Note 125 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.
George Chapman translation
When from the summer-tropic fifty days Have roll’d.]
If no verses be wanting here, Hesiod truly needs not boast of his skill in nautical affairs. For what can be more absurd than to confine all navigation within fifty days, and those beginning from the summer-solstice; especially as the summer solstice fell on the 3d of July? I should suppose that there was a deficiency of two verses to this effect:
Before the summer-tropic fifty days Thy keel may safely plough the azure ways.
The similarity of the lines may have caused the copyist’s omission of the two former. I am aware that the art of navigation was in that age imperfect: but if sea-faring men had learnt from experience that navigation was safe fifty days after the summer solstice, they could have learnt from the same teacher that it was equally safe fifty days before it: namely, in the months of May and June. Le Clerc.