He journied yesterday; with whom the gods
Went also.
Cowper.
[135] Ne’er to thy five-branch’d hand apply the blade.] This precept is somewhat obscurely expressed, like the symbols of Pythagoras: that things of no value might appear to involve a mysterious importance. Hesiod seems to intimate that we should not choose the precise time of the feast for washing the hands and paring the nails, but sit down to table with hands ready washed. No person, indeed, even at a private entertainment, would have thought of cutting his nails at table, if he did not wish the parings to fly into the dishes, which I conceive could not have been more agreeable to the Greeks than to ourselves. Le Clerc.
[136] Upon the goblet’s edge.] Robinson supposes a sentiment of hospitality; that the flaggon is not to stand still. Others suppose οινοχοη to be a bowl used only in libation, and which it was indecent to prostitute to common use. But for this there seems not the least authority.
“All the allegorical glosses invented by the latter Greeks to varnish over the doting superstitions of their ancestors are utterly destitute of verisimilitude. Even in our day traces of the old superstitions remain in many places. There are people, for instance, who think it a bad omen if the loaf be inverted, so that the flat part is uppermost; if the knives be laid across, or the salt spilt on the table. It would be just as easy to find a mystical sense in these, as in the idle fancies of Hesiod.” Le Clerc.
[137] Unhallow’d vessels.] There is here an allusion to the ancient custom of purifying new vessels and consecrating them to a happy use; or, as we say, blessing them. Guietus.
Le Clerc imagines a prohibition against seizing the flesh from the tripods before a sacrifice, which he illustrates by the offence of the sons of Eli, 1 Sam. ii. 13; but what has the bathing to do with this?
[138] On moveless stones.] By ακινητα, immoveable things, he appears to mean the ground or stones, which are cold and hard; or by sitting on immoveable things we may understand habits of sloth. Guietus.
Proclus interprets the word to mean sepulchres, which it was unlawful to move: but on the same grounds it may be interpreted land-marks. One should rather understand by it any sort of stones; Hesiod preferring that a boy should be placed on wooden slabs that might be moved about. But the being placed on a stone could not be more hurtful to him on the twelfth day or month than at any other period of his childhood. This was a mere superstition; and we may as well seek to interpret the dreams of a man who is light-headed. Le Clerc.