Note 135 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

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.