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Hesiod / Homeric Hymns / Epic Cycle / Homerica
Texts in Greek with English translations on facing pages.
Contains the extant works of Hesiod, along with practically all that remains of the post-Homeric & pre-academic epic poetry:
Preface
Hesiod
The Homeric Hymns
The Epigrams of Homer
The Epic Cycle
Homerica: The expedition of Amphiaraüs. The taking of Oechalia. The Procasi. The Margites. The Cercopes. The battle of the frogs & mice
The Contest of Homer & Hesiod
Index
Contains the extant works of Hesiod, along with practically all that remains of the post-Homeric & pre-academic epic poetry:
Preface
Hesiod
The Homeric Hymns
The Epigrams of Homer
The Epic Cycle
Homerica: The expedition of Amphiaraüs. The taking of Oechalia. The Procasi. The Margites. The Cercopes. The battle of the frogs & mice
The Contest of Homer & Hesiod
Index
657 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 501
76 people are currently reading
460 people want to read
About the author
Hesiod
260Ìýbooks387ÌýfollowersHesiod (Greek: Ησίοδος) was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.
Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety. Among these are Theogony, which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus's rise to power, and Works and Days, a poem that describes the five Ages of Man, offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such as Pandora's box.
Hesiod is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy, cosmology, and ancient time-keeping.
Several of Hesiod's works have survived in their entirety. Among these are Theogony, which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus's rise to power, and Works and Days, a poem that describes the five Ages of Man, offers advice and wisdom, and includes myths such as Pandora's box.
Hesiod is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy, cosmology, and ancient time-keeping.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 4, 2015
An interesting compilation of classic Greek poetry, readable mostly for historic interest. Two long works--"Theogony" and "Works and Days" anchor the collection.
"Theogony" is a near-Biblical description of the origins and lineages of the gods. It provides nice insight into the classical Greek view of the cosmos, but it mostly seems like a reference material.
"Works and Days" is a compilation of advice for everyday life, covering everything from beekeeping to how to treat your slaves. I almost preferred this for its ground-level look into Greek society of the period.
There are lots of other fragmentary bits in here, including toasts to the gods and scraps of lost poetry. I enjoyed reading about the other Trojan War epics created to fill the gaps in the Iliad and the Odyssey; I didn't realize there were so many works around the same subject. I guess the impulse to fill in the blanks--and cash in--is universal.
The collection ends with the short "Battle of Frog and Mice," a funny, gory spoof on war in miniature. If nothing else, that one might be worth checking out. Ultimately, I didn't feel the work was essential (I prefer my old Edith Hamilton mythology or any of the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid), but it does offer a window into the era of its creation.
Quotes
Ouch for the Ladies
"For from her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth. And as in thatched hives bees feed the drones whose nature is to do mischief--by day and throughout the day until the sun goes down the bees are busy and lay the white combs, while the drones stay at home in the covered skeps and and reap the toil of others into their own bellies--even so Zeus who thunders on high made women to be an evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil."
A Nuanced Prayer to Ares
"Shed down a kindly ray from above upon my life, and strength of war, that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice from my head and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul. Restrain also the keen fury of my heart which provokes me to tread the ways of blood-curdling strife. Rather, o blessed one, give you me boldness to abide within the harmless laws of peace, avoiding strife and hatred and the violent fiends of death."
"Theogony" is a near-Biblical description of the origins and lineages of the gods. It provides nice insight into the classical Greek view of the cosmos, but it mostly seems like a reference material.
"Works and Days" is a compilation of advice for everyday life, covering everything from beekeeping to how to treat your slaves. I almost preferred this for its ground-level look into Greek society of the period.
There are lots of other fragmentary bits in here, including toasts to the gods and scraps of lost poetry. I enjoyed reading about the other Trojan War epics created to fill the gaps in the Iliad and the Odyssey; I didn't realize there were so many works around the same subject. I guess the impulse to fill in the blanks--and cash in--is universal.
The collection ends with the short "Battle of Frog and Mice," a funny, gory spoof on war in miniature. If nothing else, that one might be worth checking out. Ultimately, I didn't feel the work was essential (I prefer my old Edith Hamilton mythology or any of the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid), but it does offer a window into the era of its creation.
Quotes
Ouch for the Ladies
"For from her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth. And as in thatched hives bees feed the drones whose nature is to do mischief--by day and throughout the day until the sun goes down the bees are busy and lay the white combs, while the drones stay at home in the covered skeps and and reap the toil of others into their own bellies--even so Zeus who thunders on high made women to be an evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil."
