INTRODUCTION

I. Life and Time of Hesiod: The reliable facts of the life of Hesiod that have come down to us are few and are derived chiefly from his works. We learn from Works and Days 633-40 that his father left Cyme in Aeolis hard pressed by poverty and sailed the seas as a trader, and finally settled at Ascra, a village in Boeotia on the slope of Helicon, near the town of Thespiae, which according to Diodorus Siculus1 was ruled by seven princes. Here it seems the poet was born, though according to some he was born at Cyme and came to Ascra with his father.2 At all events the son became a farmer and shows an intimate personal acquaintance with agriculture, while his knowledge of sea-faring seems to be second-hand. Besides being a farmer and the son of a trader Hesiod is represented in Theogony 22-3 as having been a shepherd-boy at the foot of Helicon, where the Muses inspired him with the gift of song, while in Works 654-62 he appears as a professional bard. But the main fact in the life of Hesiod and the one which is prominent in the Works and Days is the difficulty which arose between him and his brother Perses with reference to the division of their father's estate. This was the occasion of the poet's administering to the Thespian princes the lessons of justice and to Perses the lessons of industry found in the Works.

For the later events of his life we have little that is reliable, a few references in ancient authors and the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, the work of an anonymous writer of the reign of Hadrian,

1 IV 29, 4. Strabo (IX 2, 25) says: In the country of the Thespians is Ascra, the father-land of Hesiod.

2 So Suidas, v. "Hoiodos and Hermesianax (III 21) in Athenaeus 597d.

3 Th. 22-3 seems to be a reference to Hesiod as the great poet of Helicon by the later author of the Theogony. See Croiset, Lit. Gr. I 450 and 512. EvelynWhite renders: And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me: Nowhere in the Works and Days does the author show any particular interest in a shepherd's life or acquaintance with it. The second passage has been so severely criticized in ancient and modern times (see note 4 infra) that it seems rash to base a conclusion on it.

4 The certamen is printed in the editions of Goettling-Flach, Sittl, Rzach, and Evelyn-White, and may be said to represent fairly correctly the ancient tradition on the subject. It is evidently based on Works 654-62. These verses were rejected by Plutarch, and are suspected by most modern editors. Rohde,

who however drew his information for the close of the poet's life from Alcidamas and Eratosthenes. After some idle speculation on the parentage of Hesiods the contest is given in full. All the people were for awarding the prize to Homer, but the king Panedes crowned Hesiod as having sung of peace and industry, whereas Homer had sung of war and bloodshed. After the contest Hesiod went to Delphi to dedicate to the God the first fruits of the victory, and was told by the oracle to beware of the grove of the Nemean Zeus; for there he was fated to meet death. Consequently he avoided the Peloponnesus, thinking the Nemea there was meant, and took refuge at the court of the brothers Amphiphanes and Ganyctor at Oeneum in the country of the Ozolian Locrians near Naupactus, not understanding the oracle; for this place also was sacred to the Nemean Zeus. The two princes, suspecting that Hesiod had violated their sister, slew him and cast his body into the sea. On the third day it was brought to land by dolphins, when the people were keeping holiday on the shore; and they recognized and buried him. The murderers in alarm took ship for Crete, but were struck by a thunder-bolt in mid-sea. Later the inhabitants of Orchomenos in accordance with an oracle removed the body to their own city and buried it there. Such is the account of Alcidamas, but Eratosthenes says that Hesiod was not the guilty person, the maid having been ruined by a fellow-traveller of his."

however, points out (Kleine Schriften I 43, note 1) that the ground of Plutarch's objection must have been their reference to the contest between Homer and Hesiod, which he considered a fable. Here, however, the fact that Homer is not mentioned is clear proof that the author did not know of that tradition, else he would have mentioned the greatest of all epic poets. Hence this passage is older than the oldest form of the Certamen, and was the basis of that tradition. Perses is called dîov yévos in Works 299, where some of the ancients seem to have read Δίου γένος. Hence the tradition that Hesiod was the son of Dios. It seems that nothing more is meant than in the case of the honest swine-herd of the Odyssey, who is called dios Evuaîos. In Il. IX 538 dîov yévos (of Artemis) it taken by Leaf to be equivalent to Διός κούρη.

The tradition of the Certamen is supported by Plutarch (Conv. Sep. Sap. 19), whose statement, however, seems to imply that the Orchomenians were unsuccessful in their attempt to remove the remains, and by Pausanias (IX 31, 6 and 38, 3-4). The double interment of the poet is referred to by Pindar (Frag. 328 Christ). There seems to be an element of truth in the tradition that Hesiod spent the latter part of his life in the neighborhood of Naupactus, and possibly at Orchomenos. That he should have become dissatisfied with the uninviting region of Ascra (see Works 640), especially after his experience with the authori

The time at which Hesiod lived is a question on which the ancients were divided. Herodotus made him and Homer contemporaries, and fixed their date at 400 years before his time. This opinion is perhaps based on the legend of the Certamen. The Certamen itself and Ephorus of Cyme, according to the life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch, make Homer a generation younger than Hesiod; while the Parian Marble makes Hesiod 30 years the elder. On the other hand the Alexandrians, Eratosthenes and Aristarchus, were of the opinion that Hesiod must have lived after Homer on the ground of his wider geographical knowledge and the later character of his myths. According to Gellius (III 11, 2) even before the Alexandrians Xenophanes had declared Homer to be the elder, while Cicero in Cato Major 54 refers to Homer as having been multis, ut mihi videtur, ante Hesiodum saeculis.

