Author: HESIOD
Biography:
HESIOD (c. 775-660 BCE: Grafton)
One of the earliest Greek poets and a key source for Greek mythology, Hesiod was a native of Boeotia. In the two epic works attributed to him, the Theogony and Works and Days, he represents himself as the son of a former seafaring man who had settled in Boeotia. He himself, tending sheep on Mount Helicon, had been called on by the Muses to tell stories of the gods and won a trophy for a song at a funeral contest. Other works now believed to have been wrongly attributed to him are a short narrative poem, the Shield, about a fight between Heracles and Cycnus and the Catalogue of Women, a continuation of the Theogony. Fragments survive of a few other works believed to have been by him. His translator in this period, Charles Abraham Elton, q.v., relates in his preface some of the legends associated with the death of Hesiod, but all are far-fetched and no longer credited, if ever they had been. (A. Grafton et al., The Classical Tradition [2010]; OCD 25 Apr. 2025) HJ
Other Names:
- Hesiod the Ascraean