In the earliest known example of didactic poetry, Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod admonishes a dissolute brother to lead a life of honest labor.
Works and Days contains the earliest recorded mention of the star Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens as seen from Earth.
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Others present these stories as mythology deriving from Greek cultural influence, deriving arguments mainly from Hesiod's "Works and Days", which portrays the basic moral foundation and plantation techniques of the citizens of Greece and describes the races of men, created by the Greek deities.
Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days and Shield of Heracles (translation, introduction and commentary, 1983)
Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India, the Biblical Ecclesiastes, Islamic Hadith, The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, Hesiod's Works and Days, the Delphic maxims, and Epictetus' Handbook.