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1301 That is, the poor man’s fare, like ‘bread and cheese’.

1302 The All-endowed.

1303 The jar or casket contained the gifts of the gods mentioned in l.82.

1304 Eustathius refers to Hesiod as stating that men sprung “from oaks and stones and ashtrees”. Proclus believed that the Nymphs called Meliae (Theogony, 187) are intended. Goettling would render: “A race terrible because of their (ashen) spears.”

1306 i.e. the race will so degenerate that at the last even a new-born child will show the marks of old age.

1307 Aidos, as a quality, is that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men from wrong: Nemesis is the feeling of righteous indignation aroused especially by the sight of the wicked in undeserved prosperity (cf. Psalms, lxxii. 1-19).

1308 The alternative version is: ‘and, working, you will be much better loved both by gods and men; for they greatly dislike the idle.’

1309 i.e. neighbours come at once and without making preparations, but kinsmen by marriage (who live at a distance) have to prepare, and so are long in coming.

1310 Early in May.

1311 In November.

1312 In October.

1313 For pounding corn.

1314 A mallet for breaking clods after ploughing.

1315 The loaf is a flattish cake with two intersecting lines scored on its upper surface which divide it into four equal parts.

1316 The meaning is obscure. A scholiast renders ‘giving eight mouthfulls’; but the elder Philostratus uses the word in contrast to ‘leavened’.

1317 About the middle of November.

1318 Spring is so described because the buds have not yet cast their iron-grey husks.

1319 In December.

1320 In March.

1321 The latter part of January and earlier part of February.

1322 i.e. the octopus or cuttle.

1323 i.e. the darker-skinned people of Africa, the Egyptians or Aethiopians.

1324 i.e. an old man walking with a staff (the ‘third leg’— as in the riddle of the Sphinx).

1325 February to March.

1326 i.e. the snail. The season is the middle of May.

1327 In June.

1328 July.

1329 i.e. a robber.

1330 September.

1331 The end of October.

1332 That is, the succession of stars which make up the full year.

1333 The end of October or beginning of November.

1334 July-August.

1335 i.e. untimely, premature. Juvenal similarly speaks of ‘cruda senectus’ (caused by gluttony).

1336 The thought is parallel to that of ‘O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath.’

1337 The ‘common feast’ is one to which all present subscribe. Theognis (line 495) says that one of the chief pleasures of a banquet is the general conversation. Hence the present passage means that such a feast naturally costs little, while the many present will make pleasurable conversation.

1338 i.e. ‘do not cut your finger-nails’.

1339 i.e. things which it would be sacrilege to disturb, such as tombs.

1341 The month is divided into three periods, the waxing, the mid-month, and the waning, which answer to the phases of the moon.

1342 i.e. the ant.

1343 Such seems to be the meaning here, though the epithet is otherwise rendered ‘well-rounded’. Corn was threshed by means of a sleigh with two runners having three or four rollers between them, like the modern Egyptian nurag.

1601 The epithet probably indicates coquettishness.

1602 A proverbial saying meaning, ‘why enlarge on irrelevant topics?’

1603 ‘She of the noble voice’: Calliope is queen of Epic poetry.

1604 Earth, in the cosmology of Hesiod, is a disk surrounded by the river Oceanus and floating upon a waste of waters. It is called the foundation of all (the qualification ‘the deathless ones...’ etc. is an interpolation), because not only trees, men, and animals, but even the hills and seas (ll. 129, 131) are supported by it.

1605 Aether is the bright, untainted upper atmosphere, as distinguished from Aer, the lower atmosphere of the earth.

1606 Brontes is the Thunderer; Steropes, the Lightener; and Arges, the Vivid One.

1607 The myth accounts for the separation of Heaven and Earth. In Egyptian cosmology Nut (the Sky) is thrust and held apart from her brother Geb (the Earth) by their father Shu, who corresponds to the Greek Atlas.

1608 Nymphs of the ash-trees, as Dryads are nymphs of the oak-trees. Cp. note on Works and Days, l. 145.

1609 ‘Member-loving’: the title is perhaps only a perversion of the regular PHILOMEIDES (laughter-loving).

1610 Cletho (the Spinner) is she who spins the thread of man’s life; Lachesis (the Disposer of Lots) assigns to each man his destiny; Atropos (She who cannot be turned) is the ‘Fury with the abhorred shears.’

1611 Many of the names which follow express various qualities or aspects of the sea: thus Galene is ‘Calm’, Cymothoe is the ‘Wave-swift’, Pherusa and Dynamene are ‘She who speeds (ships)’ and ‘She who has power’.

1612 The ‘Wave-receiver’ and the ‘Wave-stiller’.

1613 ‘The Unerring’ or ‘Truthful’; cp. l. 235.

1614 i.e. Poseidon.

1615 Goettling notes that some of these nymphs derive their names from lands over which they preside, as Europa, Asia, Doris, Ianeira (‘Lady of the Ionians’), but that most are called after some quality which their streams possessed: thus Xanthe is the ‘Brown’ or ‘Turbid’, Amphirho is the ‘Surrounding’ river, Ianthe is ‘She who delights’, and Ocyrrhoe is the ‘Swift-flowing’.

1616 i.e. Eos, the ‘Early-born’.

1617 Van Lennep explains that Hecate, having no brothers to support her claim, might have been slighted.

1618 The goddess of the hearth (the Roman Vesta), and so of the house. Cp. Homeric Hymns v.22 ff.; xxxix.1 ff.

1619 The variant reading ‘of his father’ (sc. Heaven) rests on inferior MS. authority and is probably an alteration due to the difficulty stated by a Scholiast: ‘How could Zeus, being not yet begotten, plot against his father?’ The phrase is, however, part of the prophecy. The whole line may well be spurious, and is rejected by Heyne, Wolf, Gaisford and Guyet.

1620 Pausanias (x. 24.6) saw near the tomb of Neoptolemus ‘a stone of no great size’, which the Delphians anointed every day with oil, and which he says was supposed to be the stone given to Cronos.

1621 A Scholiast explains: ‘Either because they (men) sprang from the Melian nymphs (cp. l. 187); or because, when they were born (?), they cast themselves under the ash-trees, that is, the trees.’ The reference may be to the origin of men from ash-trees: cp. Works and Days, l. 145 and note.

1622 sc. Atlas, the Shu of Egyptian mythology: cp. note on line 177.

1623 Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream enclosing the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.

1624 The conception of Oceanus is here different: he has nine streams which encircle the earth and then flow out into the ‘main’ which appears to be the waste of waters on which, according to early Greek and Hebrew cosmology, the disk-like earth floated.

1625 i.e. the threshold is of ‘native’ metal, and not artificial.

1626 According to Homer Typhoeus was overwhelmed by Zeus amongst the Arimi in Cilicia. Pindar represents him as buried under Aetna, and Tzetzes reads Aetna in this passage.

1627 The epithet (which means literally well-bored) seems to refer to the spout of the crucible.

1628 The fire god. There is no reference to volcanic action: iron was smelted on Mount Ida; cp. Epigrams of Homer, ix. 2-4.

1629 i.e. Athena, who was born ‘on the banks of the river Trito’ (cp. l. 929l)

1630 Restored by Peppmuller. The nineteen following lines from another recension of lines 889-900, 924-9 are quoted by Chrysippus (in Galen).

1631 sc. the aegis. Line 929s is probably spurious, since it disagrees with l. 929q and contains a suspicious reference to Athens.