Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/29

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THE LIFE OF HESIOD.
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Mr Samuel Weller. Anyhow, he would have had the model wife fulfil the requirements of the beautiful Latin epitaph on a matron, for he prescribes that she should be "simple-minded" and "home-keeping" (though he says nothing about her being a worker in wools), in lines of which, because Elton's version is here needlessly diffuse, we submit a closer rendering of our own:—

"And choose thy wife from those that round thee dwell, Weighing, lest neighbours jeer, thy choice full well. Than wife that's good man finds no greater gain, But feast-frequenting mates are simply bane. Such without fire a stout man's frame consume, And to crude old age bring his manhood's bloom."—'Works and Days,' 700-705.

This, we conceive, was Hesiod's advice, as an outsider might give it, to others. For himself, it is probable he reckoned that the establishment would suffice which he elsewhere recommends to the farmer class—an unmarried bailiff, a housekeeper without encumbrances; for a female servant with children, he remarks, in bachelor fashion, is troublesome—and a dog that bites (see 'Works and Days,' 602-604). It is indirectly confirmatory of this view that tradition, which has built up many absurd figments upon the scant data of Hesiod's autobiography, has signally failed to fasten other offspring to his name than the intellectual creations which have kept it in remembrance. This was surely Plato's belief when he wrote the following beautiful sentences in his 'Symposium.'

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