WORKS.
53
If with firm nails thy artist join the whole,[1]
Affix the share-beam, and adapt the pole.
Two ploughs provide, on household works intent,
This art-compacted, that of native bent:
A prudent fore-thought: one may crashing fail,
The other, instant yoked, shall prompt avail.
Of elm or bay the draught-pole firm endures,
The plough-tail holm, the share-beam oak secures.
Two males procure: be nine their sum of years:
Then hale and strong for toil the sturdy steers:
Nor shall they headstrong-struggling spurn the soil,
And snap the plough and mar th' unfinish'd toil.
In forty's prime thy ploughman: one with bread
Of four-squared loaf[2] in double portions fed.
Affix the share-beam, and adapt the pole.
Two ploughs provide, on household works intent,
This art-compacted, that of native bent:
A prudent fore-thought: one may crashing fail,
The other, instant yoked, shall prompt avail.
Of elm or bay the draught-pole firm endures,
The plough-tail holm, the share-beam oak secures.
Two males procure: be nine their sum of years:
Then hale and strong for toil the sturdy steers:
Nor shall they headstrong-struggling spurn the soil,
And snap the plough and mar th' unfinish'd toil.
In forty's prime thy ploughman: one with bread
Of four-squared loaf[2] in double portions fed.
- ↑ Thy artist join the whole.] In the original “the servant of Minerva,” that is, the carpenter. Minerva presided over all crafts, and was the patroness of works in iron and wood.
- ↑ with bread
Of four-squared loaf.]The loaf here mentioned is similar to the quadra of the Romans: so denominated from its being marked four-square by incisions at equal distances. See Athenæus, iii. 29.
By “a quadruple loaf containing eight portions,” Hesiod, perhaps, means a loaf double the usual size; similar, probably, to that mentioned by Theocritus, Idyl. xxiv. 135:A huge Doric loaf:
Which he that digs the ground and sets the plant
Might eat and well be fill’d.
