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.
Works Cited
Bulliet, Richard W. Earth and Its Peoples: a Global History. 5th ed. Vol. 1. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
Hesiod. "Works and Days." Theogony and Works and Days. Trans. Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. 57-83. Print.
Schlegel, Catherine. "Introduction to Hesiod." Introduction. Theogony and Works and Days. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. 1-10. Print.
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
...e Earth and Its Peoples, Second Edition. CENGAGE LEARNING, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. .
Plato, and G. M. A. Grube. "Phaedo." Five Dialogues. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2002. 93-
David W. Tandy and Walter C. Neale (edd. and trans.), Hesiod's Works and Days: A Translation and Commentary for the Social Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 149.
* Frazer, R. M. The Poems of Hesiod (University of Oklahoma Press, U. S. A., 1983)
This paper is to show that Heracles is the prime example of a hero’s journey through his actions and the struggles that he faced during his life until he was about to die but instead of death, his father, Zeus, saved him and he conquered the mortal realm, to become a god.
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.
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.
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.
Roman and Greek mythology are filled with multiple interpretations of how the creator, be it the gods or nature, contributed to the birth of the world. These stories draw the backgrounds of the gods and goddesses that govern much of classical mythology. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Hesiod’s Theogony are two pieces of work that account for how our universe came to be. A comparison of Theogony with Metamorphoses reveals that Hesiod’s creation story portrays the deities as omnipresent, powerful role whose actions triggered the beginning of the universe whereas in Metamorphoses, the deities do not play a significant role; rather the humans are center of the creation. The similarities and differences are evident in the construction of the universe, ages of man, and the creation of men and women on earth.
Nardo, Don. The Ancient Greeks at Home and at Work. 1st ed. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 2004. Print.
"Gods and Men in Greek Religion." Gods and Men in Greek Religion. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr.
Bulliet, Richard W. et al. The Earth and Its People: A Global History. 2nd ed. New York: Houghten Mifflin.
- Chappell, Timothy. "Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 07 May 2005. Web. 08 May 2014.
“The Odyssey” is an epic poem that tells the story of Odysseus and the story of his many travels and adventures. The Odyssey tells the main character’s tale of his journey home to the island of Ithaca after spending ten years fighting in the Trojan War, and his adventures when he returns home and he is reunited with his family and close friends. This literary analysis will examine the story and its characters, relationships, major events, symbols and motifs, and literary devices.