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800 BCE
Shield of Heracles
The Shield of Heracles is an archaic Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The subject of the poem is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against Cycnus, the son of Ares, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing through Thessaly. -
800 BCE
Catalogue of Women
The Catalogue of Women — also known as the Ehoiai — is a fragmentary Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines, many of whom lay with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology to both divine and mortal paramours. -
800 BCE
The Homeric Hymns
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. -
770 BCE
Position
Hesiod may at first have been a rhapsodist (a professional reciter of poetry), learning the technique and vocabulary of the epic by memorizing and reciting heroic songs -
700 BCE
Why His Dates Aren't Certain
Hesiod’s dates are uncertain, but leading scholars generally agree that he lived in the latter half of the 8th Century BCE, probably shortly after Homer. His major works are thought to have been written around 700 BCE. Different traditions regarding Hesiod’s death have him dying either in the temple of Nemean Zeus at Locris, murdered by the sons of his host in Oeneon, or at Orchomenus in Boeotia. -
700 BCE
How Hesiod claims he got to be a rhapsodist
Hesiod, Greek Hesiodos, Latin Hesiodus, (flourished c. 700 BC), one of the earliest Greek poets, often called the “father of Greek didactic poetry.” Two of his complete epics have survived, the Theogony, relating the myths of the gods, and the Works and Days, describing peasant life. -
700 BCE
How Hesiod claims he got to be a rhapsodist
He himself attributes his poetic gifts to the Muses, who appeared to him while he was tending his sheep; giving him a poet’s staff and endowing him with a poet’s voice, they bade him “sing of the race of the blessed gods immortal.” -
700 BCE
Works and Days
The Works and Days (Ancient Greek: Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, Erga kai Hēmerai) is a didactic poem of some 800 lines written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts. -
700 BCE
Theogony
The Theogony (Greek: Θεογονία, Theogonía, Attic Greek: [tʰeoɡoníaː], i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th – 7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed c. 700 BC. It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek. -
700 BCE
Pandora
Pandora, (Greek: “All-Gifts”) in Greek mythology, the first woman. ... In Hesiod's Works and Days, Pandora had a jar containing all manner of misery and evil. Zeus sent her to Epimetheus, who forgot the warning of his brother Prometheus and made Pandora his wife. -
675 BCE
Childhood Info
As a youth, he worked as a shepherd in the mountains, and then, when his father died, as a small farmer working hard land. Hesiod claimed to have been granted the gift of poetic inspiration by the Muses themselves (who traditionally lived on Mount Helicon) while he was out tending sheep one day. After losing a lawsuit to his brother Perses over the distribution of his father’s land, he left his homeland and moved to the region of Naupactus in the Gulf of Corinth. -
650 BCE
Birthplace
He was a native of Boeotia, a district of central Greece to which his father had migrated from Cyme in Asia Minor. -
640 BCE
How he got to birthplace
His father came from Cyme in Aeolis, (modern day western Turkey), but crossed the sea to settle in a small village in Boeotia at the foot of Mount Helicon in Greece.
