Hesiod, um 700 vor Christus im armlichen Bootien lebend, ist nur wenig junger als Homer. Obwohl er von der hexametrischen Epik der "Ilias" und der "Odyssee" stark beeinflusst ist, bietet er in seinen beiden Werken "Vom Ursprung der Gotter" und "Werke und Tage" etwas vollig Neues: Zum ersten Mal in der europaischen Literaturgeschichte tritt uns ein Autor als Person entgegen. Er selbst erzahlt, wie die Musen ihm beim Schafehuten erschienen und den jungen Menschen zum Dichter beriefen.Ausserdem wird Hesiod (...) zum Vater einer eigenen literarischen Gattung: des Lehrgedichts. Er bringt die gottlichen Machte in verwandtschaftliche Beziehungen; so entsteht eine Deutung des Weltganzen, die bereits auf die philosophischen Entwurfe der vorsokratischen Denker vorausweist. Indem er die Erzahlungen uber die Gotter zusammenfasst und ordnet, wird Hesiod zur wichtigsten Quelle des griechischen Mythos. In den "Werken und Tagen," einer Art Bauernkalender, in den Bruchstucke einer ersten Autobiographie und einige beruhmte Sagen eingestreut sind, wirkt Hesiod mit seiner pessimistischen Beurteilung des eigenen Zeitalters erstaunlich aktuell. Mit Einfuhrung, Erlauterungen und Literaturhinweisen von E.G. Schmidt.". (shrink)

In his two chief works, the Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod treats the possibility of providence. In the former poem, he considers what sort of god could claim to gives human beings guidance. After arriving at Zeus as the only consistent possibility, Hesiod presents Zeus’ rule as both cosmic and legalistic. In the latter poem, how- ever, Hesiod shows that so long as Zeus is legalistic, his rule is limited cosmically to the human being. Ultimately, Zeus’ (...) rule emerges as more human than cosmic, and thus unable to fulfill the cosmic demands of piety. Hesiod’s presentation thus begs, without thematically posing, the question of how human beings ought to live. Accordingly, Hesiod’s theological analysis, and not his theogony (or, implicit cosmogony or cosmology), sets the stage for the inquiries of the early Greek philosophers, and so political philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such (...) as philosophy, didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome. (shrink)

In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion, Theogony; given the form and content (...) of these two poems, what can we plausibly conjecture about the end or ends to which they were composed? In particular, I shall consider whether, and in what sense, these poems may be regarded as didactic in intent. Much of what I have to say in I say with a measure of confidence; in , by contrast, my primary aim is to undermine unwarranted confidence — although I do, even here, reach some positive conclusions. (shrink)

Plato's Hesiod is a neglected topic, scholars having long regarded Plato's Homer as a more promising field of inquiry. My aim in this chapter is to demonstrate that this particular bias of scholarly attention, although understandable, is unjustified. Of no other dialogue is this truer than of the Ion.

This paper argues that Hesiod's Myth of the Golden Race (Op. 109-126) influenced Plato's Myth of the Cicadas from the Phaedrus (258e-259d). Among other parallels, Hesiod's Golden Race and Plato's Cicadas have a similar diet and a similar rapport with the gods, they die in a similar way and enjoy similar benefits after death. The paper further argues that Plato used the inherent ambiguity of the Golden Age myths to draw attention to the ambiguity of the Cicadas themselves, (...) who bring both benefits and rewards to humans, depending on their behavior. (shrink)

In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion, Theogony; given the form and content (...) of these two poems, what can we plausibly conjecture about the end or ends to which they were composed? In particular, I shall consider whether, and in what sense, these poems may be regarded as didactic in intent. Much of what I have to say in I say with a measure of confidence; in, by contrast, my primary aim is to undermine unwarranted confidence — although I do, even here, reach some positive conclusions. (shrink)

In the proem of the “Theogony” Hesiod describes the conception and birth of the Muses. At ll. 58-60 he specifies that Mnemosyne’s pregnancy lasted one entire year, ένιαντός. This unusual one-year pregnancy puzzles Hesiod’s commentators; West, for example, translates ένιαντός as ‘due time’ rather than ‘year’. The purpose of this article is to argue that Hesiod intended ένιαντός to mean ‘year’.

What is the role of Hesiod's poetry in the beginnings of Greek philosophy? This book explores the question by going beyond the traditional responses that stress either continuities or discontinuities between myth and philosophy. Instead, this volume attempts a reflexive or response-oriented approach, that highlights the active re-appropriation and renewal of Hesiodic thought by the Presocratic philosophers. Its fifteen contributions offer large scale comparisons, historiographical considerations, thematic and generic approaches, and detailed case studies.

