Ancient Greek poet of the archaic period
This article is about representation ancient Greek poet. For the computer application, see Hesiod (name service). For the crater on Mercury, see Hesiod (crater).
"Hesiodos" redirects here. For the asteroid, see 8550 Hesiodos.
"Hesiodus" redirects here. Put under somebody's nose the crater on the Moon, see Hesiodus (crater).
Hesiod (HEE-see-əd contraction HEH-see-əd;[3]Ancient Greek: ἩσίοδοςHēsíodos; fl. c. 700 BC) was an ancient Greekpoet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.[1][2]
Several of Hesiod's entireness have survived in their entirety. Among these are Theogony, which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and description events that led to Zeus's rise to power, and Works and Days, a poem that describes the five Ages confront Man, offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such despite the fact that Pandora's box.
Hesiod is generally regarded by Western authors whereas 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to cut into himself as an individual persona with an active role surrender play in his subject.'[4] Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Safety with establishing Greek religious customs.[5] Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, ahead of time economic thought,[6] Archaic Greek astronomy, cosmology, and ancient time-keeping.
The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in lettered circles (see § Dating below). Epic narrative allowed poets specified as Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However Hesiod's existent work comprises several didactic poems in which he went make known 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 advocate his Theogony, that support inferences made by scholars. The erstwhile poem says that his father came from Cyme in Coast (on the coast of Anatolia, a little south of say publicly island of Lesbos) and crossed the sea to settle examination a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra, "a blamed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony (property inherited from one's father or spear ancestor) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at representation foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses, who at first seems to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or ‘kings’ but ulterior became impoverished and ended up scrounging from the thrifty metrist (Works 35, 396).
Unlike his father Hesiod was averse be a consequence sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait halfway the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral partying for one Amphidamas of Chalcis and there won a tripod in a singing competition.[7] He also describes meeting the Muses on Mount Helicon, where he had been pasturing sheep, when the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, a insigne singular of poetic authority (Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story muscle seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars cause somebody to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode slipup he would have been presented with a lyre instead.[nb 1]
Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a baffle for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days, but there are also arguments against that theory.[8] For case, it is quite common for works of moral instruction ruse have an imaginative setting as a means of getting say publicly audience's attention,[nb 2] but it could be difficult to witness how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining liquidate with a narrative about himself if the account was become public to be fictitious.[9]Gregory Nagy, on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs ("the destroyer" from πέρθω, pérthō) and Hēsíodos ("he who emits the voice" from ἵημι, híēmi and αὐδή, audḗ) pass for fictitious names for poetical personae.[10]
It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Anatolia westwards to mainland Greece, the vis…vis direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Poet himself gives no explanation for it. However, around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of sea merchants from his original home in Cyme in Anatolia kind Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with the Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do check on that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia, where proceed eventually established himself and his family.[11] The family association down Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, plain in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them.[12]
In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not plot been too uncomfortable if Works and Days is anything comprise judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend (Works humbling Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.).[13] One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially depiction catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant.[14] Description father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging elect the same dialect group. However whilst his poetry features wearisome Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of the in the house, Homer's Ionian.[15]
It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems credit, or dictated them, rather than passing them on orally, whereas rhapsodes did—otherwise: the pronounced personality that now emerges from representation poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission get out of one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved.[16] 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 taught rhapsodes could do. It certainly was not in a search for immortal fame since poets in his era had undoubtedly no such notions for themselves. However some scholars suspect picture presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute introduce to oral transmission.[17] Possibly he composed his verses during disdainful times on the farm, in the spring before the Can harvest or the dead of winter.[12]
The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical short vacation a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, prudent, fond of proverbs, wary of women."[18] He was in accomplishment a "misogynist" of the same calibre as the later poetess Semonides.[19] He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues depict good versus evil and "how a just and all-powerful divinity can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". Take action recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero eradicate epic literature in favour of an idealized view of representation farmer.[20] Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings encompass Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as reason in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.[21]
Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources:
Two different—yet early—traditions record representation site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, report in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that description Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Valley, and so he fled to Locris, where he was glue at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried nearby. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in hoaxer epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th c BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death), claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in District. According to Aristotle's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians pillaged Ascra the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following depiction advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Poet and set them in a place of honour in their agora, next to the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous author. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" (οἰκιστής, oikistēs). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by originator Charles Abraham Elton in his Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod, depicts Hesiod style being falsely accused of rape by a girl's brothers extract murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the supposition culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape.[23]
Greeks in the famous 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer—in that order.[24] After that, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence nature 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 outshine Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus, though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus strenuous Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus (Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, viewpoint the 4th century BC sophistAlcidamas in his work Mouseion regular brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn (ἄγών), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Get bigger scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are moderately good arguments on either side.[25]
Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era.[citation needed] Imitations of his work have been observed in Poet, Epimenides, Mimnermus, Semonides, Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him legal action about 650 BC.
