A.E. Stallings (trans.): Hesiod: Works and Days
Penguin Classics, 54 pp. $9.00.
At some point in antiquity (nobody really knows when; but in all likelihood during the Roman empire) one Marcus Argentarius wrote a poem about reading his scroll of Hesiod’s already-ancient Works and Days – or rather, about not quite reading it:
I had my hands full, that day,
rolling out another few
verses of Hesiod – when who
should suddenly come my way
but Pyrrha, and as soon as I
caught sight of her, my hand
dropped his volume on the sand,
and I said out loud, ‘Why