The modern tendency to treat all Greek Golden Age textuality as apolitical and escapist has contributed to the ongoing neglect of the first Western educational text, Hesiod's Works and days. Most commentators have missed the interplay of utopian and dystopian images in Hesiodic poetry for lack of the appropriate conceptual framework. Once the escapist prejudice is overcome, the Hesiodic text appears as the first extant Occidental coupling of political utopianism with emancipatory ethico-political education. Once freed of its dated metaphysical-theological (...) resonances, Hesiodic utopianism is compatible with a renewed political and ethical education for cosmopolitanism and justice because the embarrassingly detailed and teleological element of temporal modern utopias and the equally embarrassing rigid architecture of spatial utopias are absent. There is no strict utopian prediction and the message for change is articulated for the whole of humanity. (shrink)

We analyze the section from Hesiod’s Works and Days (724–760) that equips the farmer with the expertise necessary to facilitate the household’s harmonious relationship with the gods. We propose that this section with its tabular ordinances represents the earliest collection of Greek religious norms, and we contextualize it both within the structure of the W&D and within the wider framework of Greek religion. The section is carefully developed and purposefully placed towards the end of the poem, with an eye (...) to symmetry and rhythm: Hesiod distributes divinely sanctioned social norms alongside religious norms in three distinct sections of the poem, providing ever more specific cautionary advice in the form of ordinances and injunctions. The passage 724–760 is also artfully structured and divided into ἀπό and ἐπί sections. By drawing attention to overlaps of the Hesiodic material and later inscriptional ritual norms, we demonstrate that they share common linguistic and thematic features. We also demonstrate that well-informed readers such as Plato, Plutarch, and Proclus repeatedly interpreted Hesiod’s norms in the light of their own religious experience. (shrink)

Stephen Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod's Theogony and traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton's own creation myth, which sought to "soar above th' Aonian Mount [i.e., the Theogony]...and justify the ways of God to men." Scully also considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories, including the Enûma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking of modern "scientific myths," Freud's Civilization (...) and its Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod's poem as a hymn to Zeus and a city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an idealized polity and--with but one exception--a place of communal harmony. This reading informs his study of the Theogony's reception in later writings about polity, discord, and justice. The rich and various story of reception pays particular attention to the long Homeric Hymns, Solon, the Presocratics, Pindar, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Plato in the Archaic and Classical periods; to the Alexandrian scholars, Callimachus, Euhemerus, and the Stoics in the Hellenistic period; to Ovid, Apollodorus, Lucian, a few Church fathers, and the Neoplatonists in the Roman period. Tracing the poem's reception in the Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance, including Petrarch and Erasmus, the book ends with a lengthy exploration of Milton's imitations of the poem in Paradise Lost. Scully also compares what he considers Hesiod's artful interplay of narrative, genealogical lists, and keen use of personified abstractions in the Theogony to Homeric narrative techniques and treatment of epic verse. (shrink)

Summary This contribution contains a critical re-assessment of the earliest archaeological material originating from the Valley of the Muses, i.e. archaic vessels and figurines, two examples of hydriai allegedly linked with the Muses, and an iconographic testimony. In the current historiography, these sources are still considered to confirm the archaic, or even earlier, origin of the cult of the Muses at the foot of Mount Helicon. An analysis of testimonies is complemented with an overview of a broader cultural context (i.e. (...) the musical agones, the Muses and nymphs and the emergence of the cult of poets/intellectuals); this enables us to assess the sources and chronological considerations. Conclusions drawn from the re-assessment of testimonies are of key importance not only to the dating of the cult of the Muses at this site, but also to our assessment of the phenomenon of the cult of these goddesses in the Greek world in general. (shrink)

On p. 118 I said that the injunction of Pythagoras παρà θνσíαν μxs22EF xs22EFννχíζον, quoted by Goettling with a false reference, might be illuminating in its context but that I suspected it of being a figment. My suspicions were unfounded. The reference, as Mr. A. B. Cook has kindly pointed out to me, is Iambl. Protrept. 364 K.; but Iamblichus's explanation—that ‘nails’ stands for one's remoter kinsfolk, οíον xs22EFνεψιáδαι xs22EF πατραδxs22EFλφων γαμβρονοτιδεîς xs22EF τοιοντοí τινες, with whom one should renew relations (...) on festal days—does not seem very helpful. (shrink)

L’usage de la forme catalogique et de la généalogie inscrit les auteurs dans une filiation intellectuelle. Partant de cette hypothèse, l’article réexamine la question de l’influence homérique sur l’œuvre d’Hérodote face à l’influence hésiodique sur la naissance de l’historio­graphie. L’objectif est de montrer que la manipulation de la forme catalogique est un critère d’innovation autant de l’école homérique face à l’école hésiodique que d’Hérodote face au style historiographique dominant. Les options poétiques « originelles » divergentes semblent ainsi avoir exercé une (...) influence durable sur le processus de la formation des genres en Grèce ancienne. Departing from the hypothesis that the use of catalogues and genealogies assigns authors to an intellectual genealogy, this paper re-examines the Homeric influence on Herodotus compared to the Hesiodic influence on the beginnings of historiography. The use of catalogues can be envisaged as a criterion of innovation, when one compares on this point the Homeric and Hesiodic “schools” as well as Herodotus and contemporary historiographers, and shows the lasting influence of the originally divergent poetic options on the process of the formation of genres in ancient Greece. (shrink)