Hesiod

Modern Mount Helicon — Hesiod was inspired by the Muses to become a poet while he was pasturing sheep there. He once described his nearby hometown, Ascra, as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."

Hesiod ( /ˈhiːsiəd/ or /ˈhɛsiəd/;^[1] Ancient Greek: Ἡσίοδος, Hēsíodos) was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.^[2][3] His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play.^[4] Ancient authors credited him and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs.^[5] Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes identified as the first economist),^[6] archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.

Life

The dating of his life is a contested issue in scholarly circles and it is covered below in Dating.

Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations but Hesiod's extant work comprises didactic poems and here he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life, including three explicit references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences. We learn in the former poem 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, l. 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 on the thrifty poet (Works l. 35, 396). Unlike their 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, where he won a tripod in a singing competition.^[7] 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, ll. 22–35) Fanciful though it might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he did not play the lyre, or that he was not professionally trained, otherwise he would have been presented with a lyre instead.^{[nb 1]}

Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops 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.^[8] 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.^[9] It is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting, as a means of getting the audience's attention,^{[nb 2]} but it is difficult to see how Hesiod could have travelled the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious.^[10]

Hesiod and the Muse, by Gustave Moreau. Here he is presented with a lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff.

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 sea-going merchants from his original home in Cyme in Asia Minor to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boetia, where he eventually established himself and his family.^[11]

In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm can't 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 (l. 370) as well as servants (ll. 502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (ll. 469–71), a slave boy to cover the seed (ll. 441–6), a female servant to keep house (ll. 405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (ll. 405, 607f.).^[12] One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony (ll. 337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant^[13] The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian dialect. However, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian — he composed in the main literary dialect of the time (Homer's dialect): Ionian.^[14]

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. 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 no such notions. However, some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute this to oral transmission.^[15] The personality behind the poems is not capable of the "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women."^[16] He was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides.^[17] 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 resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer.^[18] Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony (ll. 80ff, 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.^[19]

Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources:

• the story "The poetic contest (Ἀγών / Agōn) of Homer and Hesiod;"^[20]
• 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).

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 honour 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.

Dating

Greeks in the late fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer — in that order. Thereafter Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe the Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense.

The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus, though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, Herodotus (Histories, 2.53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and the 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic agon, which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either sides.^[21]

Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus, Epimenides, Mimnermus, Semonides, Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him is about 650 BC.

An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC (Theogony l. 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine, a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (Theogony 337–45).^[22]

Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod (Works and Days ll.654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war isn't known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC, fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony, a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis.^[23]

Works

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."^[24]

A handful of 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."^[25] Of the many works attributed to Hesiod, three survive complete and many more in fragmentary state. Our witnesses include papyri, one dating from as early as the 3rd century BC, and manuscripts written from the tenth 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.

Some (e.g. A. D. Momigliano) have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod. This is rejected by Paul Cartledge as Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification.^[26]

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 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 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.^[27] 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.^[28]

Theogony

The 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."^[29]

The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, 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 eighth 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 papyrus copies which are often damaged.

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.
• Precepts of Chiron, a didactic work that presented the teaching of Chiron as delivered to the young Achilles.
• 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).
• Ornithomantia, a work on bird omens that followed the Works and Days.

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, is an expansion of a passage in the Catalogue of Women, taking its cue from Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles.

Reception

• Sappho's countryman and contemporary, the lyric poet Alcaeus, paraphrased a section of Works and Days (582-88), recasting it in lyric meter and Lesbian dialect. The paraphrase survives only as a fragment.^[30]
• The lyric poet Bacchylides quoted/paraphrased Hesiod in a victory ode addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, commemorating the tyrant's win in the chariot race at the Pythian Games 470 BC, the attribution made with these words: A man of Boeotia, Hesiod, minister of the [sweet] Muses, spoke thus: 'He whom the immortals honour is attended also by the good report of men.' However, the quoted words are not found in Hesiod's extant work^{[nb 3]}
• Hesiod's Catalogue of Women created a vogue for catalogue poems in the Hellenistic period. Thus for example Theocritus presents catalogues of heroines in two of his bucolic poems (3.40-51 and 20.34-41), where both passages are recited in character by lovelorn rustics.^[31]

"Portrait" Bust

Ancient bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now conjectured to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod.^[32]

The Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca. It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca, when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification.^{[nb 4]}

Notes

1. ^ See discussion by M.L. West, Hesiod: Theogony, Oxford University Press (1966), pages 163–4 note 30, citing for example Pausanias 9.30.3. Rhapsodes in post-Homeric times are often shown carrying either a laurel staff or a lyre but in Hesiod's earlier time the staff seems to indicate that he was not a rhapsode i.e. he was not a professional minstrel. Meetings between poets and the Muses became part of poetic folklore — compare for example Archilochus's account of his meeting the Muses while leading home a cow, and also the legend of Cædmon.
2. ^ Jasper Griffin, in The Oxford History of the Classical World, O.U.P (1986), cites for example the Book Of Ecclesiastes, a Sumerian text in the form of a father's remonstrance with a prodigal son, and Egyptian wisdom texts spoken by viziers etc. Hesiod was certainly open to Oriental influences, as is clear in the myths presented by him in Theogony
3. ^ The Bacchylidean victory ode is fr. 5 Loeb. Theognis of Megara, (169) is the source of a similar sentiment (Even the fault-finder praises one whom the gods honour) but without attribution. See also fr 344 M.-W (D. Campbell, Greek Lyric IV, Loeb 1992, page 153)
4. ^ 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 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"

Sources

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.
• Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. xliii–xlvii.
• 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.

