Works and Days was written by Hesiod. Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet. It is believed that Hesiod was active from 750 BC and 650 BC, which is about the same as Homer (writer of  The Odyssey and The Iliad). Works and Days is a didactic poem. It was written around 700 BC and contains eight hundred and twenty-eight lines.

The Eumenides was written by Aeschylus. Aeschylus was another ancient Greek poet. He specialized in Greek tragedies and very often in his life, he wrote multiple Greek tragedies, some of which survived to this day. He was often called the Father of Greek Tragedy. The Eumenides was considered as being culturally important by scholars. It was also considered as being originally published in 458 BC.

In these two plays, there are two very different world views on cause and effect ethically in history. In Greek civilization, there is confusion on ultimate sovereignty throughout the history of the Greeks. For example, Zeus is king of the gods, yet, he does not have ultimate sovereignty over the world. He owns the gods, but only part of the world. All the gods share all the world. This causes a lot of confusion on which god the people should follow because each god has a different set of rules and laws. This causes some confusion, so it is up to the people to decide which god to follow. Even though these plays are different in some ways, they also have some similarities in other ways.

In Works and Days, Hesiod tells his brother Perses how to live a good life. He hopes that once Perses knows of this advice, he will ignore the courts and share a large portion of land with Hesiod (which he inherited from his father once he died). Part of this advice is telling Perses not to listen to the courts, but rather omens sent by the gods. In The Eumenides, it says that the gods are above men, however, the gods give men the power of judgement in the courts and that men should listen to them. These two statements are very similar even though these statements come from two very different books. Works and Days and The Eumenides, which are very different on world views and many other things, but there are some similarities, which you just saw here. There are many other similarities, however, I do not know of any more.

It also says that in Works and Days, Hesiod says to his brother that he needs to directly obey the gods, which is part of his “brotherly advice” on how to “live a good and prosperous life” (He can do this by listening to the omens sent by the gods, like what I said in the last paragraph). In The Eumenides, it says that the gods gave man this power, so man should listen to the courts (exactly what Hesiod does not what Perses to do in Works and Days). This is a huge difference between Works and Days and The Eumenides. It is very confusing.