses is real, then later (44) claims that if Perses is a persona, the father has to be real because Hesiod (who is not a persona) would not have doubled personae by making the father one. Similar logic bedevils Zanker, G., ‘The Works and Days: Hesiod’s Beggar’s Opera?’, BICS 33 (1986), 26–36Google Scholar, who argues (26 n.4) that Hesiod relies on the Muses for instruction in navigating (his only experience in sailing being the 65 metre crossing from Aulis to Euboea) but does not talk of the Muses’ help for farming instructions, and therefore must have been a farmer.

18. West (n.13 above), 24f., has a list, now expanded and interpreted by Kurke, L., ‘Pindar’s Sixth Pythian and the Tradition of Advice Poetry’, TAPA 120 (1990), 85–107.Google Scholar

19. Nagy, G., Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca NY 1990), 37–82Google Scholar, esp. 47f, 70f.

20. Ibid 72–76. Griffith (n.14 above), 61f., notes the father’s function as a negative paradigm, thus an innovation vs. the usual father-function in the wisdom genre.

21. As Rosen, Ralph has shown: ‘Poetry and Sailing in Hesiod’s Works and Days’, CA 9 (1990), 99–113.Google Scholar

22. See Griffith (n.14 above), 53–55.

23. The first of these elegant formulations is by Lamberton (n.2 above), 35, the second by Griffith (n.14 above), 38.

24. Jaeger, W., Paideia ², tr. Highet, G. (New York 1945)Google Scholar, i.66, notes in passing that the WD is a ‘huge admonitory speech’ and thus uses myths as Homeric speeches do; I do not agree, however, with Jaeger’s view that Hesiod borrows the technique from Homer, since it is more likely a genre of discourse used independently by both composers: see the model given in Martin (n.7 above). The assumption of borrowing detracts from the careful analysis of the passages by Schmidt, J.-U.Adressat und Paraineseform: Zur Intention von Hesiods Werken und Tagen (Göttingen 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who discusses the earlier studies by Diller and Munding.

25. André Lardinois points out (personal communication) that this story also is paradigmatic and mirrors the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over Briseis, contra Schmidt (n.24 above), 96ff.

26. Griffith (n. 14 above'), 56.

27. Nagy (n.19 above), 76f., connects the mounogenēs theme with the figure of Hekate in the Theogony (only-born daughter of another ‘Perses’) and the story of the two Erides. It is clear that the theme was important enough to create a nexus of mythical representations, which makes it more likely that an audience would appreciate its appearance in the Phoinix story.

28. Cf. the nurse’s speech in the Choephoroe (748–62).

29. ‘Archaic’ not just because it already shows formal patterning in Homer, like a type-scene, but also because it shows signs of affiliation with the Indo-European institution of fosterage. Appeals made to the hero Cúchulainn in the Old Irish ‘Cattle-Raid of Cooley’ use fosterageties as a similar basis for appeals. Mühlestein, H., ZA 31 (1981), 85–91Google Scholar, notices the generic appropriateness of the names of Phoinix’ kin for a figure who ‘rouses’ (cf. Ormenos) Achilles to ‘ward off (cf. Amyntor) attack. Bannert, H., ‘Phoinix’ Jugend und der Zorn des Meleagros’, WS 15 (1981), 91Google Scholar, notes the parallels in the careers of Phoinix and Patroklos without attributing importance to their metanastic status. Ephorus (FGrHist F 100) said that Hesiod’s father left Kyme after killing a kinsman, a tradition resembling that attached to Patroklos and to yet another adviser-figure, Theoklymenos (Od 15.224). And Odysseus, as well as being the prototypical outsider on his nostos, was said to have fled to Italy after being condemned by the Ithacans for the manslaughter of the suitors: Arist. fr. 507 Rose (- Plut. Qu. Gr. 14).

30. The detail about Eurypylos opens new perspectives on il 11.809–48, the scene in which he is healed by Patroklos (who resembles Phoinix, as we have seen) using medical skills that Cheiron (another wisdom-poetry narrator) taught Achilles. One could read the scene as a vindication of Phoinix by proxy.

