Repositioning Hesiod’s Works and Days in the Context
of a Changing Society

David C. Carlisle (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

This paper places Hesiod’s less accessible poem Works and Days in the historical context of changing class relations argued for by Ian Morris in his work on Greek burial practices and their relation to the rise of the polis (Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State; Cambridge, 1990). I argue that Hesiod’s poetry is uniquely suited both to support and to refine Morris’ theory; and that this theory, in turn, can help us understand and appreciate the Works and Days both as poetry and as a product of his social environment.

Hesiod’s position, I suggest, at the center of changing social relations can help us understand some of the differences not only between his poetry and his Homeric predecessor(s), but between the Works and Days and his other poems. The changes in his poetic content, focus and tone run parallel to a change in class relations. According to Morris, the kakoi are first absorbed into the agathoi, which produces a peak in cultural emphasis on class differences by (or for) the agathoi. Around 700 BC, however, these changes stop rather abruptly, and the trends seem to reflect a denial of class differences. I argue that by placing Hesiod in this context, we can make better sense of his poems: the Works and Days, unlike the Theogony or the Shield, could easily have been composed after the denial of aristocratic status begins.

This hypothesis produces two, equally useful, results: the first is that we can further refine Morris’ theory, and give a real human voice to at least one of his statistics. Morris, it should be noted, mines Hesiod for evidence, but his treatment of him is strongly in the shadow of Homer: Hesiod, he assumes, is to be situated before the denial of aristocratic difference. This is probably true of the Theogony, but positioning the Works and Days after this social change makes much more sense. What was before something of a puzzle in Hesiodic scholarship thus becomes a vivid commentary on the changes through which Hesiod lives. The poem can thus give some more color to the fascinating picture Morris paints.

This brings us to the second useful result of this approach to Hesiod: if our theory is correct, it can help explain a great deal of Hesiod’s poetry which is otherwise problematic. Though time will not permit a full commentary on the Works and Days, I will look at three particularly controversial issues as test cases: the address to the basilēes (39), the overall tone and message of the poem (i.e. the focus on hard work as the only way of life), and finally the myth of the five ages of man (109-201). I will show that all three can be greatly illuminated by placing Hesiod in this historical model.