Abstract
In the second part of his poem Works and Days, Hesiod presents a set of rules of conduct, which a prudent man should follow in everyday life. The rules are formulated as maxims and encompass the social sphere (vv. 694-723) and correct religious conduct (vv. 724-59). In his landmark study Miasma (1983: 282), Robert Parker compared these rules with the Pythagorean and Orphic lives as representatives of a unified guide to conduct. In our book (2016: 41-52) we analyzed two discrete instructions as evidence for the request for inner purity. In this paper, we will assess the complete set of religious instructions in the Works and Days as the earliest evidence of a Greek collection of ritual norms. Recent research on the way Hesiod was read and quoted in antiquity (Koning 2010; Canevaro 2015) demonstrates that W&D was an extremely popular and widely quoted poem; I. Petrovic 2016: 401-406 argues that LSCG Suppl. 91 is influenced by W&D 288-293. Rather than attempting to unearth specific influences of Hesiod's precepts on individual inscriptional religious norms, this paper will first offer an outline of religious norms as represented in Hesiod and will situate them in the context of Hesiodic notions of justice and proper religiosity. In the second step, we will investigate their specific language as compared to later inscriptional norms.
