Perses

The lesson of the myth of the races is, in fact, formulated by Hesiod with all possible precision. This lesson is addressed most directly to the farmer Perses... Listen to dike; do not allow hubris to grow. Hubris is especially bad for humble folk, for small farmers such as Perses

Vernant argues that Perses, as the humble farmer-addressee of Hesiod, is the primary vehicle through whom the Works and Days encodes its central moral opposition of dike against hubris.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis

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the entire poem in fact, is 'to instruct Perses, who is a small-scale farmer like his brother. Perses is to renounce hubris, settle down to work, and stop suing Hesiod and picking quarrels with him.

Vernant identifies the instructional relationship between Hesiod and Perses as the organizational principle of the Works and Days, linking agrarian labor, justice, and the social function of poetry.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis

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This quarrel is in fact strikingly similar to the one between Perses and Hesiod himself, where the objective is again dikê (dikêis/dikên ... dikassai: W&D 36/39) and where the quarrel itself is a neikos

Nagy demonstrates that the litigation between Perses and Hesiod is formally parallel to the Iliadic Strife Scene, revealing Perses as a figure through whom archaic Greek poetics and juridical discourse are structurally unified.

Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, 1979thesis

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Perses, 25, 26, 49, 62, 66, 76-79, 96, 102, 418 n.23, 421 n.76.

The extensive index entries for Perses across Vernant's text confirm the term's centrality to his analysis of Hesiodic myth, labor, and the functions of dike.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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by the end of the age of iron, the evil eris will reign supreme. Neither dike nor oaths nor the gods will be feared or respected. Hubris alone will be honored.

This passage contextualizes the moral stakes of Hesiod's address to Perses within the eschatological deterioration of the iron age, where the virtues Perses is urged to embrace are precisely those the age is losing.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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318 says not that there are two kinds of aidôs, but that aidôs is now harmful, now helpful; this must be the sense of 317-18

Cairns's discussion of the two kinds of aidos in Hesiod operates within the same textual neighborhood as the address to Perses, illuminating the ethical framework of shame and benefit that structures the poem's didactic purpose.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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a new form of epic sprang up... which for the romance and pathos of the Ionian School substituted the practical and matter-of-fact. It dealt in moral and practical maxims, in information on technical subjects... agriculture, astronomy, augury, and the calendar

This introduction to the Hesiodic corpus frames the genre within which Perses appears as addressee, characterizing Works and Days as practical-didactic epic oriented toward agrarian and moral instruction.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside

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