A Nuanced Prayer to Ares
"Shed down a kindly ray from above upon my life, and strength of war, that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice from my head and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul. Restrain also the keen fury of my heart which provokes me to tread the ways of blood-curdling strife. Rather, o blessed one, give you me boldness to abide within the harmless laws of peace, avoiding strife and hatred and the violent fiends of death."
February 23, 2022
4🌟
How do you rate an ancient classic? Yes there's a lot of misogynistic bs but that's one of the things that make it so interesting. Invaluable for the origins of the Pandora myth and insights into everyday life, you can't beat a bit of Hesiod.
How do you rate an ancient classic? Yes there's a lot of misogynistic bs but that's one of the things that make it so interesting. Invaluable for the origins of the Pandora myth and insights into everyday life, you can't beat a bit of Hesiod.
June 19, 2023
This volume of the Loeb Library contains the Greek texts and English translations by H.G. Evelyn-White of all the extant works attributed to Hesiod, including fragments and testimonia; the Homeric hymns, and other works attributed to Homer other than the Iliad and Odyssey; the "Contest of Homer and Hesiod"; and a selection of fragments from the Epic Cycle. Essentially the version from 1914, revised in 1919 and with a new appendix added by D.L. Page in 1935, this is the "old" Loeb version; in the "new" twenty-first century Loeb, which I haven't seen yet, the material in this volume together with much new material (including newly discovered papyri) is divided among four volumes: two volumes of Hesiod with translations by Glenn Most, one volume containing the Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, and Lives of Homer and one with all that remains of the Epic Cycle, both translated by M.L. West. (I may buy at least the much more complete Epic Cycle book at some point, but since I'm not a specialist I probably will make do with this one that I bought in college for the other things.) The translations in this older volume are very literal , which was useful to me since it has been probably a decade since I read any long works in Greek and I was very rusty on vocabulary. Unfortunatly, like many of the "old" Loeb translators, Evelyn-White has a predeliction for obscure and archaic words like "glebes", "chine", "withes" and "coombes"; he may be doing this deliberately to suggest the "feel" that the epic diction might have had for "classical" Greeks, but it is distracting, and I think any reader who had to rely on the translation would find it very annoying. Verily, I think I would not recommend many of the "old" Loeb translations to anyone who doesn't need the Greek texts. (The "new" Loeb editions are more contemporary in their translations, which is one reason the older volumes are being updated � apart from the obvious economic motivation as they are beginning to fall out of copyright.) There is also a brief but very good introduction (for the time) by Evelyn-White, although he didn't convince me of the unity of the Works and Days.
Hesiod
With regard to Hesiod, Evelyn-White argues that there was a real, mid-ninth-century poet named Hesiod and that he was the author of the Works and Days, the other poems attributed to him being later works by other now anonymous poets imitating his style or subject matter. This is of course controversial and many scholars today apparently date the Theogeny earlier than the Works and Days and place both Homer (if he can be dated at all, given the nature of oral composition) and Hesiod in the eighth century. Since my college courses in Greek literature were fifty years back, I am not in a position to judge this. The poems are written in the "epic" dialect and dactylic hexameter meter of Homer's epics.
If the Works and Days is in fact as Evelyn-White claims the only poem which is actually by Hesiod, it is hard to understand why he was ever coupled with Homer, apart from chronology. This work has none of the literary merit of Homer's two epics. It is addressed to Hesiod's brother Perses, with whom he has had a quarrel about an inheritance (some things haven't changed in millennia). Hesiod, who considers himself the aggrieved party, lectures Perses on how he ought to behave. The first few pages of the book read like a rather poorly constructed homily, full of platitudes � if you are lazy and covet other peoples property, the gods will punish you, but if you work hard you will become rich � if the gods wish it. In other words, you need a better work ethic. This section is relieved by examples from mythology (including the famous description of the five ages, the golden age, the silver age, the age of bronze, the age of heroes and the present age, with a prophecy of the "last times" that could have come out of a mediaeval homily), which are the only interesting part of the book except to specialist historians of agricultural techniques. The relevance of the myths to the argument of the sermon is not always apparent. The book then turns to a discussion of agriculture, and later sea trade, giving much practical advice, but still harping on hard work and the work ethic. If the frame story is true (Evelyn-White thinks it is, while many other scholars then and now consider it a fictional excuse for the moralizing) I think Perses would simply find it terribly annoying. The poem then falls apart completely into one or two sentence "gnomic" utterances in completely miscellaneous order, mixing practical banalities with superstition: Avoid the anger of the gods. Do not treat a friend equally with a brother, but if you do, do not offend him first, but if he offends you, pay him back double. Do not blame a man for being poor. Do not be churlish at a common dinner. Do not offer libations to Zeus after dawn without washing your hands first. Do not pee standing up facing the sun. Do not have sex after returning from a burial. Do not cross a river with unwashed hands. Do not cut your fingernails at a religious ceremony. And so on and so forth. If this weren't boring enough, he then finishes with several pages about what is lucky or unlucky to do on various days of the month.
