118Yet even when the toils of men and oxen have made trial of these things in turning the earth, the wicked goose and the Strymonian cranes and endive with its bitter fibres do no little harm, and shade does damage. 121The Father himself willed that the way of tillage should not be easy, and he first stirred the fields by art, sharpening mortal hearts with cares, and did not allow his kingdom to grow sluggish in heavy torpor. 125Before Jupiter no farmers subdued the fields; 126it was not even right to mark out or divide the plain with a boundary: they sought for the common store, and the earth herself bore all things more freely when no one demanded it.
129He added evil venom to black serpents and bade wolves prey and the sea be stirred, shook the honey from the leaves and took away fire, and checked the wine that ran everywhere in streams, so that practice, by taking thought, might little by little hammer out the various arts, and seek the blade of corn in furrows. 136Then first did rivers feel hollowed alders; 137then the sailor gave the stars numbers and names, the Pleiades, the Hyades and Lycaon's bright Bear; 139then it was discovered how to catch wild beasts in snares and to trick them with birdlime, and to ring great glades with hounds; 141and now one lashes the broad river with a casting-net, seeking the depths, and another drags his dripping lines through the sea; 143then came the hardness of iron and the blade of the shrill saw (for the first men split the cleavable wood with wedges), then came the various arts.
145Toil conquered all things, relentless toil, and want pressing hard in harsh circumstances. 147Ceres first taught mortals to turn the earth with iron, when the sacred woods were already failing of acorns and arbutus berries, and Dodona was denying them food. 150Soon toil was added to the corn as well, so that evil mildew ate the stalks and the idle thistle bristled in the fields; 152the crops perish, a rough forest springs up, burrs and caltrops, and amid the shining tillage unlucky darnel and barren oats hold sway. 155But unless you attack the weeds with constant mattocks, and frighten the birds with noise, and keep down with your sickle the shade over the darkened land, and call down rain with your prayers, alas, you will gaze in vain at another man's great heap, and console your hunger in the woods by shaking an oak.