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Hesiod

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Hesiod
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(flourished c. 700 BC) Greek poet. One of the earliest Greek poets, he is often called the father of Greek didactic poetry. A native of Boeotia, in central Greece, he may have been a professional reciter of poetry. Two complete epics have survived: the Theogony, relating stories of the gods, and the Works and Days, describing peasant life and expressing his views on the proper conduct of men. His works reveal his essentially serious outlook on life and portray a less glamorous world than Homer's. His poems won renown during his lifetime, and the power of his name was such that epics by others were later attributed to him.

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Biography: Hesiod
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The Greek poet Hesiod (active ca. 700 B.C.) was the first didactic poet in Europe and the first author of mainland Greece whose works are extant. His influence on later literature was basic and far-reaching.

The facts about Hesiod are shrouded in myth and the obscurity of time; what we can say with certainty about him comes from his own writing. His father, a merchant "fleeing wretched poverty, " migrated from Cyme in Asia Minor and became a farmer near the town of Ascra in Boeotia, where Hesiod lived most or all of his life. Hesiod undoubtedly spent his early years working his father's land. He says that the Muses appeared to him as he was tending sheep on the slopes of Mt. Helicon and commanded him to compose poetry, and it is likely that he combined the vocations of farmer and poet.

After his father's death Hesiod was involved in a bitter dispute with his brother, Perses, about the division of the property. Later legend relates that Hesiod moved from Ascra and that he was murdered in Oenoe in Locris for having seduced a maiden; their child is said to have been the lyric poet Stesichorus. The poet relates that the only time he traveled across the sea was to compete in a poetry contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas at Chalcis (in Euboea).

The dates of Hesiod's life are much disputed; some of the ancient chroniclers make him a contemporary of Homer; most modern critics date his activity not long after the Homeric epics but presumably before 700 B.C. The titles of a number of poems have come down to us under the name of Hesiod; two complete works survive, which are generally believed to be genuine.

Major Works

The Theogony (Theogonia, or Genealogy of the Gods) is a long (over 1, 000 lines) narrative description of the origin of the universe and the gods. Beginning with the aboriginal Chaos (Emptiness) and Gaia (Earth), Hesiod describes the creation of the natural world and the generations of the gods. His account concentrates on the struggles between the generations of divine powers for dominion of the world. Uranus (Sky), the original force, is succeeded by his son, Kronos, who, at the instigation of his mother, Gaia, castrates Uranus. Kronos, in turn, is deposed after a fierce battle waged between the Olympian gods (the sons and daughters of Kronos and Rhea), led by Zeus, and the Titans (children of Uranus and Gaia), led by Kronos. In the course of the narrative the births of the gods, major and minor, the evolution of the natural world, and the emergence of personified abstractions like Death, Toil, and Strife are detailed.

Although many of the myths which Hesiod incorporates are extremely primitive and probably Eastern in origin, the Theogony is a successful attempt to give a rational and coherent explanation of the formation and government of the universe from its primal origins through the ultimate mastery of the cosmos by Zeus, "the father of men and gods." Of special interest in the Theogony are the vivid description of battle between the gods and the Titans and the story of Prometheus, the Titan, who defied Zeus by stealing fire for man and was doomed to be chained forever to a rock with a stake through his middle as punishment.

The Works and Days (Erga Kai Hemerai), another long poem (over 800 lines), is much more personal in tone. It is addressed to Hesiod's brother, Perses, who had taken the bigger portion of their inheritance by means of bribes to the local "kings" and then had squandered it. Around this theme of admonition to his brother, Hesiod composed a didactic poem consisting of practical advice to farmers and seafarers, maxims (again, mostly practical) on how to conduct oneself in everyday affairs with fellowmen, moral and ethical precepts, and warnings to the local "kings" to observe righteousness in their disposition of justice. A long section at the end is a list of primitive taboos followed by a catalog of lucky and unlucky days. The authenticity of these lines is doubted, but they are characteristic of the unsophisticated peasant outlook.

The two major themes that Hesiod sounds again and again are the necessity for all men to be just and fair, since justice comes from Zeus, who will punish the wrongdoer, and the formula that success depends on unceasing hard work. If you desire wealth, he says, then "work with work upon work." The world which Hesiod describes in the Works and Days is not the heroic arena of the Trojan War but the difficult life of the small peasant farmer. Hesiod's view is essentially pessimistic; Ascra, his home, is "bad in winter, harsh in summer, good at no time"; and, in one famous passage, he details the five "Ages of Man." From the Golden Age of the reign of Kronos through the Silver, Bronze, and Brass ages of heroes, mankind has degenerated; Hesiod finds himself in the Age of Iron, where there is nothing but trouble and sorrow, labor and strife. Also included in the Works and Days is the story of Pandora, the first woman. The myth states that she was created at Zeus's command as a punishment for men.

