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Hesiod's wagon: text and technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

N. J. Richardson and
Stuart Piggott
N. J. Richardson
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford
Stuart Piggott
Affiliation:
St John's College, Oxford
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Extract

Hesiod's instructions about cutting wood for a wagon or cart (Op. 424–7) have puzzled commentators since antiquity.* The latest editor of the Works and Days, Martin West, expresses surprise that he should recommend an axle as long as 7 ft (line 424), which West thinks would be liable to break under a heavy load. In his discussion of line 426 he rejects the view of the ancient Scholia and Proclus, that ἁψίς refers to one of four segments which are joined together to make the felloe of a wheel, and that the vehicle is sized by the diameter of the wheel. Instead West accepts the view of Thraemer and Mazon, that ἁψίς refers to the whole wheel, measured across its diameter. He also assumes that it must be a block-wheel, consisting of a solid disc, and he goes on to suggest that the dimension given for the ἄμαξα of ten palms (i.e. about 2·5 ft) refers to the length of the vehicle from front to back. As he says, the result is ‘an oddly proportioned vehicle’, which would in fact be 5 ft wide and 2·5 ft long.

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Type
Notes
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 102 , November 1982, pp. 225 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1982

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References

* We should like to thank Dr J. J. Coulton for some helpful comments on the problems discussed here.

1 The best discussion which I have found is by Waltz, P., RÉA xiv (1912) 225–38Google Scholar.

2 ‘Hesiod's wagon’, JPh xxxiii (1914) 145–53Google Scholar.

3 At Eur., Ion 88Google Scholar(τὴν ἡμερίαν ἁψῖδα) LSJ give the sense ‘disc’. But as the phrase refers to the rising sun, the poet may well have been thinking of an arc or segment here. At A.Pl. iv 191Google Scholar (Nicaenetus) κύκλος ἁψῖδος is used of a potter's wheel, but this looks like a rather vague poetic periphrasis.

4 Cf. Lorimer, H. L., ‘The country cart of ancient Greece’, JHS xxiii (1903) 132–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wiesner, J., Fahren und Reiten, Arch. Homerica i F (1968)Google Scholar.

5 Contemporaries would presumably understand what was meant, as (for instance) in the case of a ‘three-litre Bentley’, which might well baffle scholars of a later age!

6 Cf. Kretschmer, , Glotta ix (1918) 216–17, xii (1923) 216–17Google Scholar. For the chariot cf. Il. v 722Google Scholar ff., and Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., Documents in Mycenaean Greek2 (Cambridge 1973) 371Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Gow (n. 2) 146–7, Wiesner (n. 4) 5 ff.

8 Cf. Waltz (n. 1) 227.

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10 Main refs in Piggott, S., Bull. Inst. Arch. U. London xvi (1979) 3–17Google Scholar.

11 Rackham, O., Trees and woodland in the British landscape (London 1976) 23Google Scholar.

12 Snodgrass, A. M., The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh 1971) 432Google Scholar; Müller-Karpe, H., Jdl lxxvii (1962) 102–3Google Scholar. See also the recently discovered model cart from Lefkandi (c. 900 B.C.): BSA lxxvii (1982)Google Scholar.

13 Karageorghis, V., Excavations in the necropolis of Salamis i (Nicosia 1967) 50–1Google Scholar.

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17 Littauer, M. A. and Crouwel, J., Antiq. li (1977) 95–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Kohler, E. L., in From Athens to Gordion (Philadelphia 1980) 89Google Scholar, fig. 32.