By constant toil alone, he says, can the many misfortunes of life be
relieved; by it riches and honor are won; and the worker is beloved
by the gods. The lazy man on the contrary has hunger for his portion
and is detested by gods and men: “Gods and mortals are alike indignant
with the man who lives without toiling; he is like in energy to the
stingless drones, for they without toiling waste and devour the product
of the honey-bees’ work. But do thou (Perses), love all seemly toil
that thy barns may be filled with food in the proper seasons.”[56] For
the poor man the poet, and apparently his contemporaries, had little
compassion, since he regards poverty as proof of a lack of industry, of
a failure to work unceasingly with a determined spirit, which he holds
to be the only way in which man can acquire the comforts which give
dignity to life. In his mind shame is the natural lot of the poor, but
self-respect the proper possession of the successful worker. And toil
has for him a divine sanction; it is a moral duty imposed on men by the
gods. By it alone men attain not only material prosperity but virtue as
well. “I perceive the good and will tell it thee, Perses, very foolish
though thou art. Wickedness men attain easily and in great numbers,
for level is the road to her and she dwells very near; but before
Virtue the immortal gods have set the sweat of toil. Long and steep is
the path to her and rough at the outset; but when one has reached the
summit, thereafter it is easy, hard though it was before.”[57]
Smarting under the injustice done him by his unjust brother and the
venal judges, Hesiod naturally praised justice (δίκη) in his work. He
repeats the word again and again. In the name of outraged universal
justice he protests against the particular wrong he has suffered, but
in his handling of this theme he passes far beyond the matter between
him and his brother, and treats justice in a universal and impressive
manner. He thus exhorts Perses: “Perses, harken to justice, and make
not insolence prosper. For insolence is baneful even to the humble;
nor can the noble easily bear the burden of it, but he sinketh beneath
its weight, meeting doom. Yet the road that leadeth in the opposite
direction, toward justice, is better to travel. Justice prevaileth over
insolence in the end; even the fool knoweth from experience.”[58] He
presses home the truth that wrong harms the doer no less than him who
suffers the wrong: “The man who worketh evil to another, worketh evil
to himself, and evil counsel is most evil for him who counselled
it.”[59] Again he teaches that even if retribution is slow in coming,
Zeus accomplishes it in the end: “Finally Zeus imposes due requital
for the wicked man’s unjust deeds.”[60] On the other hand Hesiod in a
famous passage pictures with satisfaction the prosperity of the just:
“But for those who render straight judgments to both strangers and
citizens and never depart from justice, their city flourishes and their
people prosper in it. Peace, which nurtures youth, dwells in the land
and never does far-seeing Zeus bring fearful war upon the inhabitants.
Never does famine or woe attend men who do justice, but in good cheer
do they perform their due tasks. For them the earth yields abundant
food, the oak on the mountains bears them acorns in its topmost
branches, and its trunk is the honey-bees’ home; fleecy sheep are heavy
with wool, wives bear children who are like their parents. The just
flourish in prosperity continually; nor do they go away on ships, for
the fruitful earth gives them its product.”[61]
The last sentence shows that trading in ships was less highly
regarded than agriculture. The reason is to be found not alone in the
comparatively undeveloped state of commerce, but also in the very
nature of such commerce as the poet saw it, for he admits commerce into
his plan rather unwillingly. He knows that the sea is treacherous and
often wrecks ships and causes ruin; he holds that only men’s inordinate
desires and folly tempt them to venture across the waters and to stake
all on the chances of loss and death. More than this, he feels a moral
defect in transmarine trading, even when profitable, for one may gain
wealth by a single venture. Such is not his ideal; rather he would
see material prosperity won by the long toil and frugality which make
agriculture successful.
But to return to justice. Hesiod, as we have already seen, makes this
the whole basis of man’s relation to his fellows; on just actions and
labor depends all prosperity; injustice injures the doer no less than
the object of the wrong, and in the end is sure of punishment. Indeed
according to the poet justice is what distinguishes man from the lower
animals: “Perses, put these words now in thy heart, and harken to
justice, but forget violence utterly. For this the son of Cronos has
established as a rule for men. Fishes and wild beasts and winged birds
he ordained should devour one another, since there is no justice among
them; but to man he has given justice, which is by far the best.”[62]
The theme of justice in human relations is developed into injunctions
to be kind to the stranger, the suppliant, and the orphan, to respect
parents, to regard another’s bed, and to give hospitality to one’s
friends. Yet it must be said that Hesiod’s social morality is strictly
utilitarian, not altruistic; indeed there is something in his poem
which reminds us of the maxim “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth,” as when he writes: “If thy friend is the first to do thee an
unkindness either in word or deed, remember to return him twofold; but
if he would bring thee again into friendship and consent to render thee
justice, accept it.”[63] But we must remember that this was the almost
universal teaching among the Greeks down to the end of the fifth
century.
Justice, however, is more than a social virtue between men; it is the
chief attribute of Zeus, personified as his daughter and constant
attendant: “Justice is the daughter of Zeus, glorified and honored by
the gods who hold Olympus; and whenever anyone does her wrong with
perverse blame, straightway she sits by Zeus, son of Cronos, and she
tells him the thoughts of unjust men, that the people may pay for
the folly of the princes who by their wrongful purposes and crooked
speeches turn judgments from the right course.”[64] In his work of
defending justice Zeus is aided not only by his daughter, but by a
host of watchful guardians, intermediaries who report mortals’ deeds:
“Thrice ten thousand are the immortal servants of Zeus upon the rich
earth, who watch mortal men. Clad in mist they fare to and fro on the
earth watching deeds of justice and wrongful acts.”[65] Justice then
never fails to bring sooner or later the due return to right and wrong
actions; from her and the watchful messengers of Zeus there is no
escape. The Homeric man had recognized that righteousness is better
than evil and that the wicked are constantly threatened by punishment;
but Hesiod in his Works and Days goes somewhat further than Homer, in
that he makes justice a necessary attribute of the gods as well as of
men.