Other Works

A number of other poems, attributed to Hesiod in antiquity and now generally ascribed to the "Boeotian, " or "Hesiodic, " school, are known by title or from fragmentary remains. The most important of these "minor works, " possibly by Hesiod himself, was the Catalog of Women, which seems to have described the loves of the gods and their offspring. A number of fragmentary excerpts survive. A longer fragment, called the Shield of Herakles, most likely not by Hesiod, narrates the battle between Herakles and the robber Kyknos. A large portion of this substantial (480 lines) fragment is devoted to a description of Herakles's shield - an inferior imitation of the famous description in the Iliad of the shield of Achilles.

Like Homer, Hesiod wrote in the Ionian dialect and employed the dactylic hexameter, the meter of the epic poets; but the soaring elegance of the Homeric poems is replaced by a simpler, more earthy style. Portions of the Hesiodic poems are mere "catalogs" of names and events, but often his words ring with an eloquence and conviction that reveal true literary genius. Hesiod was the first European poet to speak in a personal vein and to stress social and moral ethics. The Theogony won immediate acceptance as the authentic account of Greek cosmogony, and it stands today as one of the important basic documents for the study of Greek mythology. Hesiod's professed intent was to instruct and inform, not to amuse; thus he stands at the head of a long line of teacher-poets in the Western world.

Further Reading

Excellent critical analyses of Hesiod's writings are in Werner Wilhelm Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 1 (trans. 1939; 2d ed. 1945), and Friedrich Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus (1949). Useful for general historical background and cultural interpretation of the poems is Andrew Robert Burn, The World of Hesiod (1936; 2d ed. 1967). See also Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth-century Athens (1911; 5th rev. ed. 1931), and Chester G. Starr, The Origins of Greek Civilization (1961).

Classical Literature Companion: Hēsiod
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Hēsiod (Hēsiodos) (lived c.700 BC), one of the earliest known Greek poets, and with Homer representative of early Greek epic poetry. He tells us himself something of his life: his father gave up his livelihood of sea-trading as being unprofitable and moved from Cymē in Aeolis (on the coast of Asia Minor) to Ascra in Boeotia, where Hesiod was born, to become a farmer. As Hesiod was tending the sheep on Mount Helicon he heard the Muses calling him to become a poet and sing of the gods (Theogony 22). He once took part in a poetic contest at Chalcis in Euboea and won a tripod. On his father's death the estate was divided between Hesiod and his brother Perses; the latter claimed more than his share and a dispute ensued in which Perses bribed the authorities to favour him. Hesiod is said to have died in Locris, but his tomb was shown at Orchomenus in Boeotia. The story of his meeting and contest with Homer is certainly untrue. Two genuine poems of his survive, the Theogony and the Works and Days. A third short poem, the Shield of Heracles, is not genuine. The Catalogue of Women, thought by the ancient Greeks to be by Hesiod, exists only in fragments. Among other works attributed to him, of which only small fragments survive, are the Precepts of Chiron, the Melampodia (stories of famous seers), and an Astronomy. In the Works and Days Hesiod sought his subject from outside the field of myth (see DIDACTIC POETRY), and much of the poem seems to derive from his own experience and to reveal his own character. He wrote in the same oral tradition as Homer, using the epic dialect (see DIALECTS), but perhaps at a later stage of its evolution.

Philosophy Dictionary: Hesiod
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(c. 700 bc) Early Greek poet. His Theogony is about origins of the gods, while Works and Days contains advice on how to live, a sermon inveighing against dishonesty and idleness.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Hesiod
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Hesiod (hē'sēəd, hĕs'-), fl. 8th cent.? B.C., Greek poet. He is thought to have lived later than Homer, but there is no absolute certainty about the dates of his life. Hesiod portrays himself as a Boeotian farmer. Little is known of his life, however, except for the few scant references he makes to his family's origin and to a quarrel over property with his brother. His most famous poem, the didactic Works and Days, is an epic of Greek rural life, filled with caustic advice for his brother and maxims for farmers to pursue. The "days" are days lucky or unlucky for particular tasks. Works and Days discourses on the mythic "five races" (i.e., the five ages) of humans; the Golden Age, ruled by Kronos, a period of serenity, peace, and eternal spring; the Silver Age, ruled by Zeus, less happy, but with luxury prevailing; the Bronze Age, a period of strife; the Heroic Age of the Trojan War; and the Iron Age, the present, when justice and piety had vanished. Hesiod's systemization, especially the idealized Golden Age, became deeply entrenched in the Western imagination and was expanded upon by Ovid. Also ascribed to him are the Theogony, a genealogy of the gods, and the first 56 lines of The Shield of Heracles. He gave his name to the Hesiodic school of poets, rivals of the Homeric school. Homer and Hesiod codified and preserved the myths of many of the Greek gods of the classical pantheon.