This editon follows the Works and Days with five short testimonia, some of which contain actual fragments, of a work called the Astronomy, which seems to have been a collection of myths explaining the constellations (although perhaps Hesiod or whoever wrote it linked them to "works and days", and the later writers who cited him simply extracted the mythical passages.) In any case the testimonia do not seem entirely consistent. Then come a few fragments and testimonia from other lost works, the Precepts of Chiron, the Great Works, and the Idaean Dactyls, about which we cannot form any real idea, but were probably similar in subject matter to the Works and Days. All these are only a few pages.
The longest surviving poem attributed to Hesiod, and by far the most important, is the Theogeny, a genealogy of the gods and mythical prehistory of the world, with some of the mythology attached to the various gods. This again is important as a systematic survey of Greek mythology before it was turned into literature by the later poets and dramatists, rather than as itself a literary work; none of the works here show Hesiod as much of a poet, frankly, even making allowance for the likelihood that much spurious material has been interpolated, as the later Greek critics recognized. Perhaps to be generous we can blame it on the interpolators, but the account of the gods is not entirely consistent; for example the three Fates, Atropos, Lachesis and Klotho, are described first as the offspring of Night in the pre-Olympian era, and later as the daughters of Zeus and Themis.
This is followed by about a hundred short fragments and testimonia which Evelyn-White considers are probably from either the Catalogue of Women or the Eoiai, assuming these were separate works.
Then he prints the Shield of Heracles, the third complete poem (although I think he is correct in considering that it is actually just a long fragment of the Eoiai rather than a separate work.) This is a really poorly constructed poem, with many obvious interpolations. It begins with the story of Amphitryon and Alcmene and the birth of Heracles and Iphicles, then shifts abruptly to preparations for a single combat between Heracles and Cycnus (and his father, the god Ares.) The preparations are interrupted by a long description of Heracles' shield, which gives the work its later title, and which is a poor imitation of Homer's description of the shield of Achilles. The poem then resumes the preparations and describes the battle, with many long-winded similes imitated from Homer which add nothing to the poem. This is followed by more fragments and testimonia from other lost works (The Great Eoiai, Melampodia, Aigimius,etc.)
The Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of 33 poems about various divinities, which were sometimes attributed in antiquity to Homer, although many ancient critics disputed the attribution. They are not Homeric and they are not really hymns in any liturgical sense. The modern consensus is that they were written by multiple authors and were all later than either Homer or Hesiod, although at least the major poems are still among the oldest surviving Greek literature. The exact dates are controversial. Some of the shorter poems may have been added later, even very much later; some of them are just extracts of the longer poems (for instance the second hymn to Hermes is just the beginning and ending lines of the long hymn) which many scholars believe were intended as invocations to introduce recitations of other poems. The first two hymns were rediscovered rather later than the others and are only found in a single manuscript.
The first hymn is a short fragment invoking Dionysus.
The second hymn, to Demeter, is one of the oldest and undoubtedly the best poem of the collection; it is often published as a separate book. It tells the story of the abduction of Persephone by Hades and the sorrows of Demeter in a very stiking way and is not unworthy to be described as "Homeric".
