Of the Hesiodic poems similar in character to the “Works and Days”, only the scantiest fragments survive. One at least of these, the “Divination by Birds”, was, as we know from Proclus, attached to the end of the “Works” until it was rejected by Apollonius Rhodius: doubtless it continued the same theme of how to live, showing how man can avoid disasters by attending to the omens to be drawn from birds. It is possible that the “Astronomy” or “Astrology” (as Plutarch calls it) was in turn appended to the “Divination”. It certainly gave some account of the principal constellations, their dates of rising and setting, and the legends connected with them, and probably showed how these influenced human affairs or might be used as guides. The “Precepts of Chiron” was a didactic poem made up of moral and practical precepts, resembling the gnomic sections of the “Works and Days”, addressed by the Centaur Chiron to his pupil Achilles.
Even less is known of the poem called the “Great Works”: the title implies that it was similar in subject to the second section of the “Works and Days”, but longer. Possible references in Roman writers [1106] indicate that among the subjects dealt with were the cultivation of the vine and olive and various herbs. The inclusion of the judgment of Rhadamanthys (frag. 1): ‘If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil,’ indicates a gnomic element, and the note by Proclus [1107] on “Works and Days” 126 makes it likely that metals also were dealt with. It is therefore possible that another lost poem, the “Idaean Dactyls”, which dealt with the discovery of metals and their working, was appended to, or even was a part of the “Great Works”, just as the “Divination by Birds” was appended to the “Works and Days”.
Cf. Hesiod Home Page
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