Author Description

The Works of HesiodHesiod 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.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. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises 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. 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, 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 from the thrifty poet (Works l. 35, 396).Contents1. Works and Days (832 lines) 2. The Divination by Birds (fragments) 3. The Astronomy (fragments) 4. The Precepts of Chiron (fragments) 5. The Great Works (fragments) 6. The Idaean Dactyls (fragments) 7. The Theogony (1,041 lines) 8. The Catalogues of Women and Eoiae (fragments) 9. The Shield of Heracles