154 Hutton Webster 



of lucky and unlucky days." " Sometimes a day is a stepmother, 

 sometimes a mother," Hesiod remarks pithily. What ancient 

 regulations for the observance of tabooed periods are embodied 

 in the calendar is problematical. However, many of the pro- 

 hibitions with which the first part of the poem concludes are 

 thoroughly primitive taboos.-^ Hesiod does not mention any 

 days when labor is to be entirely abandoned. We may assume, 

 perhaps, that at the period when the Hesiodic poems were com- 

 posed the rationalizing temper of the Greeks had gotten some- 

 what the better of their superstitious fears. In the Hesiodic list, as 

 in the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, appears the notion that 

 not only whole days but even parts of days have an individual 

 character, working for good or evil. Thus the middle ninth (the 

 nineteenth) is said to be "a better day toward afternoon." 

 The " fourth which followeth the twentieth of the month is the 

 best at dawn, but it is worse toward afternoon." Hesiod does 

 not distinguish the months as lucky and unlucky, and the days 

 which possess either of these attributes are the same for every 

 month. He gives no explanation for their luckiness or unlucki- 

 ness though traces of a rationalizing process are perhaps observ- 

 able in the directions regarding the fifths (presumably 5, 15, 25) 

 which are unlucky "because on the fifth men say the Erinyes 

 attended the birth of Oath (Horkos), whom Strife bare to punish 

 perjurers." The seventh again is lucky " for on that day Leto 

 bare Apollo of the Golden Sword."-* The Hesiodic injunctions 

 did not cease to be observed in the later classical epoch and 

 exercised great influence on civil and political life. The super- 

 stitions relating to unlucky days only gained a firmer foothold 

 under the influence of Chaldean and Egyptian doctrines, in pass- 



"- Opera et Dies, 765-828. On the Hesiodic calendar see E. E. Sikes, 

 " Folk-Lore in the Works and Days of Hesiod," Classical Reviczi}, 1893, 

 vii. 389-94, and the Addenda to Mr. A. W. Mair's admirable version of 

 Hesiod, Oxford, 1908, pp. 162-66. For a full analysis of the calendar see 

 A. Mommsen, Chronologic, Untersuchnngcn fiber das Kalcndcrwesen der 

 Griechen, Leipzig, 1883, pp. 39-46. 



^ Opera et Dies, 724-64. 



^Ibid., 820, 802, 770. 



154 



