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Home / People / Hesiod

Historical person

Hesiod

born 777 BCE

Hesiod was an early Greek poet associated with Boeotia. The Theogony organises divine genealogy, while Works and Days treats labour, justice, farming and social conflict in the world of small landholders.

Hesiod was born in Cyme and died in Ascra. Hesiod’s Works and Days combines farming advice, myth and moral instruction, while the Theogony organises the genealogies of the Greek gods; together the poems became fundamental sources for later Greek ideas about divine order and human labour.

The linked Complete Works of Hesiod presents Hesiod through the poetry attributed to him rather than through a later fictional portrayal. The Theogony orders the generations and conflicts of the Greek gods, while Works and Days joins myth to advice about labour, justice, farming and household survival. Read together, the poems reveal why Hesiod matters historically: they preserve an archaic Greek voice in which divine order, practical work and moral argument occupy the same imaginative world.

Periods

Periods linked to Hesiod

Archaic Greecec. 800–480 BCE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Hesiod (1 series)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World in Order

by various authors 32 books 4.6(13,212)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…

All books in this series