Further reading

• Athanassakis, A.N. (1992). "Cattle and Honour in Homer and Hesiod". Ramus 21 (2): 156–186. 
• Athanassakis, A.N. (1992). "Introduction to 'Essays on Hesiod I'". Ramus 21 (1): 1–10. 
• Athanassakis, A.N. (1992). "Introduction to 'Essays on Hesiod II'". Ramus 21 (2): 117–118. 
• Burn, Andrew Robert (1937). The World of Hesiod: A Study of the Greek Middle Ages, c. 900–700 BC. New York: Dutton. 
• Clay, Diskin (1992). "The World of Hesiod". Ramus 21 (2): 131–155. 
• Debiasi, Andrea (2008) (in Italian). Esiodo e l'occidente. Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 8882654877. 
• DuBois, Page (1992). "Eros and the Woman". Ramus 21 (1): 97–116. 
• Gagarin, Michael (1992). "The Poetry of Justice: Hesiod and the Origins of Greek Law". Ramus 21 (1): 61–78. 
• Janko, Richard (2007). Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns : diachronic development in epic diction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521035651. 
• Kirby, John T. (1992). "Rhetoric and Poetics in Hesiod". Ramus 21 (1): 34–60. 
• Lucas, Frank Laurence (1934). "Two Poets of the Pesantry". Studies French and English. London: Cassell & Co. pp. 23–75. http://ia600401.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=1/items/StudiesFrenchAndEnglish/StudiesFrenchAndEnglish.djvu. 
• Martin, Richard P. (1992). "Hesiod's metanastic poetics". Ramus 21 (1): 11–33. 
• Nagler, Michael N. (1992). "Discourse and Conflict in Hesiod: Eris and the Erides". Ramus 21 (1): 79–96. 
• Nagy, Gregory (1992). "Authorisation and Authorship in the Hesiodic Theogony". Ramus 21 (2): 119–130. 
• Thalmann, William G. (1984). Conventions of form and thought in early Greek epic poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801831954. 
• Walcot, P. (1966). Hesiod and the Near East. Cardiff: Wales University Press. 
• West, M.L. (1985). The Hesiodic catalogue of women : its nature, structure, and origins. Oxford: Clarendon. ISBN 0198140347. 

• J.P. Barron and P.E.Easterling, 'Hesiod' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. Easterling and B. Knox (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985)
• M.L. West, Hesiod: Theogony, Oxford University Press (1966)
• Jasper Griffin, 'Greek Myth and Hesiod' in The Oxford History of the Classical World, J.Boardman, J.Griffin and O.Murray (eds), Oxford University Press (1986)
• Antony Andrewes, Greek Society, Pelican Books (1971)

Selected translations

• George Chapman, The Works of Hesiod, London, 1618, dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon.
• Cooke, Hesiod, Works and Days, Translated from the Greek, London, 1728
• Sinclair, Thomas Alan (translator), Hesiodou Erga kai hemerai, London, Macmillan and co., 1932.
• West, Martin Litchfield (translator), Hesiod Works & Days, Oxford University Press, 1978, ISBN 0-19-814005-3. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary.
• Athanassakis, Apostolos N., Theogony; Works and days; Shield / Hesiod; introduction, translation, and notes, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. ISBN 0801829984
• Frazer, R.M. (Richard McIlwaine), The Poems of Hesiod, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. ISBN 0806118377
• Tandy, David W., and Neale, Walter C. [translators], Works and Days: a translation and commentary for the social sciences, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ISBN 0520203836
• Schlegel, Catherine M., and Henry Weinfield, translators, Theogony and Works and Days, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2006
• Most, Glenn, translator, Hesiod, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006-07.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hesiod

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• Works by Hesiod at Project Gutenberg
• Hesiod, Works and Days Book 1 Works and Days Book 2 Works and Days Book 3 Translated from the Greek by Mr. Cooke (London, 1728). A youthful exercise in Augustan heroic couplets by Thomas Cooke (1703–1756), employing the Roman names for all the gods.

• 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 0-674-99063-3:
  • Scanned text at the Internet Archive, in PDF and DjVu format
  • 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)
    • Hesiod and the Arcadian theme in the paintings Shepherds of Arcadia - Et in Arcadia Ego

v d e Hesiodic poetry Extant poems Theogony Works and Days Shield of Heracles Fragmentary poems Catalogue of Women Megalai Ehoiai Wedding of Ceyx Melampodia Idaean Dactyls Precepts of Chiron Megala Erga Astronomia Aegimius