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 "Astronomy" or "Astrology" (as Plutarch calls it) was
in turn appended to the "Divination". It certainly gave some account of
the principal constellations, their dates of rising and setting, and the
legends connected with them, and probably showed how these influenced
human affairs or might be used as guides. The "Precepts of Chiron" was
a didactic poem made up of moral and practical precepts, resembling the
gnomic sections of the "Works and Days", addressed by the Centaur Chiron
to his pupil Achilles.

Even less is known of the poem called the "Great Works": the title
implies that it was similar in subject to the second section of the
"Works and Days", but longer. Possible references in Roman writers
[1106] indicate that among the subjects dealt with were the cultivation
of the vine and olive and various herbs. The inclusion of the judgment
of Rhadamanthys (frag. 1): 'If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil,'
indicates a gnomic element, and the note by Proclus [1107] on "Works
and Days" 126 makes it likely that metals also were dealt with. It is
therefore possible that another lost poem, the "Idaean Dactyls", which
dealt with the discovery of metals and their working, was appended to,
or even was a part of the "Great Works", just as the "Divination by
Birds" was appended to the "Works and Days".

II. The Genealogical Poems:

The only complete poem of the genealogical group is the "Theogony",
which traces from the beginning of things the descent and vicissitudes
of the families of the gods. Like the "Works and Days" this poem has no
dramatic plot; but its unifying principle is clear and simple. The gods
are classified chronologically: as soon as one generation is