Two oxen then, each one a nine year bull,
  Whose strength is not yet spent, the best to pull,
  Which will not fight i’ the furrow, break the plow
  And leave your work undone.  To drive them now
  Get a smart man of forty, fed to rights
  With a four-quartered loaf of eight full bites: 
  That’s one to work, and drive the furrow plim,
  Too old to gape at mates, or mates at him.

That precise loaf, with just that much bitage, is the staple in Boeotia to-day; but the [Greek:  aizeos] of forty will not so readily be found.  Elsewhere in his poem Hesiod recommends something more in accord with modern practice: 

  Your house, your ox, your woman you must have;
  For she must drive the plow—­not wife but slave.

The terms are synonymous in Greece to-day.

Plowing time is when you hear the crane in the clouds overhead.  Be beforehand with your cattle.

  When year by year high in the clouds the crane
  Calls in the plow-time and the month of rain,
  Take care to feed your oxen in the byre;
  For easy ’tis to beg, but hard to hire.

That is in Tusser’s vein, and no doubt comes naturally to rustic aphorists.  A man may plow in the spring, too; and if Zeus should happen to send rain on the third day, after the cuckoo’s first call, “As much as hides an ox-hoof, and no more,” he may do as well as the autumn-tiller.  In any case don’t forget your prayers when you begin plowing: 

  You who in hand first the plow-handles feel,
  Or on the ox’s flank lay the first weal,
  Pray Chthonian Zeus and chaste Demeter bless
  The grain you sow with heart and heaviness.

Now for your vines.  First, for the pruning, note this: 

  When, from the solstice sixty days being fled,
  Arcturus leaves the holy Ocean’s bed
  And, shining, burns the twilight; when that shrill
  Child of Pandion opens first her bill—­
  Before she twitters, prune your vines!  ’Tis best.

No reasons at all:  simply “[Greek:  os gar ameinon].”  That is like Homer.  The stars continue their signals.  Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and rosy-fingered Dawn sees Arcturus.  Then—­

  Cut your grape clusters off and bring to hive;
  Show ten days to the sun, ten nights; for five
  Cover them up; the sixth day draw all off—­

That is the way of it, Perses, and much profit to you in my learning, you scamp.

Scattered up and down these frosty but kindly old pages are scraps of wisdom on all kinds of subjects—­for life is Hesiod’s theme as well as agriculture.  He will tell you under what star to go to sea, if sail you must; but better not seafare at all.  However, if you will go, choose fifty days after the summer solstice.  That is the right time, the only pretty swim-time.  If you must venture out in the spring, let it be when you see leaves on the fig-tree top as large as the print of a crow’s foot—­but even so the thing is desperate.