Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

48 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
base of one of the jugs. As soon as the water ceased to flow, the
speaker would be required to sit down. This simple device guaranteed
that both parties spoke for exactly the same amount of time.
Marking the Passage of the Seasons
Hesiod’s Works and Days, which was composed in the seventh
century b.c.e. , is a kind of farmer’s almanac. It indicates that signs
from the natural world, such as heliacal risings and settings, were
used to mark the passage of the seasons and so served as a guide to
the farming year. The time for plowing and harvesting, for instance,
was indicated by the rise of a constellation called the Pleiades (also
known as the Seven Sisters):
When the daughters of Atlas [the giant who supports the earth on his
shoulders] are rising [i.e., early in May], begin the harvest, and when they
are setting begin your plowing. These stars are hidden for forty nights
and forty days, but they appear again as the year revolves again, which is
when iron [i.e., for the blade of the plow] must first be sharpened. (lines
383–87)
Similarly, the moment to harvest grapes coincided with the appearance
of particular stars:
When Orion and Sirius (also known as the Dog star) are in the middle of
the sky, and rosy-fingered dawn sees Arktouros [i.e., in mid-September],
then cut off all the grapes . . . and bring them home. (lines 609–11)
Hesiod also uses changes in animal behavior as an indicator of the
changing seasons:
When the house-carrier [i.e., snail] leaves the ground and climbs up plants
[i.e., in the middle of May], fleeing the Pleiades, then is not the time to
dig vineyards, but to sharpen your sickles and rouse your slaves. (lines
571–73)
The blossoming of plants served as a further guide:
When the artichoke comes into flower [i.e., in June], and the chattering
cicada sits in a tree and pours down his sweet song in full measure from
under his wings and wearisome heat is at its height, then goats are fattest
and wine is sweetest. Women are in heat, but men are at their weakest,
because Sirius saps the head and the knees, and the flesh is dry because of
the heat. (lines 582–88)