§ 8. Hesiod And His Κλήρος.
In the time of Hesiod, the κλῆρος[321] could be sold in case of need and added to the possession of another.
Hesiod an immigrant: not a typical case of a family.
But the case of Hesiod is in itself somewhat exceptional. His father had fled from his own country by stress of poverty, and settled on the barren land of Askra in Boeotia, where he was allowed to acquire some land.[322] He was therefore somewhat of a sojourner (the μετανάστης of Homer),[323] and, true to the Homeric doctrine, was unencumbered by the claims of kindred. Hesiod contrasts the ready help of the neighbour with the perfunctory slowness of the kinsman, duty-bound. The neighbour, he says, is prompted by the need of mutual protection of material property, the kinsman stays to bind on his sandals and gird his loins for the labour he is forbidden to shirk.[324]
Hesiod and his brother Perses had divided the κλῆρος of their father into two, and lived apart. Perses had squandered his half, and spent his time [pg 124] and his livelihood in the gay life of the town, but none the less seems to have expected to be allowed to draw still further on the resources of the paternal property, to the distress of his industrious brother.
Hesiod does not contemplate any possible means of making a living other than by tilling the soil; and his quaint ideas may be taken as typical of the small Boeotian peasant-farmer, allowance being made for the short time that his family had held land at Askra.