Bibliography

See translations by Lattimore (1959, 1991), and R. Lamberton, Hesiod (1988).

Quotes By: Hesiod
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Quotes:

"Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steer is the way to it."

"The fool knows after he's suffered."

"Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet."

"The half is greater than the whole."

"Try to take for a mate a person of your own neighborhood."

"Acquisition means life to miserable mortals."

See more famous quotes by Hesiod

Wikipedia: Hesiod
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This article discusses the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. For the computer application, see Hesiod (name service).
"Hesiodos" redirects here. For the asteroid, see 8550 Hesiodos.
Ancient bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now conjectured to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod[1]

Hesiod (Greek: Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos) was a Greek oral poet and is often identified as the first economist[2][3][4]. His date is uncertain but leading scholars[5][verification needed], agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the eighth century BC.[dubious – discuss] Since at least Herodotus's time (Histories, 2.53), Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired. Scholars disagree about who lived first, and the fourth-century BC sophist Alcidamas' Mouseion even brought them together in an imagined poetic agon, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Aristarchus first argued for Homer's priority, a claim that was generally accepted by later antiquity.[6]

Hesiod's writings serve as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.

Contents

Life

J. A. Symonds writes that "Hesiod is also the immediate parent of gnomic verse, and the ancestor of those deep thinkers who speculated in the Attic Age upon the mysteries of human life."[7]

Some scholars have doubted whether Hesiod alone conceived and wrote the poems attributed to him. For example, Symonds writes that "the first ten verses of the Works and Days are spurious—borrowed probably from some Orphic hymn to Zeus and recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias."[8]

As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated around Hesiod. Unlike Homer's case, however, some biographical details have survived: a few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in Works and Days; some further inferences derive from his Theogony. His father came from Cyme in Aeolis, which lay between Ionia and the Troad in Northwestern Anatolia, but 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, l. 640). Hesiod's patrimony there, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned a pair of lawsuits with his brother Perses, who won both under the same judges.

Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod directed to him in Works and Days, but in the introduction to his translation of Hesiod's works, Hugh G. Evelyn-White provides several arguments against this theory.[9] Gregory Nagy, on the other hand, sees both Persēs ("the destroyer": πέρθω / perthō) and Hēsiodos ("he who emits the voice:" ἵημι / hiēmi + αὐδή / audē) as fictitious names for poetical personae.[10]

The Muses traditionally lived on Helicon, and, according to the account in Theogony (ll. 22-35), gave Hesiod the gift of poetic inspiration one day while he tended sheep (compare the legend of Cædmon). Hesiod later mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amiphidamas awarded him a tripod (ll.654-662). Plutarch first cited 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 BC. Plutarch assumed this date much too late for a contemporary of Homer, but most Homeric students would now accept it. The account of this contest, followed by an allusion to the Trojan War, inspired the later tales of a competition between Hesiod and Homer.

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 of Chersios 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 placed them in a place of honour in their agora, beside the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous founder, and in the end came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" (οἰκιστής / oikistēs).

Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.

The legends that accumulated about Hesiod are recorded in several sources: the story "The poetic contest (Ἀγών / Agōn) of Homer and Hesiod;"[11] 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 38.3–4); a passage in Plutarch Moralia (162b).

Works

Of the many works attributed to Hesiod, three survive complete and many more in fragmentary state. Our witnesses include Alexandrian papyri, some dating from as early as the 1st century BC, and manuscripts written from the eleventh century forward. Demetrius Chalcondyles issued the first printed edition (editio princeps) of Works and Days, possibly at Milan, probably in 1493. In 1495 Aldus Manutius published the complete works at Venice.

Hesiod's works, especially Works and Days, are from the view of the small independent farmer, while Homer's view is from nobility or the rich. Even with these differences, they share some beliefs regarding work ethic, justice, and consideration of material items.

