Page "Hesiod" Paragraph 8

In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants.

His farmer employs a friend ( l. 370 ) as well as servants ( ll.

502, 573, 597, 608, 766 ), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years ( ll.

469 – 71 ), a slave boy to cover the seed ( ll.

441 – 6 ), a female servant to keep house ( ll.

405, 602 ) and working teams of oxen and mules ( ll.

405, 607f .).

One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony ( ll.

337 – 45 ), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian dialect.

However, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian — he composed in the main literary dialect of the time ( Homer's dialect ): Ionian.