Sometime around 750-600 B.C.E., the Greek poet Hesiod produced what is generally thought to be the oldest surviving Greek poetic works. During this time, Greece was near the middle of its Archaic period, a period of technological, social, political, and cultural innovations. This was the period in which the first true alphabet system arose, the system which allowed Hesiod and other poets like him to record permanently the oral stories and lyrics so important to Greek culture. This was also the time in which the Greek polis emerged – what is today translated as “city-state” – as a result of increases in population size. Hand in hand with the increase in population and formation of political bodies like the polis comes the colonization of foreign land which marked this period. Colonies arose all around the Aegean Sea and onto the coast of North Africa, spreading the Greek culture well beyond its homeland (Earth 128-131).
It was during this time that Hesiod composed Works and Days, a didactic poem of about 800 lines addressed to Hesiod’s brother, Perses. Works and Days is Hesiod’s way of telling his brother how to live a good and prosperous life. It is full of Hesiod’s beliefs about right and wrong, justice and injustice, the importance of a solid work ethic, warnings about the deceitful and thievish nature of women, and detailed instructions on everything from when to harvest the crops and take a wife to how to build your plow and dress during winter; it is also heavy in mythology and emphasis on the necessity of obedience to the gods.
Several themes are readily apparent throughout Works and Days. One important theme that Hesiod comes back to time and again is the importance of work. Perses has squandered his inheritance and c...
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...ion back to the seasons and agriculture. Greeks were also very concerned about property rights and inheritance, as Hesiod shows us with his worries about the uncertainty of children’s paternity when women are not kept submissively in the home. Through his advice to his brother, Hesiod’s Works and Days becomes a wealth of information about the particulars of life in ancient Greece during the 7th and 8th centuries B.C.E.
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As one of the most well known ancient Roman love poets, Ovid has demonstrated bountiful talents within his writing. When reading myths from his book titled Metamorphoses, you gain an enlightening insight of how he viewed mythology. To Ovid, love was the origin of everything. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that most of his poems relate to the theme of love. However, not all poets are the same and every re-telling of a myth has its own unique perspective. In this paper I will compare and contrast the myth of Medea in Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7. I will then explain how Ovid’s approach to love and loss correlate to his general approach to myth as a whole. I will support my belief with evidence from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 14.
Branscome, David, comp. "Greek Hesiod, Theogony, Lines 1-210 "invocation to the Muses and Creation" [Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Tr. Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.]." Ancient Mythology East and West. Print.
History today recalls the Greek traditions starting from the second millennium B.C to date and not just during the Archaic and the Classical periods. The primary aim of history is to provide us with a broad comprehension of the principles that governed the Greek societies (Carey, 2017). Hegemony together with Greek historians provides a comprehensible examination of the fundamental cultural and political elements which pervades Xenophon, Thucydides, Ephorus, and Herodotus. Hegemony mainly explains the master plan.
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The role of women in Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days is outstandingly subordinate. There are a number of times in Hesiod's text that despises women, being mortal, immortal, or flesh-eating monsters. The overall impression of women from Theogony and Works and Days, leads one to believe that Hesiod is a misogynist.
Theogony of Hesiod was written by one of the earliest Greek poets, Hesiod between 750 and 650 BCE. Around this time we see the rise of the polis along with its prosperity, and the rise of centers of political, religious, philosophical, and artistic development. Hesiod says all things in the universe arose from Chaos, the nothingness from which the first objects of existence appeared. Chaos’s children created the Titans, the three Cyclopes, the three Hecatonchires (hundred-handed giants,) and various deities, nymphs, and monsters. From the Titans came the first Olympians, who fought for power over the world and created the other gods and goddesses of the Greek
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Muses, which are the nine singing goddesses who he came across one day while taking care of his lambs, serve as a guide to the poet’s genealogy and organization of the origins of the gods by inspiring him to write down the lineage as they sing it. Using their angelic voices, the Muses presented Hesiod with the history of the cosmos in order. Thus, inspiring him to become a poet; he made this major change in his life and that resulted in Theogony, a chronological poem that consists of short life lessons, punishments, and roots of many Greek gods and goddesses. In this poem, Hesiod described these accounts as songs, when in fact, they were long verbal stories of how the gods of Olympus came to be. The sole purpose of
- Chappell, Timothy. "Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 07 May 2005. Web. 08 May 2014.
Marra, James L., Zelnick, Stephen C., and Mattson, Mark T. IH 51 Source Book: Plato, The Republic, pp. 77-106. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, 1998.