Hesiod
Hesiod (Hesiodos, Ἡσιοδος) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, believed to have lived around 700 BC. Greek historians debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer, and even brought them together in an imagined poetic contest; 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.
As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated round Hesiod. Unlike Homer, some biographical detail is known: the few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in Works and Days; some further inferences can be derived from his Theogony. Hesiod lived in Boeotia. His father came from Cumes in Aeolia, which lay between Ionia and the Troad in southwestern Anatolia, but crossed the sea to settle at Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works, 640). Hesiod's patrimony there was a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon that occasioned a lawsuit with his brother Perses, who won; some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing of the Works and Days that is directed to him.
Helicon was the home of the Muses, who gave Hesiod the gift of poetic inspiration one day while he tended sheep. In another biographical detail, Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea 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 BC. 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, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic 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 there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle that turns out to be true, 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 Ascra was ravaged by the Thespians, 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 / oikistês).
Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.
Legends that accumulated about Hesiod were to be found in several sources: a treatise "The poetic contest (Ἀγών / Agôn) 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 38.3–4); a passage in Plutarch Moralia (162b).
Works
Hesiod wrote only one poem universally considered authentic: 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 seen this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colonizations 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).
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, beginning with Gaia, Nyx and Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth are 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 the accepted version that linked all Hellenes.
- 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 ( Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους / Aspis Hêrakleous ), apparently forms a late expansion of one of these genealogical poems, taking its cue from Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles.
Hesiod's works survive in Alexandrian papyri, some as early as the 1st century BCE. The first printing, editio princeps, of Works and Days, was by Demetrius Chalcondyles, possibly at Milan, probably 1493 "editio princeps". In 1495 Aldus Manutius published the complete works at Venice.
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 (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin//perscoll?.submit=Change&collection=Perseus%3Acollection%3AGreco-Roman&type=text&lang=Any&lookup=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:
|
