The Ages of Man are the historical stages of human existence according to Greek mythology and its subsequent Roman interpretation .
76-695: Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from Ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value (but increasing hardness). The Greek poet Hesiod (between 750 and 650 BC) outlined his Five Ages in his poem Works and Days (lines 109–201). His list is: The Roman poet Ovid (1st century BC – 1st century AD) tells
152-508: A laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority ( Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode or he would have been presented with a lyre instead. Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days , but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it
228-484: A cosmic threat that any such actor will be hurled downwards at an immense distance, whose distance downwards is similar to the distance upwards to the heavens. Later, lines 721–725 reiterate that the region is as far below earth as earth is from heaven: just as it takes ten days for an anvil to fall from heaven to earth, so it takes ten to fall from earth to the underworld. This suggests that the Greeks in this period conceived of
304-418: A deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle ( Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod ( Theogony 116–53) and Homer ( Iliad 14.201, 246). He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in
380-562: A double-gate. Likewise in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 750–756), the paths of the sun and moon are contiguous. The heaven is a flat and solid firmament supported by pillars. Embedded into the firmament was the sun, moon, and the stars. These astral bodies were personified as, themselves, being gods that could be worshiped or prayed to. According to the Theogony of Hesiod, 116–133 : First of all Chaos came into being, and then broad-bosomed Earth (Gaia),
456-402: A firm seat for the blessed gods forever. She also brought forth large mountains, the beautiful abode of the divine Nymphs who dwell in the woody mountains. She also bore the unharvested sea, seething with its swell, Pontos, without an act of delightful love. Then she slept with Ouranos and bore Okeanos with his deep eddies [...] Heaven is described once as bronze and twice as iron. One passage in
532-516: A firm seat of all things for ever, and misty Tartaros, deep down in broadpathed earth, and Eros, the most beautiful among the immortal gods, he who loosens our limbs, and subdues the mind and thoughtful counsel of all gods and men. From Chaos, Erebos and black Night came into being, and from Night, again, came Aither and Day, whom she conceived and bore after having mingled in love with Erebos. Now Earth first of all brought forth starry Ouranos, equal to herself, so that it would cover her on all sides, to be
608-479: A girl's brothers and murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the true culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape. Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus , Musaeus , Hesiod and Homer —in that order. Thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe
684-532: A hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently. In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days , numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of
760-503: A house of Sleep and Death. Finally, the river and goddess Styx , who is the offspring of Oceanus and Tethys, flows into the underworld. The direct source for the water of the Styx river is Oceanus: once Styx parts from Oceanus, Styx flows into much of the underworld in both horizontal and vertical directions. Styx may be visualized as a singular stream starting at the horizon and then parting into multiple individual streams downwards. Cosmography
836-529: A just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealized view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for. Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources: Two different—yet early—traditions record
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#1732837953142912-457: A lot of formulaic phrases that are not found in Homer, which indicates that he may have been writing within a different tradition. Early Greek cosmology Early Greek cosmology refers to beliefs about the structure ( cosmography ) and origins ( cosmogony ) of the cosmos (Greek kosmos ) primarily from the 8th to 5th centuries BC before it was superseded by ancient Greek astronomy , which
988-414: A proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge , for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse . He had "a passion for systematizing and explaining things". Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates
1064-619: A similar myth of Four Ages in Book 1.89–150 of the Metamorphoses . His account is similar to Hesiod's, with the exception that he omits the Heroic Age. Ovid emphasizes that justice and peace defined the Golden Age . He adds that in this age, men did not yet know the art of navigation and therefore did not explore the larger world. Further, no man had knowledge of any arts but primitive agriculture . In
1140-399: A tone of voice that has been described as having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days , where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness through
1216-429: Is Tethys , who was associated with freshwater, rivers, and springs. Beyond the ocean is the realm of Hades : as such, the ocean separates the domains of the living and the dead. This spatial separation is conceived on a horizontal plain and not a vertical one, and it is reflected by the journey of Odysseus to the afterworld (in this system, the afterworld/Hades is distinct from the underworld/Tartarus). Odysseus crosses
1292-615: Is a contested issue in scholarly circles ( see § Dating below ). Epic narrative allowed poets such as Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in Works and Days , as well as some passages in his Theogony , that support inferences made by scholars. The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on
1368-455: Is a kind of gate that regulates passage into Hades, which one must go through if they wish to enter Hades from the inhabited region or return to the inhabited region from Hades. The island, which is called "the dwelling of early Dawn and her dancing-lawns, and the risings of the sun" at the beginning of Book 12 of the Odyssey, is close to both the places where the sun rises and sun sets. This leads to
