without any unifying principle; and critics have readily taken
the view that the whole is a canto of fragments or short poems
worked up by a redactor. Very probably Hesiod used much material
of a far older date, just as Shakespeare used the "Gesta
Romanorum", old chronicles, and old plays; but close inspection
will show that the "Works and Days" has a real unity and that the
picturesque title is somewhat misleading. The poem has properly
no technical object at all, but is moral: its real aim is to show
men how best to live in a difficult world. So viewed the four
seemingly independent sections will be found to be linked
together in a real bond of unity. Such a connection between the
first and second sections is easily seen, but the links between
these and the third and fourth are no less real: to make life go
tolerably smoothly it is most important to be just and to know
how to win a livelihood; but happiness also largely depends on
prudence and care both in social and home life as well, and not
least on avoidance of actions which offend supernatural powers
and bring ill-luck. And finally, if your industry is to be
fruitful, you must know what days are suitable for various kinds
of work. This moral aim -- as opposed to the currently accepted
technical aim of the poem -- explains the otherwise puzzling
incompleteness of the instructions on farming and seafaring.

Of the Hesiodic poems similar in character to the "Works and
Days", only the scantiest fragments survive. One at least of
these, the "Divination by Birds", was, as we know from Proclus,
attached to the end of the "Works" until it was rejected by
Apollonius Rhodius: doubtless it continued the same theme of how
to live, showing how man can avoid disasters by attending to the
omens to be drawn from birds. It is possible that the