Works and Days

“Muses from Pieria, who glorify by songs, come to me, tell of Zeus your father in your singing. Because of him mortal men are unmentioned and mentioned, spoken and unspoken of, according to great Zeus’s will. For easily he makes strong, and easily he oppresses the strong, easily he diminishes the conspicuous one and magnifies the inconspicuous, and easily he makes the crooked straight and withers the proud […]. O hearken as thou seest and hearest, and make judgments straight with righteousness, Lord; while I should like to tell Perses words of truth.” 

Hesiod opens his poem with an invocation of the Muses, in ancient Greece the goddesses of various arts, including poetry. The invocation offers a prayer to the Muses that they inspire him with sufficient skill, knowledge, and emotion to achieve his goal. The invocation also provides a prologue for the events to come. Thus, Hesiod refers to Zeus’ primacy over humans and alludes to Perses needing to hear “words of truth” (37).

“She rouses even the shiftless one to work. For when someone whose work falls short looks to another, towards a rich man who hasten to plough and plant and manage his household well, then neighbour vies with neighbour as he hastens to wealth: this Strife is good for mortals.” 

The “she” in this passage is Strife, specifically the positive manifestation of strife, who Hesiod conceives of as a goddess. The benefit of this form of strife lies in its ability to provoke productive competition among men. Seeing neighbors and friends achieve inspires men to work hard and succeed, thus fulfilling Zeus’s will for men.

“The infants, they do not know how much more the half is than the whole, nor how much good there is in mallow and asphodel.” 

The infants are the judges who Perses bribes to grant him more than his fair share of the family inheritance. Mallow and asphodel were the cheapest food items available. Hesiod is criticizing judges for their corrupt verdict by referring to an ancient proverb that it is better to be honorably poor than to achieve wealth through dishonorable means.