Works and Days

Main article: Works and Days

Hesiod wrote a poem of some 800 verses, the Works and Days, which revolves around two general truths: labour 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 colonisations in search of new land.

This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice.[12] 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.[13]

Theogony

Main article: Theogony
Hesiod and the Muse, by Gustave Moreau

"Theogony," a poem which uses the same epic verse-form as the "Works and Days", is also attributed to Hesiod. Despite the different subject matter, most scholars, with some notable exceptions (like Evelyn-White), believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M.L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him."[14]

The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Gaia, Chaos 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 the fifth-century historian 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 eight and ninth century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria. (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East.)

Other writings

A short poem traditionally no longer attributed to Hesiod is The Shield of Heracles (Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους / Aspis Hērakleous). This survives complete; the other works discussed in this section survive only in quotations or papyri copies which are often damaged.

Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiae (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 poems were sometimes ascribed to Hesiod:

  • Aegimius
  • Astrice
  • Chironis Hypothecae
  • Idaei Dactyli
  • Wedding of Ceyx
  • Great Works (presumably an expanded Works and Days)
  • Great Eoiae (presumably an expanded Catalogue of Women)
  • Melampodia
  • Ornithomantia

Scholars generally classify all these as later examples of the poetic tradition to which Hesiod belonged, not as the work of Hesiod himself. The Shield, in particular, appears to be an expansion of one of the genealogical poems, taking its cue from Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles.

"Portrait" Bust

The Roman bronze bust of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, was first reidentified as a fictitious portrait meant for Hesiod by Gisela Richter, though it had been recognized that the bust was not in fact Seneca since 1813, when an inscribed herm portrait with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow her identification.[15]

Manuscripts of Hesiod

Mss. of Works and Days:

  • S Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1090
  • A Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-9 (4th cent.).
  • B Geneva, Naville Papyri Pap. 94 (6th cent.).
  • C Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2771 (11th cent.).
  • D Florence, Laur. xxxi 39 (12th cent.).
  • E Messina, Univ. Lib. Preexistens 11 (12th-13th cent.).
  • F Rome, Vatican 38 (14th cent.).
  • G Venice, Marc. ix 6 (14th cent.).
  • H Florence, Laur. xxxi 37 (14th cent.).
  • I Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).
  • K Florence, Laur. xxxii 2 (14th cent.).
  • L Milan, Ambros. G 32 sup. (14th cent.).
  • M Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana 71 (15th cent.).
  • N Milan, Ambros. J 15 sup. (15th cent.).
  • O Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2773 (14th cent.).
  • P Cambridge, Trinity College (Gale MS.), O.9.27 (13th-14th cent.).
  • Q Rome, Vatican 1332 (14th cent.).

These MSS. are divided by Rzach into the following families, issuing from a common original: --

a = C

b = F,G,H

  • a = D
  • b = I,K,L,M
  • a = E
  • b = N,O,P,Q

Mss. of Theogony:

  • N Manchester, Rylands GK. Papyri No. 54 (1st cent. B.C. - 1st cent. A.D.).
  • O Oxyrhynchus Papyri 873 (3rd cent.).
  • A Paris, Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Graec. (papyrus) 1099 (4th-5th cent.).
  • B London, British Museam clix (4th cent.).
  • R Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-9 (4th cent.).
  • C Paris, Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).
  • D Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).
  • E Florence, Laur., Conv. suppr. 158 (14th cent.).
  • F Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2833 (15th cent.).
  • G Rome, Vatican 915 (14th cent.).
  • H Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2772 (14th cent.).
  • I Florence, Laur. xxxi 32 (15th cent.).
  • K Venice, Marc. ix 6 (15th cent.).
  • L Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2708 (15th cent.).

These MSS. are divided into two families:

  • a = C,D
  • b = E,F
  • c = G,H,I
  • = K,L

Mss. of Shield of Heracles:

  • P Oxyrhynchus Papyri 689 (2nd cent.).
  • A Vienna, Rainer Papyri L.P. 21-29 (4th cent.).
  • Q Berlin Papyri, 9774 (1st cent.).
  • B Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).
  • B Paris, Bibl. Nat., Suppl. Graec. 663 (12th cent.).
  • D Milan, Ambros. C 222 (13th cent.).
  • E Florence, Laur. xxxii 16 (13th cent.).
  • F Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2773 (14th cent.).
  • G Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2772 (14th cent.).
  • H Florence, Laur. xxxi 32 (15th cent.).
  • I London, British Museaum Harleianus (14th cent.).
  • K Rome, Bibl. Casanat. 356 (14th cent.)
  • L Florence, Laur. Conv. suppr. 158 (14th cent.).
  • M Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2833 (15th cent.).

