Hymn to Hephaestus and Athena

Eight lines, and they contain an entire history of civilisation.

It was thus: men "dwelt in caves in the mountains, like wild beasts". It is now thus: having learnt crafts through Hephaestus, they "pass the whole year through to its end at ease in houses of their own". The measure of the human is declared to be housing — the move from cave to house; and the unit of account is a year lived in sufficiency from beginning to end.

There are two other such catalogues in this corpus, and it is worth comparing them. In Statius, Earth "first gave food to the unfed and changed it for them" — there the line runs through diet (tellus-004). In Ovid, Ceres "first gave laws" — there through right (ovid-ceres-001). Here it runs through a roof. Three ancient answers to the question of what distinguishes a man from an animal, and all three are material: not reason, not speech, not the immortality of the soul, but bread, law and a house.

Athena is named as partner: the crafts were taught by the two of them. The usual division between them — hers the women's and the intellectual arts, his fire and metal — is not drawn here; in this line they act as one institution.

Δίδου δ᾽ ἀρετήν τε καὶ ὄλβον — grant excellence and prosperity. Of the craftsman god one asks both the skill and the income from it.