1444-490: Is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend ( Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially
1520-529: 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 . The dating of Hesiod's life
1596-554: Is not a part of the underworld but rather its whole. Three different images of Tartarus can also be painted, depending on the observer. The Titans, sealed into Tartarus by Zeus during the Titanomachy , view it as an inescapable walled enclosure. The entities of Night, Day, Sleep, and Death effectively experience it as a house: it can be entered into and left at will. (These entities all reside in Tartarus, and so Tartarus can be said to house
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#17328379531421672-566: Is one main difference between the Babylonian and early Greek view: Oceanus is a river and so has an outer bank, whereas the Babylonian Map does not have an outer rung beyond which the world geography extends. But for Hesiod, beyond Oceanus lies both Hesperides , the daughters of Night ( Nyx ), and the Gorgons . The only human or hero to traverse past Oceanus is Heracles on his journey where he finds
1748-434: Is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious. Gregory Nagy , on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs ("the destroyer" from πέρθω , pérthō ) and Hēsíodos ("he who emits
1824-577: Is related to cosmogony , the original formation of the cosmos, insofar as the latter provides an etiology for the former. Chaos has always existed and is the primordial matter, and out of it creation arises. Cosmic guardians ensure that the creation does not slip back into a status of chaos, for example: "Sun will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, guardians of Dike, will fnd him out." Chaos gives rise to Ouranos, Gaia, and Pontos (heaven, earth, sea) who, by association or sexual union, bring forth
1900-535: Is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition. Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions. Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod: In addition to these works,
1976-489: The Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense. The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus , though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus ( Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and
2052-515: The Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias). Some scholars have detected
2128-639: The Silver Age , Jupiter introduces the seasons, and men consequently learn the art of agriculture and architecture. In the Bronze Age , Ovid writes, men were prone to warfare, but not impiety. Finally, in the Iron Age , men demarcate nations with boundaries; they learn the arts of navigation and mining; they are warlike, greedy, and impious. Truth, modesty, and loyalty are nowhere to be found. These mythological ages are sometimes associated with historical timelines. In
2204-597: The Stone Age based on predominant metallurgical practices. Congruently, the term Golden Age is used to describe a civilization during a historical highpoint, for example the Golden Age of India , Islamic Golden Age and the Han and Tang dynasties of China . Similar concepts include: Hesiod Hesiod ( / ˈ h iː s i ə d / HEE -see-əd or / ˈ h ɛ s i ə d / HEH -see-əd ; Ancient Greek : Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos ; fl. c. 700 BC )
2280-450: The Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved". Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum ( Trier ), from the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic is signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod. The Roman bronze bust,
2356-481: The conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from
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2432-597: The poetry of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey ), Hesiod (the Theogony and the Works and Days ), and surviving fragments from Mimnermus . In the 5th century BC, Greek thinkers began to add new features to this cosmology. One, advocated by figures including Xenophanes , Parmenides , and Empedocles advocated the view that the kosmos as a whole (and not the Earth in particular)
2508-501: The "Hesiodic corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most : "Hesiod" is the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself. Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles ( Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους , Aspis Hērakleous )
2584-653: The 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn ( ἄγών ), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side. Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus , Epimenides , Mimnermus , Semonides , Tyrtaeus and Archilochus , from which it has been inferred that
2660-502: The 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death), claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle 's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honour in their agora , next to
2736-569: The 8th century BC. ( Theogony 337–45). Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod ( Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War
2812-546: The Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia , where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them. In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days
2888-523: The Iliad, where Zeus makes a cosmic threat against any god who dares to intervene in the Trojan War , provides more information on how heaven relates to the rest of the universe: I will seize him and hurl him down to Tartaros wrapped in mist, far away, a place where there is a pit deeper than any other, where there are iron gates and a bronze threshold, as far from Hades as heaven is from earth. Zeus makes
2964-595: The Near East .) Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece , which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land. Works and Days may have been influenced by an established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian wisdom literature. This work lays out
3040-408: The blending of salt and freshwater, personified by these deities, may stem from hydrological observations of these phenomena. The name of the island-country Bahrain also today means "Two Seas", in reference to the meeting and mingling of fresh and salt water seas. Early Greek cosmogonies may be related to earlier, Indo-European cosmogony . The god-trio Zeus (king of the gods), Poseidon (god of