An upper limit of 750 BC recapitulate indicated by a number of considerations, such as the expectation that his work was written down, the fact that no problem mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little civil significance before c. 750 BC (Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine, a region explored scold developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (Theogony 337–45).[26]
Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod (Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with representation hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria limit he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation record Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War was moreover late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification a choice of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of say publicly war is not known precisely but estimates placing it muck about 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In defer case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony, a poem that seems hurtle presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have tumble at Chalcis.[27]
Three works have survived which were attributed to Poet by ancient commentators: Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield inducing Heracles. Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in representation conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield additional Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics likewise rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they intonation a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from the Shield of Heracles[28] (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the by a long way version of the Prometheus myth.[29] Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses run through the Works and Days may have been borrowed from keep you going Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not description work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).[30]
Some scholars have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view unloved by Paul Cartledge, for example, on the grounds that Poet advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification.[31] Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse.[32] He esoteric "a passion for systematizing and explaining things".[12]Ancient Greek poetry envisage general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates a deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings go along with human society. Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question good deal first causes may even have started with Hesiod (Theogony 116–53) and Homer (Iliad 14.201, 246).[33]
He viewed the world from hard to find the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in a tone of voice that has been described although having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity"[34] but, as stated in the biography section, he could also alternate to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days, where blooper depicts a golden period when life was easy and and above, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness make safe the silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its combative men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems derive this case to be catering to two different world-views, make sure of epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy.[35]
Main article: Theogony
The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite the different subject matter between this ode and the Works and Days, most scholars, with some strange exceptions, believe that the two works were written by depiction same man. As M. L. West writes, "Both bear rendering marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, accepted to reflection, no lover of women or life, who mat the gods' presence heavy about him."[36] An example:
Hateful difference bore painful Toil,
Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain,
Battles, Combats...
The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) skull of the gods (theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus meticulous Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded amuse Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, throw out by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes. It's the earliest known source for the myths of Pandora, Prometheus and the Golden Age.
The creation myth in Poet has long been held to have Eastern influences, such gorilla the HittiteSong of Kumarbi and the BabylonianEnuma Elis. This social crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Hellenic trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria. (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and Prick Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East.)
Main article: Works and Days
Works and Days is a poem of bridge 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour psychotherapy the universal lot of Man, but he who is compliant to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this stick against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of additional land.[citation needed]
Works and Days may have been influenced by wish established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Metropolis and Egyptian wisdom literature.[citation needed]
This work lays out the fin Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and sageness, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness become calm 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.[37] Say publicly poem regards labor as the source of all good, resolve that both gods and men hate the idle, who taste drones in a hive.[38] In the horror of the tag on of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing description "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of unprovocative diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path discount living sufficiently.[39]
In addition to the Theogony and Works build up Days, numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during age. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works bear witness to generally referred to as forming part of the "Hesiodic corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted.[40] The situation assay summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most:
"Hesiod" interest the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation care for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to interpretation poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned health check Hesiod himself.[41]
Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, sole the Shield of Heracles (Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους, Aspis Hērakleous) is transmit intact via a medieval manuscript tradition.
Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue assess Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek fabricate ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated area gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions.
Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod:
In addition to these works, the Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved".[42]
Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum (Trier), yield the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic keep to signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod.[46]
The Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, of the wield first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought arrange to be of Seneca the Younger. It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. Plug fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the attack was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait elder Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars at this very moment follow Richter's identification.[nb 4]
Hesiod employed the conventional dialect disturb epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a preference Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and combine modern scholar refers to his "hobnailed hexameters".[47] His use endorsement language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles. All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. Rendering ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The range of variation depends on how the evidence is collected captain interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for specimen in the following set of statistics.
| Theogony | 2.5/1 |
| Works and Days | 1.5/1 |
| Shield | 5.9/1 |
| Homer | 5.4/1[nb 5] |
Hesiod does not observe digamma as often slightly the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect ditch Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from say publicly Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained via the fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to make up like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried prevent compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when diplomatic was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a essential difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days, but that is merely due to the fact that depiction former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it bring abouts frequent use of the definite article associated with digamma, oἱ.[48]
Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences free yourself of Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days, 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield returns Heracles. The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter.[nb 6] Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite a lot of formulaic phrases guarantee are not found in Homer, which indicates that he can have been writing within a different tradition.[49]