• Title: The Poems of Hesiod
• Author: Hesiod/Powell
• Genre/Subject: Epic verse
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Start date: 12/28/23
• Finish date: 1/8/24

Review:

First book done for 2024 and this was a great one to ring in the new year with. I’ve read Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Lucretius but Hesiod for one reason or another had escaped. It was better to come upon this late as it it uses a lot of references to the other works. Having read them made it a lot easier to understand.

Hesiod as we call it, is really three distinct poems written (mostly) by the same author: Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles. Like with any ancient literature there are endless scholarly debates about the exact provenance of the poems. The poems and translation presented in this volume are generally considered to be the canonical version.

Theogony is esseentially the mythologies and origin stories of the cosmos and the Greek world of the classical age, whereas Works and Days is esesntially a how-to guide about making a successful go of lving and working in said classical age. The Shield of Herakles is more myth and history but with an extended description of the fabulously decorated shield that Hercules bore throughout his legendary labors.

I liked this, very much. Reading Hesiod gave me a unique insight into the quotidian concerns of the average Greek citizen in the age of antiquity. Here is when it is best to plant grains, and here is the best month to shear your sheep, things like that. Since so much of history and epic verse concerns the events of gods and heroes it is extraordinarily refreshing to read about the daily concerns of the average man in the agora.

The translation is by all peer reviewed accounts an excellent and modern one. I certainly found it to be easy to read and yet still retaining the feel of epic verse. Rosy-fingered dawn painting the sky and all that.

I highly recommend this translation and I firmly believe Hesiod should be on everyone’s reading list.