31. But note the Vita by Tzetzes and the Suda entry (s.v. ‘Hesiodos’) assume he emigrated with his family: texts in Jacoby, F. (ed.), Hesiodi Carmina Theogonia (Berlin 1930), 112 and 114.Google Scholar

32. As can be seen from the passages cited in Welskopf, E.C., Soziale Typenbegriffe im alten Griechenland und ihr Fortleben in den Sprachen der Welt, vol.2 (Berlin 1985), cols. 1166–72.Google Scholar

33. Hdt. 4.76f. is the earliest source. Full testimonia are in Kindstrand (n.l 1 above).

34. See Kindstrand (n.l1 above), 53f. Cf. WD 321–26.

35. Ibid. 61–65, detailing a tradition found from Ephorus on.

36. Kindstrand (n. 11 above), 10f., explores the evidence. The Herodotean account may place the death near a grove of Hekate, reminding one of the close relation between poet and goddess in the Theogony (see notes 26 and 27 above).

37. For explication of the way in which this Anacharsis story represents an old aristocratic Greek ideal, seen also in the advice poetry of Theognis, see Kurke, L., ‘Kapeleia and Deceit: Theognis 59–60’, AJP 110 (1989), 535–44Google Scholar. She notes (538 n.9) that Hesiod, unlike Anacharsis, does not denigrate trade so much as warn against dangers of the sea.

38. See Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton 1989), 296f.Google Scholar and 322, with further bibliography there.

39. For extended comparison of the poet of WD and Thersites, see Puelma, M., ‘Sanger und König: Zum Verständnis von Hesiods Tierfabel’, MH 29 (1972), 86–109Google Scholar; cf. also the remarks of Zanker (n.l7 above), 33. The similarities make sense when we realise that the Thersites figure fits the conventions of an old tradition of blame-poetry, seen elsewhere in Archilochean iambosr. see Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore 1979), 253–64Google Scholar. Hesiod would then be employing the poetics of a widely known genre.

40. It is significant corroboration that Old Comedy, which describes itself in terms oiparrhesia, presents a similar generic mix (lyric, invective, myth) and creates similar interpretive problems for critics uncomfortable with its open-ended structure.

41. Havelock, E., ‘Thoughtful Hesiod’, YCS 20 (1966), 62f.Google Scholar; West, review of Peabody, B. (n.45 below), Phoenix 30 (1976), 385Google Scholar, and ‘Is the Works and Days an Oral Poem?’ in Brillante, C.et al. (eds.), I poemi epici rapsodici non omerici e la tradizione orale (Padua 1981), 65Google Scholar; Knox (n.l7 above), 5 and 18. An important exception is the work of Broccia, G., Tradizione ed esegesi (Brescia 1969), 41–51Google Scholar, which shows the subtle topical critique accomplished by this sort of Hesiodic ‘doubling’ rhetoric. Recently, Hamilton, R., The Architecture ofHesiodic Poetry (Baltimore 1989)Google Scholar has explicated a ‘subtle but noticeable series of echoes articulating the main parts of the Works and Days’ (77).

42. See Hunt, R., ‘Satiric Elements in Hesiod’s Works and Days’, Helios n.s. 8 (1981), 29–40.Google Scholar

43. See Nagy (n.39 above), 222–41; Nagy (n.8 above), 57 and 256.

44. From the rich recent scholarship demonstrating this flexibility, I single out in particular Connelly, B., Arab Folk Epic and Identity (Berkeley 1986)Google Scholar; Slyomovics, S., The Merchant of Aif An Egyptian Hilali Oral Epic Poet in Performance (Berkeley 1987)Google Scholar; Foley, J., Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington 1991).Google Scholar

45. For the first fully developed demonstration of this discovery, see Edwards (n.10 above); also Hoekstra, A., ‘Hésiode et la tradition orale’, Mnem. 10 (1957), 193–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPeabody, B., The Winged Word (Albany 1975)Google Scholar, offers a detailed attempt at reading WD as oral poetry on the level of the structure of the ‘song’ as a whole. On the level of phrasing, see Minton, W., ‘The Frequency and Structuring of Traditional Formulas in Hesiod’s Theogony’, HSCP 79 (1975), 25–54Google Scholar. As another oralist, Patrizia Mureddu, notes in Formulae tradizione nella poesia di Esiodo (Rome 1983)Google Scholar, Parry had already suggested in 1930 (HSCP 41, 90f.) that Hesiod as well as Homer composed in oral style. Delay in following up this insight has stemmed partly from critical disagreement over the value of formula-counting, and indeed the definition of a formula. There is still much work to be done on evaluation of repeated diction in Hesiod: see Ferndndez Delgado, J., ‘Remarks on the Formular Diction of the “Homeric Hymns”’, MPL 8 (1987), 15f.Google Scholar