Evelyn-White divides the third hymn, to Apollo, into two parts, one of which he calls a hymn to Delian Apollo and the other a hymn to Pythian (i.e. Delphic) Apollo. Neither part is particularly good. The first part tells the story of the birth of Apollo at Delos, and the second part deals with the founding of his oracle at Delphi. It begins with him searching for a site to build his oracle, and the way the various personified places talk him out of choosing them, until he comes to the island where the oracle was in fact built. It then describes in a few lines, more or less in passing, the killing of the serpent who brought up Typhoeus, which one would have expected to be the central event of the hymn. While elsewhere (including the Theogeny) Typhoeus is a tremendous elemental force of nature born from the Earth (obviously related to the Babylonian Tiamat) whom Zeus barely defeats shortly after his birth in a titanic struggle, and who if he had had more time to mature would have easily made himself the ruler of the gods, in this hymn he is a son of Hera conceived in a fit of pique against Zeus who is merely a nuisance to the mortals in the immediate neighborhood. The author then gives a bizarre etymology of the place name Pythos, deriving it from the verb meaning "to rot" because Apollo left the serpent to rot in the sun, which reminded me of a line in one of the Addams family movies. Then the majority of the hymn is an account of how Apollo, taking the form of a dolphin (for no apparent reason), hijacks a merchant ship from Crete and forces the sailors to become his priests. Much of the "story" is just a long list of places they sail by to get to his island.
The fourth hymn, to Hermes, is the longest, and is also good. It is a humorous account of the new-born Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo and what resulted. The author, like the translator, has a penchant for unusual vocabulary which made this the most difficult of the hymns for me to read. The fifth hymn, to Aphrodite, is about her affair with the Trojan Anchises and the conception of their son Aeneas, later to be made famous by Vergil. The sixth hymn to Dionysus, though short (two pages) is a well-told episode about pirates who try to kidnap the god and are turned into dolphins.
The remainder of the hymns are short, between a few lines to a couple of pages.
The poems of the Epic Cycle
The next section contains a selection of fragments and testimonia from the lost poems of the so-called Epic Cycle. The longest testimonia are from a collection of summaries by later writer named Proclus (not the philosopher and mathematican of that name). The Epic Cycle was a group of epic poems telling the stories of the Theban Cycle (Oedipus, his sons, and the epigonoi) and the parts of the Trojan Cycle which were not included in the two longer epics of Homer. They were naturally sometimes attributed to Homer, but more often to other later poets about whom we know nothing. The attributions were not made with much confidence, and the testimonia tend to say things like this (from Athenaeus, in Evelyn-White's translation): "the author of the Cypria, whether Hegesias or Stasinus . . . whoever he was, writes . . ." In the form in which they were ultimately written down and known to the later Greeks, they are organized around the Iliad and the Odyssey as prequels, sequels, and "interquels" if there is such a word, but modern scholars have suggested that they selected their material from the same larger corpus of oral poetry about the Trojan War as the Homeric epics themselves. These fragments provide us with a tantalizing glimpse of the details and variations of myths which we all think we are familiar with from reading Greek tragedy and later writers.
The minor poems attributed to Homer and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod
The volume is rounded out with a short collection of epigrams attributed to Homer, a mock epic called the Batrachomyomachia (Battle of Frogs and Mice), and a short account of what was believed about the two poets called the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The Batrachomyomachia is a dactylic hexameter poem which describes a war between mice and frogs in the Homeric style with heroic formulas and epithets; the Suda attributes it to one Pigres of Halicarnassus, along with the Margites, a lost poem of apparently the same humorous type (which may be the source of the famous quotation about the fox and the hedgehog.) The Contest in the form we have it comes from the second century CE, but is undoubtedly put together from much earlier writings. The book ends with an appendix of fragments first published while it was in press, and a second appendix by Page with the fragments discovered or published between 1919 and 1935.
Hesiod
With regard to Hesiod, Evelyn-White argues that there was a real, mid-ninth-century poet named Hesiod and that he was the author of the Works and Days, the other poems attributed to him being later works by other now anonymous poets imitating his style or subject matter. This is of course controversial and many scholars today apparently date the Theogeny earlier than the Works and Days and place both Homer (if he can be dated at all, given the nature of oral composition) and Hesiod in the eighth century. Since my college courses in Greek literature were fifty years back, I am not in a position to judge this. The poems are written in the "epic" dialect and dactylic hexameter meter of Homer's epics.