3116-472: The catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group. However whilst his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of
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3192-462: The cattle of Eurytion . The sun does not illuminate the region beyond the river ocean as its circular revolution does not extend over these regions. Instead, according to Mimnermus , it lies during the night in a golden chamber by the banks of the ocean, or perhaps in a barque that had been made by Hephaistos . Oceanus is also overlaid by the rim of a shield that was fashioned by Hephaistos for Achilles . Related to Oceanus, as his sister and wife,
3268-649: The chronology of Saint Jerome , the Golden Age lasts c. 1710 to 1674 BC, the Silver Age 1674 to 1628 BC, the Bronze Age 1628 to 1472 BC, the Heroic Age 1460 to 1103 BC, while Hesiod's Iron Age was considered as still ongoing by Saint Jerome in the fourth century AD. Modern historical periodisation such as the Three-age system has reappropriated the terms Bronze Age and Iron Age to describe archaeological periods following
3344-687: The coast of Anatolia , a little south of the island of Lesbos ) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra , "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" ( Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony ( property inherited from one's father or male ancestor ) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon , occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses , who at first seems to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or ‘kings’ but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from
3420-644: The conventional dialect of epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a native Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and one modern scholar refers to his "hobnailed hexameters". His use of language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles . All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. The ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The extent of variation depends on how
3496-412: The cosmos on a vertical axis, where planes of the cosmos from Tartarus, the earth, and heaven are successively located above each other. Furthermore, the equivalence between the immensity of the directions up and down may also indicate that humans lie on the central plane of this vertical axis. The underworld in the writings of Hesiod is an immense, dark, and enclosed region called "Tartarus". Tartarus
3572-504: The cyclical phenomena of night, day, sleep, and death. ) Finally, from the viewpoint of human topography, it can be understood as a great gorge. These images are also not mutually exclusive: the Titans have an increased difficulty of escaping from Tartarus, such as to the earth, due to the depth of the gorge. Hesiod offers multiple descriptions of features of the underworld, and sometimes they come into tension with each other. According to Johnson,
3648-404: The definite article associated with digamma, oἱ. Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences from Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days , 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield of Heracles . The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter. Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite
3724-515: The description of a counter-intuitive topography where both east and west ultimately collapse into a single point. This leads to Odysseus being disoriented on the island where he says "we do not know where East is, nor where the bright sun goes down under the earth": Odysseus cannot tell apart east from west. Like in Egyptian literature, the exit and entry point of the sun into the inhabited world, circumscribed by Oceanus, lie side by side with each other as
3800-512: The different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days , most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M. L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him." An example: Hateful strife bore painful Toil, Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain, Battles, Combats... The Theogony concerns
3876-693: The earliest known source for the myths of Pandora , Prometheus and the Golden Age . The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis . This cultural crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria . (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox 's Travelling Heroes and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and
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#17328379531423952-495: The early Roman Empire , Strabo , Tacitus , and the Epicureans continued to accept a flat Earth. The last Greek author known to maintain this position was Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 6th century AD. All models of early Greek cosmology shared the following five elements: Another important element of early Greek cosmology that would distinguish it from the ancient Greek astronomy that would come to dominate in later centuries
4028-512: The evidence is collected and interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for example in the following set of statistics. Hesiod does not observe digamma as often as the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect that Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from the Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained by
4104-505: The fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to compose like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried to compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when it was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a significant difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days , but that is merely due to the fact that the former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it makes frequent use of
4180-500: The farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter. The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women." He was in fact a " misogynist " of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides . He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how
4256-418: The five Ages of Man , as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses ) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in
