Hesiod
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''This article discusses the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. For the computer application, see Hesiod (name service).''
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'''Hesiod''' (''Hesiodos'', Ἡσιοδος), the early Greek language|Greek poet and rhapsode, presumably lived around 700 BC. Historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer, and some authors even brought them together in an imagined poetic contest; most modern scholars agree that Homer lived after Hesiod.
Hesiod serves as a major source for knowledge of Greek mythology, of farming techniques, of archaic Greek astronomy and of ancient time | time-keeping.
As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated round Hesiod. Unlike Homer, some biographical detail has survived: the few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in ''Works and Days''; some further inferences 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, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, 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 Hesiod directed to him.
The Muses traditionally lived on Helicon, and they 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 Delphi|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 Irony|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 (town)|Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle's ''Constitution of Orchomenus'', when the Thespiae | 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 / ''oikistês'').
Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.
Legends that accumulated about Hesiod came from 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 (geographer)|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 Greek colonies | 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).
Tradition also attributes the ''Theogony'' to Hesiod, although the authorship remains uncertain. The ''Theogony'' resembles ''Works and Days'' very closely in style and substance considering the purposely different subject-matter.
The ''Theogony'' concerns the cosmogony | origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Gaia, Nyx and Eros (mythology)|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 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 papyrus|papyri, some dating from as early as the 1st century BCE. Demetrius Chalcondyles issued the first printing (''editio princeps'') of ''Works and Days'', possibly at Milan, probably in 1493. In 1495 Aldus Manutius published the complete works at Venice.
External links
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:
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:
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/348
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Hesiod http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/index.htm(''Theogony'' and ''Works and Days'' only)
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