Note 136 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

Upon the goblet’s edge.] Robinson supposes a sentiment of hospitality; that the flaggon is not to stand still. Others suppose οινοχοη to be a bowl used only in libation, and which it was indecent to prostitute to common use. But for this there seems not the least authority.

“All the allegorical glosses invented by the latter Greeks to varnish over the doting superstitions of their ancestors are utterly destitute of verisimilitude. Even in our day traces of the old superstitions remain in many places. There are people, for instance, who think it a bad omen if the loaf be inverted, so that the flat part is uppermost; if the knives be laid across, or the salt spilt on the table. It would be just as easy to find a mystical sense in these, as in the idle fancies of Hesiod.” Le Clerc.