46. E. Stein (n.17 above), 1, notes the resemblance, but it does not necessarily follow that this seemingly personal voice reflects use of writing by Hesiod and also a later stage of composition than Homeric epic; nor do I think we must immediately assume that Hesiodic verse is ‘gattungsmässig völlig anders’ than lyric (3). For fuller comparison, see Arrighetti, G., ‘Esiodo fra epica e lirica’ in Arrighetti, (ed.), Esiodo: letture critiche (Milan 1975), 5–36.Google Scholar

47. Hooker, J. T., The Language and Text of the Lesbian Poets (Innsbruck 1977), 80Google Scholarf. Nagy (n.8 above), 462f., notes that the metrical variation reinforces Hooker’s argument The old view of Page and others (Sappho and Alcaeus [Oxford 1955], 305f.Google Scholar) that Alcaeus ‘translated’ Hesiod is unfortunately continued in Meyerhoff, D., Traditioneller Stoffund individuetle Gestaltung (Hildesheim 1984), 158–60.Google Scholar

48. For texts in Russian, see Poltoratzky, M., Russian Folklore (New York 1964), 27–40.Google Scholar On the function of koljadki, see Sokolov, Y., Russian Folklore, tr. Smith, C. (New York 1950), 180–85Google Scholar, and Chicherov, V., ‘Some Types of Russian New-Year Songs’ in Oinas, F. and Soudakoff, S. (eds.), The Study of Russian Folklore (The Hague 1975), 113–22Google Scholar. Erren, Manfred, ‘Die Anredestruktur im archaischen Lehrgedicht’ in Kullmann, W. and Reichel, M. (eds.), Der Übergang von der Mündlichkeit zur Literatur bei den Griechen (Tübingen 1990), 190f.Google Scholar, sees the WD as a new blend of political rhetoric and a type of calendar poetry which he traces to Sumerian literature.

49. See Watkins, C., ‘Anosteos hon poda tendei’ in Etrennes de linguistique et de grammaire comparée offerts à M. Lejeune (Paris 1978), 231–35Google Scholar. Again, I would compare Russian koljadki, with their clear fertility functions. For exhaustive treatment of the ‘boneless one’, see now Bader, F., La langue des dieux ou l’hermétisme des poçtes indo-europeens (Pisa 1989), 97–188.Google Scholar

50. Cited by Durrell, Lawrence, Reflections on a Marine Venus (London 1960), 195fGoogle Scholar., quoting from a paper by A.R. Mills contributed to the Bulletin for the History of Medicine (n.d.).

51. On the homology of moral and ritual correctness in Theognis and Hesiod see Nagy (n.19 above), 69.

52. Selected Writings IV: Slavic Epic Studies (The Hague 1966), 638Google Scholar. Compare West’s note (‘Is the WD … ’ n.41 above), 61: ‘The Russian traveller Valikhanov encountered a sultan of one of the Kazakh tribes whom he took to be an imbecile, because his intermittent utterances consisted of rhymed couplets of rather general import, accompanied by alarming rollings of the eyes. Probably the man was simply making conversation in the most formal and polite way he knew.’

53. On internal marking of proverbs, see Russo, J., ‘The Poetics of the Ancient Greek Proverb’, Journal of Folklore Research 20 (1983), 121–30Google Scholar. Examples of the techniques and comparison with other archaic poetic traditions are in Campanile, E., Ricerche di cultura poetica indoeuropea (Pisa 1977), 105f.Google Scholar; cf. also R. Cantarella (n.10 above). In archaic Irish poetic texts and in the Mahabharata there occur maxims of legal, medical and religious content, similar to Hesiod’s and also marked by emphatic poetic features: see Campanile, E. et al., ‘Funzione e figura del poeta nella cultura celtica e indiana’, SSL 14 (1974), 239–44.Google Scholar See Durante, M., Sulla preistoria della tradizione poetica greca (Rome 1976), ii.131, 142 and 149Google Scholar for useful parallels in Vedic poetry.

54. Pellizer, Ezio, ‘Metremi proverbiali nelle “Opere e i giorni” di Esiodo’, QUCC 13 (1972), 24–37Google Scholar, suggests that proverbs functioned as preconstituted metrical units (paroemiac-shaped) for the poet of the WD. This would explain the patterning exhibited, but there is still a certain amount of joining, enjambment and breaking of the metrical frame, which I take to be the poet’s innovatory art.

55. Paulson, J., Studio Hesiodea I: De re metrica (Lund 1887), 1.Google Scholar

56. See Paulson (n.55 above), 4–6, for the statistics on spondees: 45% of verses in WD have two or more spondees as against 31% in, e.g., Book 1 of the Iliad. See also West, (ed.), Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford 1966), 93.Google Scholar

57. Fernàndez Delgado, J., ‘La poesia sapiencial de grecia arcaica y los origenes del hexametro’, Emerita 50 (1982), 151–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, after reviewing theories of the development of the hexameter out of shorter lines, proposes that these preforms were mainly used for gnomic expressions of Hesiodic type.

58. Edwards (n.10 above), 195f., summarises the linguistic features involved, e.g. distribution of genitive pi. -eōn /-ōn as opposed to -aōn. CO. Pavese Tradizioni e generi poetici della grecia arcaica (Rome 1972), 52ff., admits that some elements are organic Ionisms, e.g. neglect of digamma (conserved late in actual Boeotian) is much more frequent in Hesiod. Nagy (n.19 above), 61, points out that Hesiodic poetry’s ‘self-proclaimed Boeotian provenience would be nearly impossible to detect on the basis of language alone’.

59. See Nagy (n.19 above), 63. Hoekstra (n.45 above), 199, suggests the name can be used because the public in Boeotia knew Ionic poetry so well.

60. Hoekstra, A.Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (Amsterdam 1965), 25 n.3.Google Scholar

61. West (n.13 above), 26.

62. Edwards (n.10 above), 38, believes Hesiod ‘shows himself acquainted with the hexameter tradition in a later phase, as is evident not only from the general Ionic appearance of his language … but also from particular expressions with these features

63. Lamberton (n.2 above), 111, finds the same analogy to stand-up comedy congenial for explaining how the seemingly haphazard texture of the WD occurs when the poet consciously makes his organisation sound like the ‘explicitly free and arbitrary choice of a highly individualised speaker’.

64. West (n.56 above), 90.

65. I am convinced by G. Ferrari’s argument that the Derridean reading of this scene by Pucci, P. and Arthur, M. is unsupported by the text: see his ‘Hesiod’s Mimetic Muses and the Strategies of Deconstruction’ in Benjamin, A. (ed.), PoststructuraUst Classics (London 1988)Google Scholar. Griffith (n.14 above), 48f., recognises a traditional statement of divine power vs. mortal in the song of the Muses.

66. On which see West, , The Orphic Poems (Oxford 1983), 4–6.Google Scholar

67. Bibliography in E. Pellizer (n.15 above), 29–31.

68. Cf. WD 285 with Hdt. 3.86.3; in part WD 648 = oracle at Hdt. 1.47. See Pellizer (n.15 above), 40, and Cantarella (n.10 above), 5–10, who notes Waltz had already seen how WD 235 relates to the curse of the Amphissians in Aeschines 3.33. See also McLeod, W., ‘Oral Bards at Delphi’, TAPA 92 (1961), 317–25Google Scholar. Fernández Delgado, J., ‘Poesia oral mantica en los or&culos de Delfos’ in Melena, J. (ed.), Symbolae Ludovico Mitxelena (Vitoria-Gasteiz 1985), 153–66Google Scholar, shows that the corpus of hexameter oracles represents a distinct, old tradition, which may have influenced Hesiodic and Homeric diction.

69. See ‘Greek States and Greek Oracles’ in Cartledge, P. and Harvey, F. (eds.), CRUX: Essays presented to G.EM, de Ste. Croix (Exeter 1985), 30Google Scholar. Again I am reminded of the Odyssey’s metanastic mantic, Theoklymenos.

70. Nagy (n.19 above), 52.

71. On the problem, see Lamberton (n.2 above), 46–48, who posits a Hellenistic date for fixation of the autobiographical traditions. I agree but would stress their earlier oral performance function. Similar traditions must underly the old lore in the Certamen, datable to the 4th century but probably stemming from lost 6th-century versions: see Richardson, N.. ‘The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and Alcidamas’ Mouseiori’, CQ n.s. 31 (1981), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. On the story about Hesiod’s bones being brought to Orkhomenos (or Ozolian Lokris, in another tradition) see Nagy (n.19 above), 49.