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The structure of Hesiod's Works and Days has long puzzled classical scholars, in part because the poem is not held together by an overarching narrative, like the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Theogony, but instead is composed of a single speech. As Martin West (1978.41) remarks: "To anyone who expects an orderly and systematic progression of ideas, it is liable to appear a bewildering text." Several explanations have been given for the structure of this poem. Some scholars have tried to find its unity in a central theme, but so far these efforts have remained largely unconvincing.1 Others, like West, argue that Hesiod's poem is a collection of loose passages that could have ended anywhere after line 264, 316, 380, 617, or 764.2 In this paper, I would like to suggest how a number of angry speeches in the Homeric epics may clarify the structure of the Works and Days. This comparison should help to explain both the organization of Hesiod's poem and the emotional framework in which it is set.
Sections of the Works and Days have already been compared to various Homeric speeches, most recently by Jens-Uwe Schmidt (1986). Following Heinz Munding (1959) and Hans Diller (1962), Schmidt compares the long passage on dike in Op. 213-85 to Phoenix's speech to Achilles in Book 9 of the Iliad, and the Farmer's Almanac in Op. 286 and following to Nestor's instruction of his son Antilochus in Iliad Book 23. These comparisons, while useful in explaining certain details of composition, focus only on individual parts of the poem and thus implicitly reinforce the idea of a poem made up of unrelated units. I find an explanation for the structure of Works and Days in the arrangements of several angry speeches in the Homeric epics, in particular Menelaus's speech to Euphorbus (II. 17.18-32), and I argue that this structure serves a particular rhetorical purpose, which is to persuade the external audience to side with Hesiod in his dispute with his brother and the kings of Ascra. Some scholars have commented already on the angry tone in Hesiod's voice: Gregory Nagy (1979.312-14), for example, referring to the prominent use of the word neikos in lines 29-35 and the...