8

9

Hesiod was by origin an Aeolian from Cyme, but he passed the most important part of his life at Ascra in Boeotia. His poem, however, is in the Ionic dialect with a somewhat larger Aeolic element than the Homeric poems and a few Doricisms. It is reasonable to suppose that the Works was composed virtually as it now stands, so far as language is concerned. From this it may fairly be concluded that the Ionic epic was already well developed and generally known in Greece at the time of Hesiod, and it follows that Hesiod was probably somewhat later than Homer, who (whatever opinion may be held of him) must have stood at the culmination of the

ties there, is not surprising. Compare Velleius I 7: Patriamque et parentes testatus est (Hesiodus); sed patriam, quia multatus ab ea erat, contumeliosissime contestatus est. It is evident from Thuc. III 96 that the tradition of his death at Oeneum goes back at least to the time of Pericles.

7 II 53. So Varro (Gellius III 11, 3).

See Strabo I 2, 14 and 22; and Aristarchus on Il. IX 246; XI 750. It is to be noted that this opinion is based not on the Works and Days, but on the Theogony and later Hesiodic works. Thus the Theogony refers to the Nile (338), the Tyrrhenians (1016), Latinus (1013), the Eridanus and Ister (338-9), the island Erytheia (290), and the Hesperides (518), all which are not mentioned in Homer. In Th. 913-14 Hades snatched Persephone from her mother and Zeus allowed him to keep her (cf. Hom. Hymn to Demeter). This myth is not mentioned in Homer, where Persephone is associated with Hades as a dread goddess. The incident of Od. III 464 is developed into a marriage between Telemachus and Polycaste in the Catalogus (Frag. 17).

The language of Boeotia was an Aeolic-Doric mixture. See Buck's Greek Dialects, pp. 1-14.

Greek epic.10 On the other hand it seems certain that Hesiod was considerably earlier than Semonides and Archilochus." We may fix his date, then, somewhat after Homer, or approximately in the first half of the 8th century.

II. Works of Hesiod: Besides the Works and Days the most important work ascribed to Hesiod is the Theogony. That the ancients considered the Theogony a genuine work of Hesiod is evident from references to it in writers of the Attic period.1 Not till the time of Pausanias do we find its genuineness questioned, according to whom (IX 31, 4) those dwelling around Helicon considered only the Works genuine. That it goes back to an early date is evident from the character of the work, as well as from the importance assigned to it in the historic period.

The Theogony catalogues the genealogies and struggles of the gods, which resulted in the epic order of the universe. After a long and composite proem to the Muses, which is generally considered of later origin, the epic narration begins at verse 116 with the primal powers of nature and passes through the older generation of gods to the dynasty of Zeus, culminating in the Titanomachy2 and Zeus

10 The evidence of language and ideas would point to a later date for the Works and Days, though it can hardly be stated conclusively from the occurrence of similar verses and phrases in the Works and Days and in the Iliad and Odyssey that the author of the former was familiar with the latter, owing to the prevalence of the Heroic Epic and its stereotyped character. The geography of the Works falls well within that of Homer, though the use of Hellas (653) and PanHellenes (528), as well as the epithet Aeolian (636) seem post-Homeric. So the quantity of the first syllable of κaλóv (63), the meaning of 40os in 67 and 699, the sense of voμov in 276 and of prasin 573, the functions of the Heroes in 159-60, of Cronos in 169, and of Zeus Chthonios in 465 are not found in Homer. In some cases the later date of the Works is involved with the question of later interpolations.

"Semonides, Frag. 6 is apparently an imitation of Works 702-3, and Archilochus, Frag. 89, 1 of Works 202. So Archilochus, Frag. 85 reflects Theogony 120-2. It may be assumed that the Works and Theogony, with perhaps one or two of the Major Homeric Hymns, are distinctly older than any other extant Greek Literature except the Iliad and Odyssey.

'In Herodotus II 53 Homer and Hesiod are referred to as ol monoaνTES Oeoyovínv "Eλnot. See also Plato, Sym. 178B; Rep. 377E, where Th. 116 ff., 154 ff., 453 ff. are clearly assigned to Hesiod.

2 The cosmic struggle is taken for granted in the Iliad, being mentioned several times: VIII 478-81; XIV 203-4 and 274-9. It is not mentioned in the Odyssey.