HE'SIOD (Gk. ././c'siodos). After Ho mer, the earliest Greek poet whose works have survived. The date at which he lived is uncer tain. Herodotus regarded him as contemporary with Homer, and dated both of these at 40(1 years before his own day. i.e. in the middle of the ninth century n.e. Ephorus thought him older than Homer; the Parlay _Marble also takes this view and makes him thirty years the elder: but the Alexandrians, Eratosthenes, and Anis tarchus, held that the treatment of the myths and the geographical knowledge shown in llesiod's works proved him to be younger. Modern criticism has shown clearly that the Hesiodic works ex hibit a knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey in their present Ionic dialect. and in very much their pfesent form: on the other hand, it is cer tain that Hesiod's Works and Days were known to Simonides and Archilochus. so that we may safely place Hesiod in the second half of the eighth century. or perhaps about n.e. 700.
Our knowledge of his life is derived almost solely from his poem's; the ancient had no better source of information. From notices in his Works and Days, and other scattered sources, we learn that his father. under stress of poverty, came to Ilteotia as an emigrant from Cyme, an .Eolian town in Asia Minor, and set tled in the petty village of Asera beneath Mount IleIkon. Here probably Hesiod was horn. In his youth he watched the sheep on IleIkon. At his father's death his brother Perses succeeded in cheating him of his proper inheritance by cor rupting, the judges; but later. this unjust brother was reduced to such poverty that he was forced to appeal for aid to liesiod. Under the impulse of his homely muse, Ilesiod, like other early bards, became a wandering singer, visiting not simply the cities of his native Bicotia, but also traveling to the west past Delphi, until he reached Naupactus in Ozolian Loeris. Tradition says that the Delphic oracle had warned him that lie was destined to (lie in the shrine of the Nemean Zeus: hut the poet in the course of his travels eater to (Freon in Loeris. quite unaware that here also was a temple of the god whose sacred precinct lie was to avoid. in this town he is reported to have met his death at the hands of two brothers who without foundation sus pected him of •roncing their sister. The tradi tion may well have this truth. that Hesiod died in Locris. At Naupaetus a school of Hesiodie poetry developed. one product of which was the genealogical poem Naercibcria, fragments of which are embodied in the Scholia to Apollonitis Rho thus. In later Onus, a gia‘i• nl Ibisiod was to be seen in the market plat( at Grehom•ntis, to which tradition said the poet's bone: had been removed at. the command of the Delphic tiraele.
Ilesiod was the founder of Greek didactic poor), as limner of epic song. The billowing works are extant inith•r his name: Works anti Days (' Efe; a sal 'llpt pat) in S2.S verses, which the Bieolian tradition on Helicon regarded as his tii ly genuine work. The first part of its name
( II of lass t 1111111 the direct ions for vari bil•• kinds of tailor which it. contains; the second ilbltiN) is due to the calendar it gives, the days of the month on which certain tasks should be performed. The poem in its present form no doubt eontains sonic later additions. but scholars are riot agreed as to the extent of these intertdatiims. The Throgony (Oco-,opia) in 1022 verses is an attempt to bring Greek mythol ogy into an ordered system. and to incorpo rate into the ranks of the nutter divinities the new •nds from abroad, which were not known to the llotneric poem:. Tn it theosophie and •os niogonic speculation; are combined with ancient bymns and act-omits of cults, •uder the epic form I lesiod gives a histt ry of the creation and of the generation: of the gods; the close of the poem contains n list of the daughters of Zeus, who bore sons to mortals. We have to regret tile hiss of the Cato/or/tie of Women Ford icryoti, which gave a list of the mortal women who had become the mothers of heroes, and some (le count of these heroes' exploits. The poem was di vided live books. of which probably the last two bore the special title the fact that each division began with f) an, 'or such a woman.' The extant Shield of Hercule R ('Acrirls in viirses its introdue taou from the fourth hook of the preceding work. The greater part of the poem is ocelipied with an account of the shield of Hereules, which is an inferior imitation of the deseriptitin of shield in the Iliad, There were a num ber of Ile:iodic poems in antiquity: of these only scanty fragments are left. The Br n anil //rgind 'A,t:,v) usually printed with llesicars works is a produel of the time of Iladrian.
llcsiod exhibits none of the splendid imagina tion and vivid power of Bonier; his verses are filled with sayings and homely precept:: they offer a calendar and a mythology for the com mon people. Bid the form is the same as that of the Homeric poems and the dialect on the whole shows little divergetwe. liesiod •as. however, highly prized for his moral precepts. and the poems played an important part in Greek edu cation. Their influence, especially that of the trorkR and Daps., was not confined to Birotia and Loeris. where a school developed, but txtended to Tonia, and can be seen in the develop ment of iambic poetry. The poems formed the ,:tihjeet of learned continent from the Alexandrian Age to the Byzantine period. The best editions are by Lennep (Amsterdam. 1943): (Berlin. I I19) Elleh (Berlin. 1s711: G'dtline• Vlach (Leipzig. : TIzaeh (T.eipzio.. 1990 ; Sittl I \thenz. 1R9oi. There are translations of the WorkR and nays by Chapman (T.ondon, of the entire poems by Elton (2(1 ed., London, 1932). and by Banks (London, 1R92).
Consult also: Fick, Iltsiod's (htlichle gen, 1s87) Grote's Gret rt.., vols. i. and ii. passim (5111 ed., London. 'ISMS); and the histories of Greek literature.