(ll. 814-818) Again, few know that the twenty-seventh of the month is best for opening a wine-jar, and putting yokes on the necks of oxen and mules and swift-footed horses, and for hauling a swift ship of many thwarts down to the sparkling sea; few call it by its right name.
(ll. 819-821) On the fourth day open a jar. The fourth of the mid-month is a day holy above all. And again, few men know that the fourth day after the twentieth is best while it is morning: towards evening it is less good.
(ll. 822-828) These days are a great blessing to men on earth; but the rest are changeable, luckless, and bring nothing. Everyone praises a different day but few know their nature. Sometimes a day is a stepmother, sometimes a mother. That man is happy and lucky in them who knows all these things and does his work without offending the deathless gods, who discerns the omens of birds and avoids transgressions.
THE DIVINATION BY BIRDS
Proclus on Works and Days, 828: Some make the Divination by Birds, which Apollonius of Rhodes rejects as spurious, follow this verse (Works and Days, 828).
THE ASTRONOMY
Fragment #1—Athenaeus xi, p. 491 d: And the author of “The Astronomy”, which is attributed forsooth to Hesiod, always calls them (the Pleiades) Peleiades: ‘but mortals call them Peleiades’; and again, ‘the stormy Peleiades go down’; and again, ‘then the Peleiades hide away....’
Scholiast on Pindar, Nem. ii. 16: The Pleiades.... whose stars are these:—‘Lovely Teygata, and dark-faced Electra, and Alcyone, and bright Asterope, and Celaeno, and Maia, and Merope, whom glorious Atlas begot....’ ((LACUNA)) ‘In the mountains of Cyllene she (Maia) bare Hermes, the herald of the gods.’
Fragment #2—Scholiast on Aratus 254: But Zeus made them (the sisters of Hyas) into the stars which are called Hyades. Hesiod in his Book about Stars tells us their names as follows: ‘Nymphs like the Graces [1401], Phaesyle and Coronis and rich-crowned Cleeia and lovely Phaco and long-robed Eudora, whom the tribes of men upon the earth call Hyades.’
Fragment #3—Pseudo-Eratosthenes Catast. frag. 1: [1402] The Great Bear.]—Hesiod says she (Callisto) was the daughter of Lycaon and lived in Arcadia. She chose to occupy herself with wild-beasts in the mountains together with Artemis, and, when she was seduced by Zeus, continued some time undetected by the goddess, but afterwards, when she was already with child, was seen by her bathing and so discovered. Upon this, the goddess was enraged and changed her into a beast. Thus she became a bear and gave birth to a son called Arcas. But while she was in the mountains, she was hunted by some goat-herds and given up with her babe to Lycaon. Some while after, she thought fit to go into the forbidden precinct of Zeus, not knowing the law, and being pursued by her own son and the Arcadians, was about to be killed because of the said law; but Zeus delivered her because of her connection with him and put her among the stars, giving her the name Bear because of the misfortune which had befallen her.