Works and Days (420-440)

then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then remember to hew your timber: it is the season for that work. Cut a mortar[*] three feet wide and a pestle three cubits long, and an axle of seven feet, for it will do very well so;

but if you make it eight feet long, you can cut a beetle[*] from it as well. Cut a felloe three spans across for a wagon of ten palms' width. Hew also many bent timbers, and bring home a plough-tree when you have found it, and look out on the mountain or in the field for one of holm-oak;

for this is the strongest for oxen to plough with when one of Athena's handmen has fixed in the share-beam and fastened it to the pole with dowels. Get two ploughs ready and work on them at home, one all of a piece, and the other jointed. It is far better to do this, for if you should break one of them, you can put the oxen to the other.

Poles of laurel or elm are most free from worms, and a share-beam of oak and a plough-tree of holm-oak. Get two oxen, bulls of nine years; for their strength is unspent and they are in the prime of their age: they are best for work. They will not fight in the furrow and break the plough

and then leave the work undone. Let a brisk fellow of forty years follow them, with a loaf of four quarters[*] and eight slices[*] for his dinner, one who will attend to his work and drive a straight furrow and is past the age for gaping after his fellows,