If the Works and Days is in fact as Evelyn-White claims the only poem which is actually by Hesiod, it is hard to understand why he was ever coupled with Homer, apart from chronology. This work has none of the literary merit of Homer's two epics. It is addressed to Hesiod's brother Perses, with whom he has had a quarrel about an inheritance (some things haven't changed in millennia). Hesiod, who considers himself the aggrieved party, lectures Perses on how he ought to behave. The first few pages of the book read like a rather poorly constructed homily, full of platitudes � if you are lazy and covet other peoples property, the gods will punish you, but if you work hard you will become rich � if the gods wish it. In other words, you need a better work ethic. This section is relieved by examples from mythology (including the famous description of the five ages, the golden age, the silver age, the age of bronze, the age of heroes and the present age, with a prophecy of the "last times" that could have come out of a mediaeval homily), which are the only interesting part of the book except to specialist historians of agricultural techniques. The relevance of the myths to the argument of the sermon is not always apparent. The book then turns to a discussion of agriculture, and later sea trade, giving much practical advice, but still harping on hard work and the work ethic. If the frame story is true (Evelyn-White thinks it is, while many other scholars then and now consider it a fictional excuse for the moralizing) I think Perses would simply find it terribly annoying. The poem then falls apart completely into one or two sentence "gnomic" utterances in completely miscellaneous order, mixing practical banalities with superstition: Avoid the anger of the gods. Do not treat a friend equally with a brother, but if you do, do not offend him first, but if he offends you, pay him back double. Do not blame a man for being poor. Do not be churlish at a common dinner. Do not offer libations to Zeus after dawn without washing your hands first. Do not pee standing up facing the sun. Do not have sex after returning from a burial. Do not cross a river with unwashed hands. Do not cut your fingernails at a religious ceremony. And so on and so forth. If this weren't boring enough, he then finishes with several pages about what is lucky or unlucky to do on various days of the month.
This editon follows the Works and Days with five short testimonia, some of which contain actual fragments, of a work called the Astronomy, which seems to have been a collection of myths explaining the constellations (although perhaps Hesiod or whoever wrote it linked them to "works and days", and the later writers who cited him simply extracted the mythical passages.) In any case the testimonia do not seem entirely consistent. Then come a few fragments and testimonia from other lost works, the Precepts of Chiron, the Great Works, and the Idaean Dactyls, about which we cannot form any real idea, but were probably similar in subject matter to the Works and Days. All these are only a few pages.
The longest surviving poem attributed to Hesiod, and by far the most important, is the Theogeny, a genealogy of the gods and mythical prehistory of the world, with some of the mythology attached to the various gods. This again is important as a systematic survey of Greek mythology before it was turned into literature by the later poets and dramatists, rather than as itself a literary work; none of the works here show Hesiod as much of a poet, frankly, even making allowance for the likelihood that much spurious material has been interpolated, as the later Greek critics recognized. Perhaps to be generous we can blame it on the interpolators, but the account of the gods is not entirely consistent; for example the three Fates, Atropos, Lachesis and Klotho, are described first as the offspring of Night in the pre-Olympian era, and later as the daughters of Zeus and Themis.
This is followed by about a hundred short fragments and testimonia which Evelyn-White considers are probably from either the Catalogue of Women or the Eoiai, assuming these were separate works.
Then he prints the Shield of Heracles, the third complete poem (although I think he is correct in considering that it is actually just a long fragment of the Eoiai rather than a separate work.) This is a really poorly constructed poem, with many obvious interpolations. It begins with the story of Amphitryon and Alcmene and the birth of Heracles and Iphicles, then shifts abruptly to preparations for a single combat between Heracles and Cycnus (and his father, the god Ares.) The preparations are interrupted by a long description of Heracles' shield, which gives the work its later title, and which is a poor imitation of Homer's description of the shield of Achilles. The poem then resumes the preparations and describes the battle, with many long-winded similes imitated from Homer which add nothing to the poem. This is followed by more fragments and testimonia from other lost works (The Great Eoiai, Melampodia, Aigimius,etc.)
The Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of 33 poems about various divinities, which were sometimes attributed in antiquity to Homer, although many ancient critics disputed the attribution. They are not Homeric and they are not really hymns in any liturgical sense. The modern consensus is that they were written by multiple authors and were all later than either Homer or Hesiod, although at least the major poems are still among the oldest surviving Greek literature. The exact dates are controversial. Some of the shorter poems may have been added later, even very much later; some of them are just extracts of the longer poems (for instance the second hymn to Hermes is just the beginning and ending lines of the long hymn) which many scholars believe were intended as invocations to introduce recitations of other poems. The first two hymns were rediscovered rather later than the others and are only found in a single manuscript.
The first hymn is a short fragment invoking Dionysus.
The second hymn, to Demeter, is one of the oldest and undoubtedly the best poem of the collection; it is often published as a separate book. It tells the story of the abduction of Persephone by Hades and the sorrows of Demeter in a very stiking way and is not unworthy to be described as "Homeric".