Man’s dependence on the gods is naturally recognized in Hesiod as
elsewhere by the obligations of sacrifice, libation, and prayer, for
these are universal modes of religious expression. The poet betrays the
unimaginative character of a peasant by the baldness with which he says
that material prosperity is the whole purpose of religious observance
as well as of justice: “According to thy ability offer sacrifice to the
immortal gods with thy person pure and undefiled, and burn the goodly
thigh-pieces; again propitiate them with libations and with sacrifices,
both when thou liest down and when the sacred light comes, that they
may have a heart and mind kindly disposed toward thee; that thus thou
mayest buy the land of others and not another thine.”[66] Yet we must
remember that this huckster’s mind, as Plato might have called it,
was common enough in Greece, that it was the ordinary attitude of the
official Roman religion throughout Rome’s history, and that it has not
disappeared from men’s thought today.
In the Iliad and Odyssey evil, like the good, comes from the gods. The
simple fact is unquestionably recognized. But Hesiod searches more
deeply for the origin of evil which he pessimistically regards as
omnipresent. The story of Prometheus and Pandora contains in part the
poet’s answer to this eternal riddle. The myth was already ancient and
familiar to all. Once men lived without effort and free from evils, but
when led by crafty Prometheus they had endeavored to cheat Zeus of the
better part of the sacrificed bullock, the god withheld fire from them.
Yet the cunning Titan stole a spark of this divine fire and delivered
it to mortals. This Zeus allowed men to keep; by its aid they created
all industries, but only at the cost of constant toil and struggle.
Prometheus he punished harshly. To work his vengeance on mortals he
caused Hephaestus to create a woman on whom the gods bestowed all gifts
so that she was named Pandora. She opened a jar containing every kind
of evil, which straightway flew out among mankind. Only Ἐλπίς remained
therein—a word hardly equivalent to our Hope, but rather meaning
“anticipation of misfortune.” It then is the only plague to which man
is not subjected.[67] He is obliged to suffer, having been involved
in the original sin of Prometheus, who wished to cheat Zeus of the
sacrifice due him. Such is the sacred tale offered as an explanation of
the presence of evils on earth. To us it seems childish, and indeed it
did not completely satisfy Hesiod.
A second explanation of a very different sort was given, one which
was in reality a profound attempt to trace man’s origin as well as to
explain his actual condition.[68] This is the story of the five ages
of man, beginning with the age of gold in which gods and men dwelt
together. Then mortals lived like the gods with hearts untroubled, far
from toil and suffering, and the earth yielded them of its own accord
abundant food. Over them Cronos reigned. But the men of this Utopian
age died in painless sleep; and the silver age under Zeus followed.
Compared with the former it was an age of degeneracy in which men
showed insolence toward one another and failed to sacrifice to the
gods. Zeus in his anger destroyed these mortals. The three remaining
ages—the bronze, the heroic, and the iron, show both decay and
advance. The men of the bronze age were fierce, wild creatures,
unapproachable in their savagery. To these succeeded a better and
juster race, that of the heroes, who however met their fate in war
beneath seven-gated Thebes or at Troy for fair-haired Helen’s sake.
And now they dwell care-free in the Islands of the Blest. Finally
Hesiod pictures his own age, that of iron. Now no longer do men spend
their effort in war and battle, but they have come to a selfish
individualism, “when father and children will not agree together, nor
guest with host, nor friend with friend, nor brother longer be dear
as aforetime.”[69] But this unlimited egoism, which Hesiod pictures,
presupposes an intellectual evolution beyond the stage where men fought
in masses as in the heroic time. Thus faithfully and relentlessly he
describes his own day. Yet the poet is not without confidence that
there are good as well as evil elements in the age of iron; but on the
whole he is despondent and exclaims: “Would that I were not living in
the fifth age of men, but that I had either died before them or been
born later.”[70]
Thus Hesiod takes ancient myths and by his genius makes them
epitomize the stages of man’s evolution downward morally, but forward
intellectually. The faint hope expressed at the end of the exclamation
just quoted shows that the poet saw the possibility of a better age to
come, and therein he showed himself a prophet. He apparently did not
regard the present age of iron as eternal, but perhaps, in accordance
with the cyclical theory of the world, thought that the ages might
revolve and the Golden Age return again. Furthermore, although he
regards man’s course as largely one of degeneration, he sees that it
has also been one in which intellectual progress has been made and law
developed.
When we come to the question of life beyond the grave we must
acknowledge that herein Hesiod shows no advance over Homer. For
ordinary mortals oblivion in the dank halls of Hades seems to be the
relentless doom. Only a few, the heroes of that earlier age are allowed
by divine favor to dwell with hearts free from trouble in the Islands
of the Blest.
Yet if we consider the Hesiodic poetry as a whole it does bear witness
to a great change from the world of Homer. It shows clearly that by the
seventh century B.C. man was coming to self-consciousness,
that he was endeavoring by reflection to solve some of the deepest
problems of life, and that he had already developed a moral code that
demanded righteousness in the individual. Hesiod depicts for us a more
thoughtful and a more reflective time than that shown us by Homer. How
significant this change was I shall try to show in my next lecture.