Introduction
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.
He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.
Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes considered history's first economist), archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
Life
Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life.
There are three explicit references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. (For the PDF)
He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.
Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes considered history's first economist), archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
Life
Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life.
There are three explicit references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. (For the PDF)
The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on the coast of Asia Minor, a little south of the island Lesbos) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet, near Thespiae in Boeotia, named Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works 640).
Hesiod's patrimony there, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses, who seems, at first, to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or "kings" but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from the thrifty poet (Works 35, 396.).
Unlike his father, Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Athamas of Chalcis, and there won a tripod in a singing competition.
He also describes a meeting between himself and the Muses on Mount Helicon, where he had been pasturing sheep when the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority (Theogony 22–35).
Unlike his father, Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Athamas of Chalcis, and there won a tripod in a singing competition.
He also describes a meeting between himself and the Muses on Mount Helicon, where he had been pasturing sheep when the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority (Theogony 22–35).
Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode, or he would have been presented with a lyre instead.
Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days, but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting, as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have travelled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious.
Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days, but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting, as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have travelled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious.
It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Asia Minor westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Asia Minor to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with the Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia, where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them.
In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend (Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group.
However, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of the time, Homer's Ionian.
It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passed them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly wasn't in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However, some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute this to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter.
The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women." He was in fact a misogynist of the same caliber as the later poet Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how a just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealized hero of epic literature in favor of an idealized view of the farmer.
Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.
Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources:
the story about the Contest of Homer and Hesiod;
a vita of Hesiod by the Byzantine grammarian John Tzetzes;
the entry for Hesiod in the Suda;
two passages and some scattered remarks in Pausanias (IX, 31.3–6 and 38.3 f.);
a passage in Plutarch Moralia (162b).
Two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle 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 there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle that predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death) claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra, the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honor in their agora, next to the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous founder. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" (οἰκιστής, oikistēs). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.
Works
Three works have survived which are attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles. Other works attributed to him are only found now in fragments. The surviving works and fragments were all written in the conventional meter and language of epic.
However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem.
Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, meter, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from the Shield of Heracles.
Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognized as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).
Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse. He had "a passion for systematizing and explaining things".
He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in a tone of voice that has been described as having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days, where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behavior and happiness through the silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy.
Theogony
The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite the different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days, most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that his work is considered as an equal with the other great Greek poets.
"Hesiod (c. 700 BCE) in conjunction with Homer, is one of those almost legendary early Greek Epic poets. His works are not of comparable length to Homer's. Hesiod's poems are not epic because of their length, but because of their language."
The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (Theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes.
The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis. This cultural crossover would have occurred in the eighth and ninth century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria.
Works and Days
The Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labor is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colorizations in search of new land. This poem is one of the earliest known musings on economic thought.
This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labor and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favor of Perses) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in a hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently.
Other writings
In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days, numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of the "Hesiodic Corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most:
"Hesiod" is the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself.
Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles (Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους, Aspis Hērakleous) is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition.
Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions.
Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod:
Megalai Ehoiai, a poem similar to the Catalogue of Women, but presumably longer.
Wedding of Ceyx, a poem concerning Heracles' attendance at the wedding of a certain Ceyx—noted for its riddles.
Melampodia, a genealogical poem that treats of the families of, and myths associated with, the great seers of mythology.
Idaean Dactyls, a work concerning mythological smelters, the Idaean Dactyls.
Descent of Perithous, about Theseus and Perithous' trip to Hades.
Precepts of Chiron, a didactic work that presented the teaching of Chiron as delivered to the young Achilles.
Megala Erga or Great Works, a poem similar to the Works and Days, but presumably longer
Astronomia, an astronomical poem to which Callimachus (Ep. 27) apparently compared Aratus' Phaenomena.
Aegimius, a heroic epic concerning the Dorian Aegimius (variously attributed to Hesiod or Cercops of Miletus).
Kiln or Potters, a brief poem asking Athena to aid potters if they pay the poet. Also attributed to Homer.
Ornithomantia, a work on bird omens that followed the Works and Days.
In addition to these works, the Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved".
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