Hesiod, creator; Homer, creator; Evelyn-White, Hugh G.
(Hugh Gerard), d. 1924, translator
and to keep off the rain. On your head above wear a shaped cap of felt to keep your ears from getting wet, for the dawn is chill when Boreas has once made his onslaught, and at dawn a fruitful mist is spread over the earth from starry heaven upon the fields of blessed men:
it is drawn from the ever-flowing rivers and is raised high above the earth by windstorm, and sometimes it turns to rain towards evening, and sometimes to wind when Thracian Boreas huddles the thick clouds. Finish your work and return home ahead of him,
and do not let the dark cloud from heaven wrap round you and make your body clammy and soak your clothes. Avoid it; for this is the hardest month, wintry, hard for sheep and hard for men. In this season let your oxen have half their usual food, but let your man have more;
for the helpful nights are long. Observe all this until the year is ended and you have nights and days of equal length, and Earth, the mother of all, bears again her various fruit. When Zeus has finished
sixty wintry days after the solstice, then the star Arcturus [*](February to March.) leaves the holy stream of Ocean and first rises brilliant at dusk. After him the shrilly wailing daughter of Pandion, the swallow, appears to men when spring is just beginning.
Before she comes, prune the vines, for it is best so. But when the House-carrier[*](I.e.the snail. The season is the middle of May.) climbs up the plants from the earth to escape the Pleiades, then it is no longer the season for digging vineyards, but to whet your sickles and rouse up your slaves. Avoid shady seats and sleeping until dawn
in the harvest season, when the sun scorches the body. Then be busy and bring home your fruits, getting up early to make your livelihood sure. For dawn takes away a third part of your work, dawn advances a man on his journey and advances him in his work,—
dawn which appears and sets many men on their road, and puts yokes on many oxen. But when the artichoke flowers,[*](In June.) and the chirping grass-hopper sits in a tree and pours down his shrill song continually from under his wings in the season of wearisome heat,