that which he himself -- according to the compiler of the
"Contest of Hesiod and Homer" -- selected as best in all his
work, `When the Pleiades, Atlas' daughters, begin to rise...'
("Works and Days," 383 ff.). The value of such a passage cannot
be analysed: it can only be said that given such a subject, this
alone is the right method of treatment.

Hesiod's diction is in the main Homeric, but one of his charms is
the use of quaint allusive phrases derived, perhaps, from a pre-
Hesiodic peasant poetry: thus the season when Boreas blows is the
time when `the Boneless One gnaws his foot by his fireless hearth
in his cheerless house'; to cut one's nails is `to sever the
withered from the quick upon that which has five branches';
similarly the burglar is the `day-sleeper', and the serpent is
the `hairless one'. Very similar is his reference to seasons
through what happens or is done in that season: `when the House-
carrier, fleeing the Pleiades, climbs up the plants from the
earth', is the season for harvesting; or `when the artichoke
flowers and the clicking grass-hopper, seated in a tree, pours
down his shrill song', is the time for rest.

Hesiod's charm lies in his child-like and sincere naivete, in his
unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all
that happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those
pre-eminently of the "Works and Days": the literary values of the
"Theogony" are of a more technical character, skill in ordering
and disposing long lists of names, sure judgment in seasoning a
monotonous subject with marvellous incidents or episodes, and no
mean imagination in depicting the awful, as is shown in the
description of Tartarus (ll. 736-745). Yet it remains true that