Evelyn-White divides the third hymn, to Apollo, into two parts, one of which he calls a hymn to Delian Apollo and the other a hymn to Pythian (i.e. Delphic) Apollo. Neither part is particularly good. The first part tells the story of the birth of Apollo at Delos, and the second part deals with the founding of his oracle at Delphi. It begins with him searching for a site to build his oracle, and the way the various personified places talk him out of choosing them, until he comes to the island where the oracle was in fact built. It then describes in a few lines, more or less in passing, the killing of the serpent who brought up Typhoeus, which one would have expected to be the central event of the hymn. While elsewhere (including the Theogeny) Typhoeus is a tremendous elemental force of nature born from the Earth (obviously related to the Babylonian Tiamat) whom Zeus barely defeats shortly after his birth in a titanic struggle, and who if he had had more time to mature would have easily made himself the ruler of the gods, in this hymn he is a son of Hera conceived in a fit of pique against Zeus who is merely a nuisance to the mortals in the immediate neighborhood. The author then gives a bizarre etymology of the place name Pythos, deriving it from the verb meaning "to rot" because Apollo left the serpent to rot in the sun, which reminded me of a line in one of the Addams family movies. Then the majority of the hymn is an account of how Apollo, taking the form of a dolphin (for no apparent reason), hijacks a merchant ship from Crete and forces the sailors to become his priests. Much of the "story" is just a long list of places they sail by to get to his island.
The fourth hymn, to Hermes, is the longest, and is also good. It is a humorous account of the new-born Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo and what resulted. The author, like the translator, has a penchant for unusual vocabulary which made this the most difficult of the hymns for me to read. The fifth hymn, to Aphrodite, is about her affair with the Trojan Anchises and the conception of their son Aeneas, later to be made famous by Vergil. The sixth hymn to Dionysus, though short (two pages) is a well-told episode about pirates who try to kidnap the god and are turned into dolphins.
The remainder of the hymns are short, between a few lines to a couple of pages.
The poems of the Epic Cycle
The next section contains a selection of fragments and testimonia from the lost poems of the so-called Epic Cycle. The longest testimonia are from a collection of summaries by later writer named Proclus (not the philosopher and mathematican of that name). The Epic Cycle was a group of epic poems telling the stories of the Theban Cycle (Oedipus, his sons, and the epigonoi) and the parts of the Trojan Cycle which were not included in the two longer epics of Homer. They were naturally sometimes attributed to Homer, but more often to other later poets about whom we know nothing. The attributions were not made with much confidence, and the testimonia tend to say things like this (from Athenaeus, in Evelyn-White's translation): "the author of the Cypria, whether Hegesias or Stasinus . . . whoever he was, writes . . ." In the form in which they were ultimately written down and known to the later Greeks, they are organized around the Iliad and the Odyssey as prequels, sequels, and "interquels" if there is such a word, but modern scholars have suggested that they selected their material from the same larger corpus of oral poetry about the Trojan War as the Homeric epics themselves. These fragments provide us with a tantalizing glimpse of the details and variations of myths which we all think we are familiar with from reading Greek tragedy and later writers.
The minor poems attributed to Homer and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod
The volume is rounded out with a short collection of epigrams attributed to Homer, a mock epic called the Batrachomyomachia (Battle of Frogs and Mice), and a short account of what was believed about the two poets called the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The Batrachomyomachia is a dactylic hexameter poem which describes a war between mice and frogs in the Homeric style with heroic formulas and epithets; the Suda attributes it to one Pigres of Halicarnassus, along with the Margites, a lost poem of apparently the same humorous type (which may be the source of the famous quotation about the fox and the hedgehog.) The Contest in the form we have it comes from the second century CE, but is undoubtedly put together from much earlier writings. The book ends with an appendix of fragments first published while it was in press, and a second appendix by Page with the fragments discovered or published between 1919 and 1935.
July 26, 2019
Thank goodness a passage of Plutarch is rescued in this book, a passage which mentions and deciphers Hesiod’s veiled symbolic chronological figures showing it extends into the millions of years.
Using this one can then flesh out the more detailed timing of his dynasties� year-periods within the houses of each of his being phases (gigantomachy, titanomachy etc). He places each of their sections within his mentioned 9 1/2 turning to 10 divine ages of Zeus, or 10 Numakos periods.
