Texts in Conversation
In Works and Days, a Greek poem of moral advice, Hesiod describes the road to badness as smooth and near and the path to goodness as steep. The Didache, an early church manual, begins with a similar picture of two ways, one to life and one to death.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Hesiod, Works and Days 287
Classical
[286] To you, foolish Perses, I will speak good sense. Badness can be got easily and in shoals: the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows: long and steep is the path that leads to her, and it is rough at the first; but when a man has reached the top, then is she easy to reach, though before that she was hard.
Date: c. 700 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Didache 1:1
Early Christian
1 There are two Ways: one of Life and one of Death, and there is a significant difference between the two Ways. 2 The way of life is as follows: First, you should love the God who created you; secondly, love your neighbor as yourself. Treat others as you would want to be treated. 3 Now, the teaching behind these words is this: Bless those who curse you, pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. What credit is it to you if you love only those who love you back? Don't even the non-believers do the same? Instead, love those who hate you, and you will have no enemies.
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Notes and References
“... Human beings stand before a parting of the ways: each individual can choose only one of the two paths. There is no compromise. [...] The topos of the "two ways" was a widespread commonplace of ancient (and not only ancient) moral philosophy. For popular Greek moral thought, cf. Hesiod Works and Days 287-92 (Rzach, 70); [...] ("Badness can be got easily and in shoals: the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows: long and steep is the path that leads to her, and it is rough at the first; but when a man has reached the top, then is she easy to reach, though before that she was hard"). The text is found within a longer admonition to exercise dike. ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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