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Hesiod
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:''This article discusses the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. For the computer application, see
Hesiod (name service).''
'''Hesiod''' (''Hesiodos'', {{polytonic|Ἡσίοδος}}), the early
Greek language Greek poet and
rhapsode, presumably lived around
700 BCE. Historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of
Homer, and some authors have even brought them together in an imagined poetic contest. Modern scholars disagree as to which was earlier; their lives very likely overlapped.
Hesiod serves as a major source for knowledge of
Greek mythology,
farming techniques, archaic Greek
astronomy and ancient
time-keeping.
John Addington Symonds J. A. Symonds writes that "Hesiod is also the immediate parent of gnomic verse, and the ancestor of those deep thinkers who speculated in the Attic Age upon the mysteries of human life".{{rf|1|Symonds1}}
Some scholars doubt whether Hesiod alone conceived and wrote ''Works and Days''. J. A. Symonds writes that "the first ten verses of the Works and Days are spurious - borrowed probably from some Orphic hymn to Zeus and recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as
Pausanias (geographer) Pausanias".{{rf|2|Symonds2}}
As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated around Hesiod. Unlike the case of Homer, however, some biographical details have survived: a few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in ''Works and Days''; some further inferences derive from his ''Theogony''. Hesiod lived in
Boeotia. His father came from Kyme in
Aeolis, which lay between
Ionia and the
Troad in Northwestern
Anatolia, but crossed the sea to settle at Boeotian Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (''Works'', 640). Hesiod's patrimony there, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount
Helicon, occasioned a pair of
lawsuits with his brother Perses, who won both under the same judges (some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod directed to him in ''Works and Days'').
The
Muses traditionally lived on Helicon, and they gave Hesiod the gift of poetic inspiration one day while he tended sheep (compare the legend of
Cædmon). In another biographical detail, Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at
Chalcis in
Euboea where the sons of one Amiphidamas awarded him a tripod (ll.654-662).
Plutarch first cited this passage as an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, based on his identification of Amiphidamas with the hero of the
Lelantine War between
Chalcis and
Eretria, which occurred around 705 BCE. Plutarch assumed this date much too late for a contemparary of Homer, but most Homeric scholars would now accept it. The account of this contest inspired the later tale of a competition between Hesiod and Homer.
Two different -- yet early -- traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as
Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the
Suda and
John Tzetzes, states that the
Delphi Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to
Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar
Irony ironic convention: the oracle that predicts accurately after all.
The other tradition, first mentioned in an
epigram of
Chersios of Orchomenus written in the
7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death) claims that Hesiod lies buried at
Orchomenus (town) Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to
Aristotle's ''Constitution of Orchomenus'', when the
Thespiae Thespians ravaged Ascra, the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and placed them in a place of honour in their ''
agora'', beside the tomb of
Minyas, their eponymous founder, and in the end came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" (οἰκιστής / ''oikistês'').
Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts.
Legends that accumulated about Hesiod came from several sources: a treatise "The poetic contest (Ἀγών / Agôn) of Homer and Hesiod"; a ''
vita'' of Hesiod by the Byzantine grammarian
John Tzetzes; the entry for Hesiod in the ''
Suda''; two passages and some scattered remarks in
Pausanias (geographer) Pausanias (IX, 31.3–6 and 38.3–4); a passage in
Plutarch ''Moralia'' (162b).
Works
Hesiod wrote a poem of some 800 verses, the ''Works and Days'', which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have seen this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented
Greek colonies colonisations in search of new land.
This work lays out the five
Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and 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.{{rf|3|Hesiod1}} The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in a hive.{{rf|4|Hesiod2}}
Tradition also attributes the ''
Theogony'', a poem which uses the same epic verse-form as the ''Works and Days'' (and Homer's as "
Iliad" and "
Odyssey") to Hesiod. The ''
Theogony'', which in its surviving form has over 1000 verses, resembles ''Works and Days'' very closely in style and substance considering the different subject-matter.
The ''
Theogony'' concerns the
cosmogony origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with
Gaia,
Nyx and
Eros (mythology) Eros, and shows a special interest in
genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to the 5th-century historian
Herodotos, the accepted version that linked all
Hellenes.
* Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod later genealogical poems -- known as ''
Catalogues of Women'' or as ''Eoiae'' (because sections began with the Greek words ''e oie'' 'or like her'). Only fragments of these have survived. They deal with the genealogies of kings and
heroes of the legendary heroic period. Scholars generally classify them as later examples of the poetic tradition to which Hesiod belonged, not as genuine poems of Hesiod himself.
* A final poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod, ''The Shield of Heracles'' (Ἀσπὶς ἩÏ?ακλÎους / Aspis Hêrakleous), apparently forms a late expansion of one of these genealogical poems, taking its cue from Homer's description of the
Shield of Achilles.
Hesiod's works survive in
Alexandrian
papyrus papyri, some dating from as early as the 1st century BCE.
Demetrius Chalcondyles issued the first printed edition (''
editio princeps'') of ''Works and Days'', possibly at Milan, probably in 1493. In
1495 Aldus Manutius published the complete works at Venice.
Notes
*{{ent|1|Symonds1}} J. A. Symonds, ''Studies of the Greek Poets'', p. 166
*{{ent|2|Symonds2}} J. A. Symonds, p. 167
*{{ent|3|Hesiod1}} Hesiod, ''Works and Days'', Canto III, [250]: "Verily upon the earth are thrice ten thousand immortals of the host of Zeus, guardians of mortal man. They watch both justice and injustice, robed in mist, roaming abroad upon the earth". (cf. also, J. A. Symonds, p. 179)
*{{ent|4|Hesiod2}} Hesiod, ''Works and Days'', [300]: "Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labor of the bees, eating without working"
References
*Philip Wentworth Buckham, ''Theatre of the Greeks'', 1827.
*Erwin Rohde, ''Psyche'', 1925.
*J. A. Symonds, ''Studies of the Greek Poets'', 1873.
*Thomas Taylor, ''A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries'', 1791.
External links
{{wikiquote}}
{{Wikisource author}}
{{Commonscat|Hesiod}}
* {{gutenberg author| id=Hesiod | name=Hesiod}}
* Web texts taken from ''Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica'', edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, published as
Loeb Classical Library #57, 1914, ISBN 0674990633:
*
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Perseus Classics Collection: Greek and Roman Materials: Text: Hesiod (Greek texts and English translations for ''Works and Days'', ''
Theogony'', and ''Shield of Heracles'' with additional notes and cross links.)
** Versions of the electronic edition of Evelyn-White's English translation edited by Douglas B. Killings, June 1995:
**
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Project Gutenberg plain text.
**
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Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE: The Online Medieval and Classical Library: Hesiod
**
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Sacred Texts: Classics: The Works of Hesiod (''Theogony'' and ''Works and Days'' only)
Category:Ancient Greek poets
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