These MSS. belong to two families:

  • a = B,C,D,F
  • b = G,H,I
  • a = E
  • b = K,L,M

To these must be added two MSS. of mixed family:

  • N Venice, Marc. ix 6 (14th cent.).
  • O Paris, Bibl. Nat. 2708 (15th cent.).

Mss. of the fragments of Catalogue of Women:

  • Berlin Papyri 7497 (1) (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 7.
  • Oxyrhynchus Papyri 421 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 7.
  • "Petrie Papyri" iii 3. -- Frag. 14.
  • "Papiri greci e latine", No. 130 (2nd-3rd cent.). -- Frag. 14.
  • Strassburg Papyri, 55 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 58.
  • Berlin Papyri 9739 (2nd cent.). -- Frag. 58.
  • Berlin Papyri 10560 (3rd cent.). -- Frag. 58.
  • Berlin Papyri 9777 (4th cent.). -- Frag. 98.
  • "Papiri greci e latine", No. 131 (2nd-3rd cent.). -- Frag.99.
  • Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358-9.[16]

Notes

  1. ^ Erika Simon (1975) (in German). Pergamon und Hesiod. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. OCLC 2326703. 
  2. ^ Rothbard, Murray N., Economic Thought Before Adam Smith: Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 1, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 1995, pg. 8.
  3. ^ Gordan, Barry J., Economic analysis before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius (1975), pg. 3
  4. ^ Brockway, George P., The End of Economic Man: An Introduction to Humanistic Economics, fourth edition (2001), pg 128.
  5. ^ West, T.W. Allen
  6. ^ M.L. West, "Hesiod," in Oxford Classical Dictionary, second edition (Oxford: University Press, 1970), p. 510.
  7. ^ J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, p. 166
  8. ^ J. A. Symonds, p. 167
  9. ^ Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1964) Volume 57 of the Loeb Classical Library, pp. xivf.
  10. ^ Gregory Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Cornell 1990), pp. 36-82.
  11. ^ Translated in Evelyn-White, Hesiod, pp. 565-597.
  12. ^ Hesiod, Works and Days, line 250: "Verily upon the earth are thrice ten thousand immortals of the host of Zeus, guardians of mortal man. They watch both justice and injustice, robed in mist, roaming abroad upon the earth." (Compare J. A. Symonds, p. 179)
  13. ^ Works and Days, line 300: "Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labor of the bees, eating without working."
  14. ^ West, "Hesiod", p. 521.
  15. ^ Gisela Richter (1965). The Portraits of the Greeks. London: Phaidon, I, 58ff; commentators agreeing with Richter include Wolfram Prinz, 1973. "The Four Philosophers by Rubens and the Pseudo-Seneca in Seventeenth-Century Painting" The Art Bulletin 55.3 (September 1973), pp. 410-428. "...one feels that it may just as well have been the Greek writer Hesiod..." and Martin Robertson, in his review eview of G. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks for The Burlington Magazine 108.756 (March 1966), pp 148-150. "...with Miss Richter, I accept the identification as Hesiod"
  16. ^ Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. xliii-xlvii.

References

  • Allen, T. W. and Arthur A. Rambaut, 'The Date of Hesiod', The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 35 (1915), 85-99
  • Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
  • Lamberton, Robert, Hesiod, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0300040687
  • Murray, Gilbert, A History of Ancient Greek Literature, New York : D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Cf. pp. 53 and onward for Hesiod.
  • Peabody, Berkley, The Winged Word: A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally Through Hesiod's Works and Days, State University of New York Press, 1975. ISBN 0873950593
  • Pucci, Pietro, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. ISBN 0801817870
  • Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1925.
  • Symonds, John Addington, Studies of the Greek Poets, 1873.
  • Taylor, Thomas, A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 1791.
  • Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. xliii-xlvii.

Selected translations

Further reading

  • Athanassakis, Apostolos N., [guest editor], Essays on Hesiod I, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature, Vol. 21, no 1 (1992), and Essays on Hesiod II, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature, Vol. 21, no 2 (1992), La Trobe University and Aureal Publications, Australia. [1]
  • Athanassakis, A.N., Cattle and Honour in Homer and Hesiod, Ramus, v.21, n.2 (1992), pp. 156-186.
  • Martin, Richard P. Hesiod's metanastic poetics, Ramus, 21 (1992), 11-33.
  • Debiasi, Andrea. Esiodo e l'Occidente. Roma, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2008, 220 p. (Hesperìa, 24).

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