Th e poem glorifi es the solid, earthbound values of hard-
working agricultural people, who at that time constituted the
majority of humankind, and their never-ending, backbreak-
ing work of plowing, sowing, reaping, threshing, and grind-
ing. Th ese were the peasants whose hard labor made possible
the privileged lifestyles of the warrior-kings and princes of
Homeric legend.
Works and Days deals fi rst with the questions of why hu-
mans have to work so hard. Hesiod’s answer places the blame
on the demigod Prometheus, who defi ed Zeus, king of the
gods, by giving humanity the forbidden gift of fi re, forging
thereby the arts and craft s of civilization. Enraged by this defi -
ance, Zeus punished both Prometheus and humanity by send-
ing down a woman, Pandora, who unleashed on the world all
manner of evils—work, disease, hatred, envy, old age, and ev-
ery other problem that continues to plague the human race.
As a follow-up to this troubling scenario, Hesiod de-
scribes his “Myth of the Five Ages,” which is a further at-
tempt to characterize the wretched state of humanity in
his day. Before the defi ance of Prometheus and the wrath
of Pandora, humanity lived in a golden age, free of toil and
trouble. But this idyllic situation was followed by three suc-
cessive stages—the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron
Age—each one regressively worse than the last. Hesiod’s
sequence also makes room for a nonmetallic “Heroic Age,”
which drew from the collective Greek memory of the glories
of the Mycenean civilization. Such heroic memories served
only to intensify the sense of human wretchedness in Hes-
iod’s own time, the Iron Age.ARCHAIC LYRIC AND IAMBUS:
ARCHILOCHUS OF PAROS
Archaic lyric refers to the earliest Greek poetry that expresses
subjective thoughts and feelings, oft en in a songlike style or
form. Th e poets who wrote aft er Hesiod explore a variety of
poetic forms and rhythms, including the elegiac couplet (a
combination of the epic hexameter and a shorter line), the
pentameter (fi ve metrical units rather than six), and iambic
rhythms (metrical units consisting of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable, or a short syllable followed byFrieze of three Muses; the Muses typically are invoked at or near the beginning of a Greek epic poem. (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection,
American School of Classical Studies at Athens)
literature: Greece 657