All of his sacred mythologium descent cycles of beings in order, from the gods to us, he properly places upon and within this cycle or scale, an equally geologic scale of the earth’s ages in revelation - as he shows in this work.
For the latter he mentions here in it speaking of the river of fire, Styx, recreating all at the end of each 10 divine ages as it flows out from the North coming from Eilythia - the Norse’s Elivagar who retain the same record also of such cycle of destruction coming out from such land in the North.
See modern geology on the phases of Arctida repeating out from Ellesmere Orogeny.
It just may be then that all of the great ages of deep history are revealed in this work...if only you know how to read it; a marvelous work.
Using this one can then flesh out the more detailed timing of his dynasties� year-periods within the houses of each of his being phases (gigantomachy, titanomachy etc). He places each of their sections within his mentioned 9 1/2 turning to 10 divine ages of Zeus, or 10 Numakos periods.
All of his sacred mythologium descent cycles of beings in order, from the gods to us, he properly places upon and within this cycle or scale, an equally geologic scale of the earth’s ages in revelation - as he shows in this work.
For the latter he mentions here in it speaking of the river of fire, Styx, recreating all at the end of each 10 divine ages as it flows out from the North coming from Eilythia - the Norse’s Elivagar who retain the same record also of such cycle of destruction coming out from such land in the North.
See modern geology on the phases of Arctida repeating out from Ellesmere Orogeny.
It just may be then that all of the great ages of deep history are revealed in this work...if only you know how to read it; a marvelous work.
December 19, 2006
This is my favorite single volume of the bilingual Loeb series. It has all of Hesiod, the fragments of the Epic Cycle, and the Margites and the satirical "Battle of Frogs and Mice". Useful index is particularly helpful with Hesiod -- all those names!
September 10, 2014
This older translation contains works attributed to Homer and Hesiod, the Homeric pieces all being later than the Iliad and Odyssey. I'd already read some, particularly the Hesiod, in other versiona and therefore only read the texts not read previously.
December 25, 2023
I went back to this because of reading Natalie Haynes' Pandora's Jar. She references Hesiod and I knew I had a copy that I had never (or perhaps too long ago had) read. It's pertinent to Pandora, Helen, and Medea especially.
The edition, originally published in 1914 and updated regularly until 1964, is larded with rather old-fashioned English. Also, because they couldn't be arsed to stick them in the Catalogues of Women earlier in the text, fragments were just tacked on as an appendix. And there's even a further appendix to that appendix. I mean, really.
And it's all in there, just like Natalie Haynes said:
Pandora described as "an evil thing for men as the price of fire."
The swearing of oaths to protect the eventual winner of the Marry Helen Later of Troy contest.
Creon's relatives killing Medea's children and putting it about that she'd done it. Her killing them herself to revenge herself on Jason was an invention of Euripides that now everyone knows.
Other interesting bits are Phoebus' mom, Leto, providing the land Delos with a scam to fleece pilgrims to a Phoebus Apollo shrine, because, she tells it (him? her?) "you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly." This way those dwelling on Delos will be fed "from the hands of strangers." Whatta scam! I just bet that was Leto's idea - NOT!
There's a Homeric hymn about the mother of Hermes being visited regularly by Zeus while Hera slept "and neither deathless god nor mortal man knew it." Until >now anyway, blabbermouth.
And the contest between Hesiod and Homer section, which seems to inform Aristophanes in his slagging off contest between Euripides and Aeschylus in "The Frogs," which is funnier than the former and made Diet Pepsi come out my nose when I read it in the 90s. Right then I wanted to know if it was just as funny in Greek and cast about for a Greek class for ages until one got enough students to start.
The edition, originally published in 1914 and updated regularly until 1964, is larded with rather old-fashioned English. Also, because they couldn't be arsed to stick them in the Catalogues of Women earlier in the text, fragments were just tacked on as an appendix. And there's even a further appendix to that appendix. I mean, really.
And it's all in there, just like Natalie Haynes said:
Pandora described as "an evil thing for men as the price of fire."
The swearing of oaths to protect the eventual winner of the Marry Helen Later of Troy contest.
Creon's relatives killing Medea's children and putting it about that she'd done it. Her killing them herself to revenge herself on Jason was an invention of Euripides that now everyone knows.
Other interesting bits are Phoebus' mom, Leto, providing the land Delos with a scam to fleece pilgrims to a Phoebus Apollo shrine, because, she tells it (him? her?) "you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly." This way those dwelling on Delos will be fed "from the hands of strangers." Whatta scam! I just bet that was Leto's idea - NOT!
