In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How the Days Fit the Works in Hesiod’s Works And DaysAndré LardinoisEver since the nineteenth century, scholars have questioned the authenticity of the catalogue, at the end of Hesiod’s Works and Days, of favorable and unfavorable days (765–828; hereafter termed Days). Ul-rich von Wilamowitz–Moellendorff omitted the entire section from his 1928 edition, and Friedrich Solmsen bracketed it in the Oxford Classical Text.1 Even scholars who defend the passage, Martin (...) West for example, are willing to concede that there is a misfit; West argues that the whole poem is a compilation of loose passages, and the Days is no exception.2 I argue here for the authenticity of the Days by demonstrating the connection of that passage to the poem’s other themes. By “authentic” I mean that the same poet who composed most of lines 1–764—minor interpolations, of course, cannot be excluded—also gave the Days its present form.3 It is possible that this poet worked from one or more preexisting calendars in verse, but if so, he went out of his way to integrate [End Page 319] them into the rest of the poem.4 This must have occurred before the end of the sixth century b.c.e., when Heraclitus refers to the passage as Hesiodic.5In a celebrated article Hermann Fränkel has shown how the idea that humans are “ephemeral”—not in the modern sense of “short– lived,” but of “having to live from day to day”—pervades archaic Greek literature.6 I believe that Hesiod expresses the same thought in Works and Days, particularly through his inclusion of the calendar of good and bad days at the end of the poem. This final section on the Days is therefore crucial to our understanding of the poem. In my analysis the Days refers back to themes which are treated more fully in the earlier parts of the poem, just as these earlier parts already allude to the idea that humans have to live from day to day. In this way the various themes of the poem, as well as the cosmological spheres they represent, are interconnected. Before examining the various themes of Works and Days, however, let us review the different arguments for and against the authenticity of the Days.QUESTIONS ABOUT AUTHENTICITYAmong recent critics, Solmsen (1963) and Walter Marg (1970, 383–86) have formulated the strongest objections against the authenticity of the Days. They point to (1) the irrational beliefs expressed in the passage, which would contradict the rational outlook of Hesiod in the rest of the poem, and (2) the fact that in the rest of the poem time is not reckoned by days of the lunar month but by the movement of the sun and the constellations. They further argue that (3) the passage on the Days is hard to reconcile with some of the instructions in the part of the poem dealing with agricultural work (286–617), (4) it is inconsistent with the [End Page 320] description of Hesiod’s farm in that earlier part of the poem, (5) lacks internal coherence, and (6) does not show Hesiod’s customary style and wit.West (1978, 346–50) has responded to most of these objections. To his arguments I here add some of my own and those of other recent critics. First of all, belief in lucky and unlucky days was widespread in antiquity,7 and similar “irrational” beliefs are found not only in W&D 724–59 (which Solmsen and Marg, following Wilamowitz, therefore want to athetize as well), but also in W&D 391–92, where Perses is instructed “to strip to sow, strip to plow, and strip to reap.” West rightly suspects that the reluctance of some critics to allow for irrational or superstitious beliefs in a classical poet like Hesiod lies behind the rejection of these lines in Works and Days.8Solmsen himself expressed doubt about the significance of the fact that the Works largely measures time by the movement of the sun and the constellations (286–617), whereas the Days are arranged according to the lunar month. In the Works reference is made... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its SettingAndré LardinoisEva Stehle. Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its Setting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. xi 1 367 pp. Cloth, $39.50.Both gender and performance have been the focus of much research in Greek literature since the mid-1970s, although they usually have been studied by different sets of scholars. A quick gender analysis shows that (...) gender studies, so far, have attracted mainly female scholars (with the prominent exception of Jack Winkler), while the study of the performance contexts of early Greek literature has been dominated by men: Claude Calame, Bruno Gentili, and Wolfgang Rösler, to name but a few. Eva Stehle, for the first time, combines both approaches to present a new reading of various passages in archaic and classical Greek literature.The book consists of six chapters with an introduction and a brief conclusion. The introduction opens with six ancient reports about performances, some of which touch upon the staging or self-presentation of the performers. This self-presentation can encompass many characteristics, including the performers’ physical fitness, social status, wealth, or gender. Stehle argues that the latter was considered particularly important in antiquity and is nowadays most easily detectable, because it is reflected in the language of the texts. This gendered self-presentation of the performers in turn has to be situated within the specific context of the performance. Stehle recognizes three types of performances in early Greece to which she relates the three major genres of poetry: (1) community performances (chapters 1–3), reflected mostly in choral poetry, (2) performances by bards of hexameter poetry (chapter 4), and (3) symposia (chapter 5), where most monodic lyric together with elegy and iambos was performed. Chapter 6 is devoted to Sappho, whose love poetry, Stehle argues, “was designed to escape the tyranny of the performance culture” (323).Another important concept discussed in the introduction is that of “psychological efficacy” (19–21). This relates to the effect a performance is supposed to have on the audience, besides entertainment. In chapter 1, Stehle discusses the psychological efficacy of community poetry, which, she argues, is to renew the community and provide a unifying discourse. Community poetry is mostly, but not exclusively, choral. A chorus can function as both reflection and model of the community, which means that it can speak for or to the audience. Among the fragments Stehle treats in this chapter are Alkman fr. 1, the Swallow Song (PMG 848), the Athenian praise song for Demetrios Poliorketes, Pindar’s Paian 9, Tyrtaios’ Eunomia, Solon’s Salamis elegy, and Archilochos frr. 98–99. [End Page 633]Chapter 2 (“Women in Performance in the Community”) continues the analysis of Alkman fr. 1 and further discusses Alkman fr. 3, Pindar’s Daphnephoria (fr. 94b), Korinna fr. 655, other evidence for songs sung by parthenoi, evidence for performances by adult women (chapter 2.2), and finally a number of inscriptions with women as subjects (chapter 2.3). (Inscriptions are also discussed at the end of chapter 6.) There is, according to Stehle, something of a paradox in the representation of the community by women, who otherwise lack a public voice. This paradox is resolved in Alkman’s partheneia fragments by having the young women downplay the efficacy of their voice. The same holds true for the young women in Pindar’s Daphnephoria fragment. In Korinna fr. 655 the poem “does not limit or depreciate women’s ability to speak effectively” (103), but it is unclear if this is a choral song. Adult women staged themselves as producers of warriors and proper wives. In other words, “women performing communal poetry combined the function of providing reflection and model with a staging of their own subordinate status in the community” (113). Stehle finds in the inscriptions a more positive expression of women’s identities, which she attributes to the “self-sufficient authority” of writing (115).The male body was associated with martial strength and aggressiveness, qualities which could be displayed in armed dances like the pyrrhiche but in other contexts were problematic for addressing the community. Therefore several strategies were developed to mitigate the aggressive... (shrink)