Hesiod

Hesiod is the first author I have addressed in my reading program on Ancient Greece. Along with Homer, he stands at the beginning of Greek literature, situated in the period of the 8th-7th centuries BCE, quite shortly after the Greeks had converted the Phoenician alphabet into their own script—remarkable indeed. Also remarkable: these are relatively extensive works, even preceding administrative, commercial, and substantive (political-philosophical, etc.) texts (while in the Near East, show more this was almost everywhere the other way around).
This book includes three works largely attributed to Hesiod. The Theogony is the most complex of the three, outlining the chaotic struggle between gods and demigods at the dawn of time. Works and Days feels more down-to-earth because it focuses on the human community and, among other things, provides guidelines for labor in the field. And only the beginning of the much shorter The Shield of Heracles is attributed to Hesiod. All are "didactic works," in the sense that the author doesn't so much tell a story (like Homer), but rather aims to educate the reader on a specific subject.
Hesiod is sometimes called "the first self-conscious author in Western Literature," because the work "Works and Days" is written in the first person and he also talks about himself in it. But that should be taken with a grain of salt. Just think of the Akkadian priestess Enheduana, almost a millennium and a half (!) earlier (see xxx ), although her authorship is also subject to some criticism.
A word of caution: these texts aren't always easy to read even in translation; some fragments remain obscure, which apparently lends itself to the most diverse interpretations. I read two English, one French, and one Dutch translation side by side, and repeatedly, they sometimes diverged considerably. This immediately indicates that one must be cautious when using these works as historical sources.
Compared to Homer, this seems to be the lesser work. That's deceptive: indeed, the Iliad and the Odyssey are infinitely more appealing for their literary quality. But Hesiod's works contain the beginnings of what would much later be considered classical Greek thought. I discuss this in more detail in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7778645497. show less

Theogony
Continuing in the tradition of Greek poets by invoking the Muses, Hesiod gives us the semi-creation account of the Greek pantheon, the origin of men and evil, and the genealogy of the gods. Hesiod is credited, at least to our knowledge of providing the well-known origin stories of the gods and Greek myths. While the poetry, at least translated, doesn't stand out all that well; it is interesting that the Greeks saw order, design, and hierarchy in the universe and translated from the show more theology to the societal among the polis and the family.

Works and Days
A personal grudge from Hesiod to his brother, but it reads like a book of sayings or a Poor Richard's Almanac. It contains common planting tips for agriculture but also how best to live among each other in this budding city-state. The suggested laws have a ring of Old Testament Leviticus/Deuteronomy and attempts to provide a means for violence to be lessended in this new blended society and where law and politics (and good work ethic) is a means to lessen violence. This flows really well from Oresteia especially The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides by Aeschylus. Not so much as a poetry read but interesting to see the real life day-to-day maturations of a typical Ancient Greek life.

