Hesiod’s father was a seafaring merchant from Asia
Minor who fell upon hard times and emigrated to
Ascra, on the lower slopes of central Greece’s Helicon
mountain range, where he became a farmer.
When the patriarch died, he left his farm to his
sons, and Hesiod lived there most of his life.
According to legend, Hesiod visited a sacred
grove in his later years and was slain by his hosts
for seducing and impregnating their sister. His
body was flung into the sea, but dolphins brought
it ashore, where it was buried. The lyric poet Stesichorus
is said to be the product of the illicit union.
Like his father, Hesiod was a poor farmer, for
his primary occupation was poetry. He entered at
least one poetry contest, at the funeral games of
Amphidamas in Euboia, and won a prize. He may
have been a contemporary of the epic poet HOMER,
and the biographer PLUTARCH has him defeating
Homer in a poetry competition.
Hesiod is often called the father of Greek didactic
poetry.His Works and Days is an 800-line poem
addressed to Perseus, his wastrel brother. It describes
Ascra and the life of a farmer and also contains
some elements of EPIC poetry (such as the use
of hexameter verse, lofty language, and myths),
which is perhaps why VIRGIL used the poem as a
model for his Georgics.
In Works and Days, Hesiod observes the decline
of the world since the glorious Golden Age, which
was followed by the foolish Silver Age, the fierce
Bronze Age, and the age of the Heroes. Now is the
Age of Iron, which he characterizes as endless hard
drudgery, hardship, and weariness; “And I wish
that I were not any part of the fifth generation of
men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward.”
Works and Days is also scattered with tidbits of
advice, such as “Get two strong, seasoned oxen and
a mature, staid hired hand”;“Have one son to help
with the chores”; and “When the cranes fly overhead,
it’s time for winter planting.” Hesiod’s descriptions
and language have led translator
Richard Lattimore to write: “Hesiod is the poet of
the roadside grass and the many colored earth, and
of men who live by the soil. . . . Echoes of ancient
peasant wisdom and of the mysteries of the earth
linger in his pages.”
In another poem, Theogony,Hesiod describes in
1,000 lines the creation of the cosmos and the genealogy
of the early gods. He begins by invoking
the muses, who kept a sanctuary at Mt. Helicon. It
was here, he says, when he was “shepherding his
lambs,” that the goddesses taught him his “splendid
singing” (i.e., poetry). They handed him an
olive staff, breathed a voice into him, and told him
to sing “the race of the blessed gods everlasting.”
Hesiod goes on to chronicle the origins of the
earth, oceans, fate, death, and dreams in Theogony.
He also personifies cheating Deception, loving Affection,
malignant Old Age, and hateful Discord.
He describes the origins of the more familiar
deities as well: Zeus bedded Demeter, who bore
him Persephone; he loved “Mnemosyne of the
splendid tresses, from whom were born to him the
Muses”; and from his head he produced gray-eyed
Athena, leader of armies.
Hesiod did not name the gods, but he was the
first to classify them. Greek scholar Edith Hamilton
marvels that “a humble peasant, living on a
lonely farm far from cities, was the first man in
Greece to wonder how everything had happened,
the world, the sky, the gods, mankind, and think
out an explanation. . . .” It is this explanation that
influenced later writers such as John Dryden, Edmund
Spenser, and John Milton, and gave Hesiod
a place in world literature.
English Versions of Works by Hesiod
Hesiod. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959.
Hesiod’s Ascra. Translated by Anthony T. Edwards.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Hesiod: Theogony,Works and Days, Shield. Translated
by Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Works about Hesiod
Hamilton,Richard.Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry. Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Lefkowitz,Mary R. The Lives of the Greek Poets. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
Marsilio, Maria S. Farming and Poetry in Hesiod’s
Works and Days. Lanham,Md.: University Press of
America, 2000.
Peabody, Berkeley.Winged Word: A Study in the Technique
of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen
Principally through Hesiod’s Works and Days.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975.