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Hesiod was a simple shepherd of Boetia in 700 BC Greece until, as he himself describes, he became beloved of the Muses who bestowed upon him a laurel staff and with it the gift of Poetry: "they breathed into me wondrous voice, so that I should celebrate things of the future and things that were aforetime." Hesiod's earliest poem, the famous Works and Days, shines a light on the daily tasks, timings, and strategies needed to farm successfully in the ancient world. Full of wise admonitions, and interwoven with episodes of myth, allegory, and the poet's own experiences, it forms a fascinating…mehr

Produktbeschreibung
Hesiod was a simple shepherd of Boetia in 700 BC Greece until, as he himself describes, he became beloved of the Muses who bestowed upon him a laurel staff and with it the gift of Poetry: "they breathed into me wondrous voice, so that I should celebrate things of the future and things that were aforetime." Hesiod's earliest poem, the famous Works and Days, shines a light on the daily tasks, timings, and strategies needed to farm successfully in the ancient world. Full of wise admonitions, and interwoven with episodes of myth, allegory, and the poet's own experiences, it forms a fascinating Farming Diary from the remote past. The Theogony is altogether a work of greater ambition: a glorious - and at the time, a unique - attempt to work the numerous legends of Greek gods, goddesses and demi-gods into a coherent and reasonably logical system. This catalogue of deities is leavened with a multitude of their mythical exploits, including murder, infanticide, incest, cannibalism and emasculation as the action leads up to the Titanomachia, the epic battle between the Olympian gods, led by Zeus, and the Titans, who support Cronus. Hesiod's poems are more than a storied overture to the sublime works of Homer - they are, in themselves, a powerful, emotional connection with the cultural richness and beliefs of our European ancestors some two and a half millennia ago. A must-read for anyone interested in Western Philosophy and Culture.
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Autorenporträt
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have lived between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to view himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passed 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 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 wasn't 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 this to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter.