Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

The other portrait of the fiercely independent farmer in the earliest Greek poetry is Hesiod’s self-portrait in his agricultural poem Works and Days. Hesiod is the first author in world literature we feel we can understand as an individual. He exemplifies several of the ten characteristics that I think collectively constituted the distinctive ancient Greek mind-set, especially his strong authorial “I” voice and the emotional directness and mordant humor of his advice. “Do not let a flaunting woman coax and flatter and deceive you: she is after your barn.” He despises his idle, litigious brother, Perses, and scathingly suggests that he stop worrying about legal disputes and do some work: “the man who has not laid up a year’s store of food, Demeter’s grain, has no business concerning himself with quarrels and courts of law.”