There's a Homeric hymn about the mother of Hermes being visited regularly by Zeus while Hera slept "and neither deathless god nor mortal man knew it." Until >now anyway, blabbermouth.
And the contest between Hesiod and Homer section, which seems to inform Aristophanes in his slagging off contest between Euripides and Aeschylus in "The Frogs," which is funnier than the former and made Diet Pepsi come out my nose when I read it in the 90s. Right then I wanted to know if it was just as funny in Greek and cast about for a Greek class for ages until one got enough students to start.
Read
December 26, 2019These pieces, many of them fragmentary, offer fascinating glimpses into ancient Greek life and religion/belief. Despite the way the "Contest of Homer and Hesiod" turns out, Hesiod's works (or the others here that have traditionally been attributed to Homer) aren't as beautifully written or impressive as the Iliad or Odyssey, but worth checking out for those who love Homer and/or Greek mythology, in the same way that a fan of an epic movie will enjoy all of the "bonus features" on the DVD.
(No rating: religious text)
(No rating: religious text)
February 15, 2019
Enjoyable mostly for Hesiod's Works and Day, his Theogeny, and several of the Homeric Hymns. The majority of the fragments, or references, provide little enjoyment themselves, but are primarily for the scholar. Would not mind, though, having a nice old, musty, tangible copy of these works for the shelf.
January 16, 2025
My two favorite stories were the Hymn to Hermes and the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. The former is the story of Trickster's birth and baby adventures stealing Apollo's long-horn cows. The latter is an animal story, like so many more anamistic cultures have, but an epic and brutally told one that mirrors the Iliad.
March 29, 2022
I really liked this book, it's old (been around a long time) but if you keep that in mind while reading the book it really is engaging. I recommend reading this if you are interested in philosophy or any history of philosophy. Great fun to read.
June 30, 2014
One of my favorite books. Oh, I know what you're saying, but I'm not out to fool anyone. Hesiod was a contemporary of Homer. If you want to read about home problems that we still encounter today, or how to make wine the ancient way (Don't! I tried. It was absolutely horrible. That might be why the Ancient Greeks always watered down their wine.) or when to plant or the myths of the gods, read this book. Simply written and very engaging, but then, I like to read accounts of the earliest civilized men.
September 13, 2014
Hesiod was a Greek epic poet, some say a contemporary of Homer, some say he came afterwards. His two biggest works were "Days and Works" and "Theogony."
Days and Works takes the form of a missive to Hesiod's sluggard brother, advising him of the best times to plant and proverbs to lead a better life.
Theogony is essentially a family tree of the gods.
The best piece is a satire of the Illiad entitled The Battle of the Mice and Frogs.
Another interesting work is the alleged contest between Hesiod and Homer.
Fragments of reputed works are also included.
Days and Works takes the form of a missive to Hesiod's sluggard brother, advising him of the best times to plant and proverbs to lead a better life.
Theogony is essentially a family tree of the gods.
The best piece is a satire of the Illiad entitled The Battle of the Mice and Frogs.
Another interesting work is the alleged contest between Hesiod and Homer.
Fragments of reputed works are also included.
July 28, 2007
Just the 'Theogony'
August 13, 2007
I've been told that this Loeb is the best bargain for Greek and Latin literature out there, containing both Hesiod and The Homeric Hymns.
December 2, 2007
Interesting, but an older translation.
October 19, 2012
Read for Coursera Greek & Roman Mythology
Er, yeah. The Greek version of Deuteronomy, I guess. Looking forward to Prof Struck's dissection of it, though!
Er, yeah. The Greek version of Deuteronomy, I guess. Looking forward to Prof Struck's dissection of it, though!
June 8, 2013
Worth reading once, but quickly.
January 14, 2019
2019 Jan. Reading material in THEOGONY on Hades (ll. 617-819).
2016 Aug. Reading only the Introduction and Theogony.
2016 Aug. Reading only the Introduction and Theogony.
Read
May 7, 2018While I did enjoy reading this, I felt it was more academic. I have read Works and Days, Theogony, and The Shield of Heracles, so I just briefly skimmed through those. I also felt that there was commentary included with the works, and sometimes I didn't know if I was reading commentary about the works or the actual works themselves. I did enjoy reading the Homeric Hymns the most.
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