4332-463: The latest possible date for him is about 650 BC. An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC ( Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine , a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in
4408-487: The origins of the world ( cosmogony ) and of the gods ( theogony ), beginning with Chaos , Gaia , Tartarus and Eros , and shows a special interest in genealogy . Embedded in Greek myth , there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus , the accepted version that linked all Hellenes . It's
4484-441: The proper way to read Hesiod so as to avoid encountering such tensions, according to Hesiod's own intentions, is to understand that "Hesiod is not attempting to provide a map of the various structures within the underworld but is giving separate descriptions of the underworld as a whole". Hesiod refers to a fence enclosing Tartarus, as well as Poseidon's doors and an associated wall; Johnson believes that these terms are referring to
4560-517: The rest of the gods. Cosmic struggles between Zeus and the Titans threaten the order of the universe in what is called the Titanomachy : Zeus and the Hundred-Armed eventually drives the Titans, previously Earth-bound, into the netherworld, Tartarus. A wall and fence is also built around Tartarus with giant bronze doors. One important feature of cosmogony is the intermingling or mating between Oceanus,
4636-643: The river ocean, takes a long walk across the banks of the ocean, and then arrives at the place where the rivers Cocytus and Phlegethon join to form the Acheron . Hades is also spatially characterized by terms like erebos and zophos which designate a region of darkness unreached by the sun. Finally, the center of the Earth, the axis mundi , often is said to have a cosmic mountain or cosmic tree, similar to Mount Mashu in Mesopotamian cosmology. In Homer's Iliad, Mount Olympus reaches to heaven. The island of Circe
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#17328379531424712-473: The salt-water god, with Tethys, the god of all forms of fresh-water (including rivers, springs, and so on). This mimics the earlier Mesopotamian division of the salt and freshwater gods, Tiamat and Abzu . And like in earlier Mesopotamian cosmology, Homer and Hesiod, and later still in Plato ( Timaeus 40e), the salt and freshwater gods intermingle (or mate) to produce succeeding generations of gods. Ideas regarding
4788-511: The same barrier. Tartarus is a great windy chasm. Some passages locate Atlas in Tartarus but others place it in the far west with the Hesperides , past Oceanus. Other evidence also indicates that Tartarus is both located below the earth but is also to be found at its edges. Thus, Tartarus extends such that some regions of it can be found vertically below the earth whereas others can be found horizontally surrounding it. Hesiod also places in Tartarus
4864-405: The silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy. The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite
4940-628: The site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides , reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea , and so he fled to Locris , where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in
5016-498: The so-called Pseudo-Seneca , of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca the Younger . It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification. Hesiod employed
5092-467: The thrifty poet ( Works 35, 396). Unlike his father Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Amphidamas of Chalcis and there won a tripod in a singing competition. He also describes meeting the Muses on Mount Helicon , where he had been pasturing sheep, when the goddesses presented him with
5168-453: The time, Homer's Ionian . It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passing them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise: the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it
5244-522: The tomb of Minyas , their eponymous founder. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" ( οἰκιστής , oikistēs ). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by author Charles Abraham Elton in his Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod , depicts Hesiod as being falsely accused of rape by
5320-637: The voice" from ἵημι , híēmi and αὐδή , audḗ ) as fictitious names for poetical personae . It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Anatolia westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However, around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Anatolia to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with
5396-470: 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
5472-443: Was demythologized and involved the systematic study of the world. The main features of early Greek cosmography are shared with those found in ancient near eastern cosmology . The basic elements of the cosmos include (a flat ) earth, heaven, the sea, and the netherworld ( Tartarus ), the first three of which corresponded to the gods Gaia , Ouranos , and Oceanus (or Pontos ). Some primary sources for early Greek cosmology include
5548-426: Was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly was not in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute it to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on
5624-423: Was spherical. Empedocles and Anaxagoras advocated for a notion called "vortex", which describes a rotation of the cosmos that explains the visible rotation of the stars. When the spherical model of the Earth was proposed, early Greek cosmology as a whole began to be replaced, although this was not immediate. Geographers like Ctesias and Ephorus rejected a spherical Earth in the 4th century BC. Among authors from
5700-528: Was the emphasis on the role of the gods in the past and ongoing history of man and the mythological nature of the surrounding world. Near the edges of the earth is a region inhabited by fantastical creatures, monsters, and quasi-human beings. Once one reaches the ends of the earth they find it to be surrounded by and delimited by an ocean ( Oceanus ), as is seen in the Babylonian Map of the World , although there
5776-700: Was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony , a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis. Three works have survived which were attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days , Theogony , and Shield of Heracles . Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in
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