Hesiod

Hesiod (Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, believed to have lived around the year 700 BCE. From the 5th century BCE, literary historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer. Most modern scholars agree that Homer lived before Hesiod.

Hesiod serves as a major source for knowledge of Greek mythology, of farming techniques, of archaic Greek astronomy and of ancient time-keeping.

Table of contents

1 Life 2 Works 2.1 Works and Days 2.2 Theogony 2.3 Genealogical works 3 External links

Life

Hesiod lived in Boeotia and regularly visited Mt Helicon, the mythological home of the Muses, who, he says, gave him the gift of poetic creation one day while he tended sheep.

The few details of Hesiod's life come from his own works. His poem Works and Days mentions that he lost a lawsuit with his brother Perses over their inheritance. However, some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing of the Works and Days. In another biographical detail, Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis where the sons of one Amiphidamas awarded him a tripod (ll.654-662). Plutarch first identified this passage as an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, based on his identification of Amiphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria, which occurred around 705 BCE. The account of this contest inspired the later tale of a competition between Hesiod and Homer.

Two different, yet early, traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, states that an oracle had warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram of Chersios of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BCE, claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.

Works

Works and Days

Hesiod wrote only one poem universally considered authentic: the Works and Days.

This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest work and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses).

Theogony

The Theogony is traditionally attributed to Hesiod, although authorship is not certain. Theogony resembles Works and Days very closely in style and substance considering the purposely different subject-matter.

The Theogony concerns the origins of the world and of the gods, and shows a special interest in genealogy.

Genealogical works

• Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod later genealogical poems -- known as Catalogues of Women or as Eoiae (because sections began with the Greek words e oie 'or like her'). Only small fragments of these have survived. They deal with the genealogies of kings and heroes of the legendary heroic period. Scholars generally classify them as later examples of the poetic tradition to which Hesiod belonged.
• A final poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles, apparently forms a late expansion of one of these genealogical poems.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about .

• Web texts taken from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, published as Loeb Classical Library #57, 1914, ISBN 0674990633:
  • Perseus Classics Collection: Greek and Roman Materials: Text: Hesiod (Greek texts and English translations for Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles with additional notes and cross links.)
  • Versions of the electronic edition of Evelyn-White's English translation edited by Douglas B. Killings, June 1995:
    • Project Gutenberg plain text.
    • Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE: The Online Medieval and Classical Library: Hesiod
    • Sacred Texts: Classics: The Works of Hesiod (Theogony and Works and Days only)

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