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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
In this note it is assumed that the bibliographical remarks in the Works and Days are true or anyhow true enough.
Hesiod's father started at Cyme in Aeolis. For a time he tried the sea—for trade, to judge by 631–4, where trade is regarded as the only object of seafaring. After that, to flee from poverty, he migrated to Ascra in Boeotia, where he came into possession of a farm, prosperous enough when divided between his sons to allow each of them a reasonable livelihood (37 for division; 298–307 for implication that Perses' share too was in land).
Hesiod does not say how his father obtained his farm at Ascra. The most popular explanation is that he reclaimed waste land, but there are objections. First, Hesiod does not mention reclamation as a way in which a landless man could become landed or a landed man enlarge his property, though he approved enlargement, but by purchase (341).
1 Hesiod's share, to judge by his recommendations, could support the owner, presumably a wife and perhaps children, two or more male slaves (469–71, 502, 607–8) and a female one (602–3). Perses' share presumably had a similar potential.
2 So M. L. West, though tentatively (Hesiod, Works and Days [Oxford, 1978] 31). On the puzzling Doric elements in Hesiod's dialect, to which also he refers, I offer no opinion.
