Note 86 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.
George Chapman translation
with bread Of four-squared loaf.]
The loaf here mentioned is similar to the quadra of the Romans: so denominated from its being marked four-square by incisions at equal distances. See Athenæus, iii. 29.
By “a quadruple loaf containing eight portions,” Hesiod, perhaps, means a loaf double the usual size; similar, probably, to that mentioned by Theocritus, Idyl. xxiv. 135:
A huge Doric loaf: Which he that digs the ground and sets the plant Might eat and well be fill’d.