Hesiod

Hesiod (lived 8th century bc), Greek poet, who occupies a unique place in Greek literature both for his moral precepts and for his highly personal tone. Hesiod was born in Ascra, Boeotia (now Palaioppanagia). After the death of his father, he settled in Naupactus. There, as in his youth, he tended sheep and led the life of a farmer. Except for what Hesiod reveals of himself in his poetry, little is definitely known of his life. Modern scholars place him in the same period of Greek literature as Homer. His first poem, the Theogony (Genealogy of the Gods), is a poem in which the large and amorphous body of Greek myths is systematized and expanded to include the newer divinities unknown in the Homeric poems. The Theogony recounts the creation of the world out of chaos, the birth of the gods, and descriptions of their adventures. The closing portion contains a list of the daughters of Zeus, the father of the gods, and mortal women. It forms the introduction to a lost poem, the Catalogue of Women, which in the fragments that survive traces the exploits of heroes born to mortal women.

Hesiod is also credited with composing Works and Days, the earliest example of didactic poetry—that is, poetry meant to be instructive rather than entertaining. The work reflects Hesiod's experiences as a Boeotian farmer and is interspersed with many episodes of allegory and fable. In a simple, moralizing style Hesiod stresses the importance of hard work and righteousness. He gives practical advice on how to live, providing hints and rules on husbandry and charting a religious calendar with propitious and unpropitious days for certain farming tasks. The main theme is moral decay: Hesiod traces the history of the world through five stages, from the Golden Age to his own age of iron, which according to Hesiod was characterized by suffering and lawlessness. Of other works by Hesiod only titles and fragments remain, and even these, most scholars believe, were probably written by successors and imitators who are known collectively as the Hesiodic school. In this group are the narrative poem “Shield,” the didactic poem “Maxims of Cheiron,” the genealogical poem “Aegimius,” and the mythological poems “Marriage of Ceyx” and “Descent of Theseus to Hades.”