"Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it"
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Hesiod makes virtue sound less like a halo and more like a hiking trail that hurts your knees. The line is bluntly transactional: badness is cheap, abundant, frictionless. It is not romanticized evil; it is the default setting of human life when no one is watching, when appetite outruns discipline, when shortcuts are available. The “smooth road” sits “close by” because it requires no transformation. You just keep going as you are.
Then he pulls the old Greek trick of turning ethics into geography. “In front of excellence” isn’t an abstract barrier; it’s a placed obstacle, a threshold the gods have arranged. That’s the subtextual sting: excellence isn’t merely hard by accident. Difficulty is part of its design, almost its proof. Sweat becomes a kind of moral credential, the price of admission to arete (excellence) in a world that prizes earned status and visible labor.
Context matters here. Hesiod writes in an agrarian economy where survival depends on repetitive work and delayed reward. His poetry is didactic; it’s aimed at shaping behavior in a community where idleness and opportunism threaten social order. Invoking “immortal gods” isn’t just piety, it’s enforcement: the cosmos itself backs the lesson. Yet there’s also a democratic edge. Nobility isn’t inherited in this framing; it’s achieved, painfully, over time. The steep road is open to anyone willing to bleed a little for it.
Then he pulls the old Greek trick of turning ethics into geography. “In front of excellence” isn’t an abstract barrier; it’s a placed obstacle, a threshold the gods have arranged. That’s the subtextual sting: excellence isn’t merely hard by accident. Difficulty is part of its design, almost its proof. Sweat becomes a kind of moral credential, the price of admission to arete (excellence) in a world that prizes earned status and visible labor.
Context matters here. Hesiod writes in an agrarian economy where survival depends on repetitive work and delayed reward. His poetry is didactic; it’s aimed at shaping behavior in a community where idleness and opportunism threaten social order. Invoking “immortal gods” isn’t just piety, it’s enforcement: the cosmos itself backs the lesson. Yet there’s also a democratic edge. Nobility isn’t inherited in this framing; it’s achieved, painfully, over time. The steep road is open to anyone willing to bleed a little for it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Hesiod, Works and Days, lines ~287–289 (English translation by H. G. Evelyn-White, 1914). Passage appears in standard editions; Greek/English available at Perseus Digital Library. |
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