Final Grade - B- show less

I’ve managed to avoid reading these great Greek classics until now. And it was merely one of those books, listing “books that you should read” that got me started. And, I must say, I am quite enjoying my dabbling into these classic works. I never realised until now that Hesiod was roughly contemporary with Homer.....about 700 BC. About 250 years before the classical period in Athens with Socrates Plato and Aristotle.
The original of “Works and Days” was written in verse. Hesiod was show more a poet. So I looked for a translation, such as the current one, that had attempted to emulate the verse. Of course, this is nigh on impossible ....apart from the fact that the Greeks of the time had notions and concepts that are totally foreign to us today. Still, I have no regrets. I’ve also just read another version of the same poem which doesn’t try and keep to verse and my conclusion is that they are so close that it doesn’t really matter. I’m sure there will be many points where scholars and translators will argue and disagree. But for me one version was as good as the other.
I kind of liked “Works and Days” much more than “The Theogony”. The latter purports to be a revelation of how the world and the gods came to be. And I found it rather tedious. A bit like reading Deuteronomy. (Still this book was not about the Theogony...though there are endless references to the gods in the work. I certainly reminded me in parts of Polonius’s instructions to his teenage son whom he was sending off to college in England.....”Neither borrower nor lender be” etc. Lots of really practical advice there....including how many boards to have in stock before building a cart. Plus the best season for putting to sea in a trading ship.
One thing struck me throughout and that was the casual attitude to slavery. Clearly slaves were allotted the drudge work and it was accepted that even a very modest household would have several slaves. But there was no thought nor mention in all this advice about “how to live the good life” of human rights for slaves. Slaves are mentioned in the same breath as oxen and mules.......Unyoke the mules and let the slaves ease their knees. It really seems to be a blank spot in the morality of the time. I wonder why? ....what was it in the cosmology that relegated salves (and maybe women) to inferior roles.
I’ve captured some of the author/translators comments and some of the actual verse in the passages below. Partly because the passage caught my fancy and partly to help me remember it.
What did I think overall? Yes, I liked it. Four stars from me.
Introduction
As Samuel Butler says in his delightfully quirky yet insightful work on “Homer, The Authoress of the Odyssey”, ‘Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in their fear of jumping to a conclusion to forget that there is such a thing as jumping away from one.’
In the eighth century, Greece was emerging from a time of cultural eclipse traditionally known as the Greek Dark Ages, the era between the thirteenth and ninth centuries BCE, during which writing mysteriously vanishes.
Linear-B disappears, almost overnight, with the collapse of the palatial system and its attendant red tape. Then, after centuries in Greece with no writing at all, suddenly, in the mid-eighth century, inscriptions in an entirely different method of writing Greek appear. The onset and spread of this new system is likewise swift, from no evidence of it in the ninth century to scribbles in the last third of the eighth century
The Greek alphabet seems to appear rather suddenly and almost fully formed.....The great and deceptively simple innovation of the Greek alphabet was the addition of vowels, in which the spoken language abounds.....On the other hand, with the complex syllabary script of the Mycenaeans, Linear-B, you still had to guess at the vowels or even the number of syllables......The alphabet, with its precise articulation of words into syllables, turned out to be ideal for the recording of metrical poetry.
The Theogony unfolds the origins of the cosmos (‘ in the beginning was Chaos’) as well as the family trees of the gods, while in Works and Days the poet refreshingly takes his own trials and tribulations for a subject, and depicts the workaday world as his audience knew it,
Works and Days as we have it is a scant 828 lines, to the Iliad’s whopping 15,693.....An apocryphal story related by Pausanias says that Hesiod was expelled from a competition in Delphi because he hadn’t learned how to accompany himself (on the Lyre). .....That his authority is as an official Prize-Winning Poet perfectly suits the poem’s themes of judgements and justice.
Perhaps Hesiod’s mention of it seems to us off-hand, but a tripod is nothing to sneeze at. In the Iliad, for instance, in Book 22.164, we are informed that the appropriate prize for the horse or prestigious chariot race at a funeral games was a bronze tripod or a woman.
Herodotus says that it is Homer and Hesiod who first ascribe to the gods their various attributes.
Works and Days is roiled with anxiety about conflict between siblings......It turns out Strife’s a twin, a double birth–There are, not one, but two Strifes on the earth....The following is from the actual "Works and Days" poem of Hesiod:
A man who gets to know them both admits One’s blessed, one’s cursed–the two are opposites. One brings forth discord, nurtures evil war:
the other, Shady Night Gave birth to first. This Strife, high-seated Zeus Set in earth’s roots–for this one has a use: She spurs a man who otherwise would shirk, Shiftless and lazy, to put his hands to work
Perses, take this to heart, lest Strife, whose quirk Is mischief-making, draw your mind from work;
let’s settle this fair and square–Straight judgements are from Zeus and past compare. Already we’ve divvied up our lots, but you Keep laying hold of more than is your due,
To Zeus’s plan, the Cripple7 right away Modelled a modest maiden out of clay;
Then Hermes Argus-killer set in her heart Lies and wheedling words, a knack for deceit.
The design of Zeus deep-thunderer complete,
Gave her a voice. ‘Pandora’ he would name her,
But woman grappled off the jar’s huge lid, 9 Scattering its contents as she did, Unleashing sorry troubles on Mankind.
Would I be better dead or not yet born?–For this age is an Iron Age indeed–Suffering never ceases for our breed: By day, men toil; night worries them with care, And the gods will give them troubles hard to bear;
So Perses, you be heedful of what’s right; Don’t nurture Arrogance–she’s a disaster For lowly mortals; she will overmaster Even noble men and crush them with her load
Once they encounter troubles. The better road Is the one bypassing Arrogance to wend To Justice; Justice triumphs in the end.
Judges, you gift-gluttons, beware: Drop crooked verdicts, speak them fair and square. He harms himself who harms another man; The plotter is the worst hurt by the plan.
Far-seeing Zeus will grant prosperity To him who speaks up for the truth, but he Who bears false witness and lies under oath, Injures past healing law and good name both, And his descendants live under a cloud; The sons of one true to his word are proud.
The strait and narrow path the gods have set To Virtue is steep and long, and paved with sweat.
It’s work that prospers men, and makes them rich In heads of livestock, and it’s working which Endears you to the immortals. There’s no shame In working, but in shirking, much to blame.
Invite a friend but not a foe to feast–
Invite the man close by not last nor least;
If something bad should happen on your farm, Neighbours arrive half-dressed at the alarm; Kinsmen, belted.
Deposit even small amounts, but do It often, and you’ll find that they accrue.
He wards off sun-scorched famine who can add To what he has.
But if it’s wealth you long for in your chest, Then do this: work on work and never rest.
When Atlas’ daughters rise, the Pleiades, Start harvesting, plough at their setting. These Are hidden forty days and forty nights.
I’d urge you heed: Think how to clear debts and not starve. You’ll need A woman and an ox to start a life:
A ploughing ox; bondswoman, not a wife, One who can follow oxen, and prepare
The household’s needs and management with care,
Cut three feet for a mortar; three cubits’ good For pestles; for an axle, a seven-foot Length (eight for a mallet-head to boot). That’s how things are well-fitted, part to part:
Equip your household with two ploughs, take care To have a single-piece one, and a spare Well joined.
Elm poles are sturdiest Or laurel, oak for stocks, while holm is best For trees.
Be mindful when you hear the clanging cry Of the crane migrating through the cloudy sky, 30 450 She brings the sign for ploughing and the start Of winter rains
When first the opportunity to plough Shows itself to mortals, that means now: Jump to it, both you and your slaves together,
In winter, pass the blacksmith’s forge, don’t stop Where men gather and chat in his warm shop.
The dope Who’s idle and awaits an empty hope, Gripes in his soul, lacking a livelihood. 500 But as provider, Hope is not much good, Not to a man who lacks his daily bread
But loiters at the forge all day instead.
When winter weather Has come, stitch skins of firstling kids together37 With thongs of ox sinew, so you can drape Your shoulders with a rain-resistant cape.
Now rouse your slaves and whet Your scythes. Shun shady spots and lying in Till dawn at harvest, when sun withers the skin. No time to waste now, get your crop inside. Rise early, so the harvest will provide.
And when mighty Orion starts to shine, Urge slaves to thresh Demeter’s holy corn On a threshing floor that’s airy and well worn.
And gather hay and straw inside So your oxen and your mules are well supplied. Then let slaves ease their knees, unyoke your team.
when the Pleiades, Fleeing Orion, sink in cloudy seas, That’s when all kinds of wind blasts rage. Don’t keep Your ship any longer on the wine-dark deep,
But work the earth,
Till sailing season comes, just wait. Then drag your swift ship seawards. Range the freight In its hold, get ready for the profit you’ll Bring home–just like our father
The time is ripe for sailing the fifty days Past solstice, summer in its closing phase, Season of toil. You will not shipwreck then, Nor will the sea extinguish all your men,
Of all that I proclaim to you: do not Load hollow ships with your whole livelihood. 690 Keep most aside, a lesser portion’s good.
It’s terrible to meet a watery fate–
Above all, choose a bride From nearby, having searched on every side, Lest your marriage make your neighbours’ mirth.
Don’t get a name for many guests, or none, Don’t keep low company, nor be the one
To wrangle with high.
Make sure you do not stand Facing the sun when you piss. Do not forget: Go before sunrise, or after the sun has set,
Talk’s evil–light and easily raised up, then Hard to bear, hard to put down again; For once on many tongues, Rumour’s abroad, Nor wholly dies; she too is a kind of god.
Few know the twenty-first is best at dawn And worsens as the evening comes on.
These days are gifts to those who dwell on earth–The rest, haphazard, with no special worth,
Fateless. One praises one day, one, another; show less

Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days are interesting in the context of other classic works and provide an interesting understanding of the genealogy of the ancient Greek gods and the agrarian life of the time. This is a work of poetry translated into prose, and there are some issues. The first thing that struck me was the misogyny of Theogony. Women (pp. 20-21) were sent down by Zeus as a curse to men:

No fit partners for accursed Poverty, but only for Plenty... a bane for mortal men has

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high-thundering Zeus created women, conspirators in causing difficulty.

The misogyny doesn't stop there. In Works and Days, the mythological Pandora (echoing Eve in Genesis), releases evil upon the world (p. 39). Not by opening a "box" as Erasmus mistakenly conveyed, but by opening a clay storage jar (p. xiv). La Rochefoucauld's maxims often talk about love as an illness that is difficult to cure, no doubt echoing Hesiod (p. 21):

...the man who gets a good wife who is sound and sensible, spends his life with bad competing constantly against good; while the man who gets the awful kind lives with unrelenting pain in heart and spirit, and it is an ill without cure.

In Works and Days, Hesiod provides advice to living the agrarian life. Virgil seems to echo Hesiod in his Eclogues and Georgics. But Virgil is reflecting back on the simple life, whereas Hesiod reminds me of people offering advice on an internet bulletin board (p. 56):

I will show you the measure of the resounding sea - quite without instruction as I am either in seafaring or in ships; for as to ships, I have never yet sailed the broad sea...

Of course, in true bulletin board style, Hesiod goes on to instruct others in how and when to sail. This is an important historical work and well worth reading. But while there are instances of timeless proverbs (which have tended to reappear through history), I don't think I will be taking on too much of Hesiod's advice any time soon. show less