Works and Days (520-540)

who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One[*] gnaws his foot

in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men,[*] and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes. Then the horned and unhorned denizens of the wood,

with teeth chattering pitifully, flee through the copses and glades, and all, as they seek shelter, have this one care, to gain thick coverts or some hollow rock. Then, like the Three-legged One[*] whose back is broken and whose head looks down upon the ground,

like him, I say, they wander to escape the white snow. Then put on, as I bid you, a soft coat and a tunic to the feet to shield your body,—and you should weave thick woof on thin warp. In this clothe yourself so that your hair may keep still

and not bristle and stand upon end all over your body. Lace on your feet close-fitting boots of the hide of a slaughtered ox, thickly lined with felt inside. And when the season of frost comes on, stitch together skins of firstling kids with ox-sinew, to put over your back