1. Ἔργα or Ἔργα καὶ ἡμέραι, commonly called

In the time of Pausanias (9.31.3, &c.), this was the only poem which the people about Mount Helicon considered to be a genuine production of Hesiod, with the exception of the first ten lines, which certainly appear to have been prefixed by a later hand. There are also several other parts of this poem which seem to be later interpolations; but, on the whole, it bears the impress of a genuine production of very high antiquity, though in its present form it may consist only of disjointed portions of the original. It is written in the most homely and simple style, with scarcely any poetical imagery or ornament, and must be looked upon as the most ancient specimen of didactic poetry. It contains ethical, political, and economical precepts, the last of which constitute the greater part of the work, consisting of rules about choosing a wife, the education of children, agriculture, commerce, and navigation. A poem on these subjects was not of course held in much esteem by the powerful and ruling classes in Greece at the time, and made the Spartan Cleomenes contemptuously call Hesiod the poet of helots, in contrast with Homer, the delight of the warrior. (Plut. Apophth. Lac. Cleom. 1.) The conclusion of the poem, from 5.750 to 828 is a sort of calendar, and was probably appended to it in later times, and the addition καὶ ἡμέραι in the title of the poem seems to have been added in consequence of this appendage, for the poem is sometimes simply called Έργα. It would further seem that three distinct poems have been inserted in it; viz. 1. The fable of Prometheus and Pandora (47-105); 2. On the ages of the world, which are designated by the names of metals (109-201); and, 3. A description of winter (504-558). The first two of these poems are not so much out of keeping with the whole as the third, which is manifestly the most recent production of all, and most foreign to the spirit of Hesiod. That which remains, after the deduction of these probable interpolations, consists of a collection of maxims, proverbs, and wise sayings, containing a considerable amount of practical wisdom; and some of these γνῶμαι or ὑποθῆκαι may be as old as the Greek nation itself. (Isocrat. c. Nicocl. p. 23, ed. Steph.; Lucian, Dial. de Hes. 1, 8.) Now, admitting that the Ἔργα originally consisted only of such maxims and precepts, it is difficult to understand how the author could derive from his production a reputation like that enjoyed by Hesiod, especially if we remember that at Thespiae, to which the village of Ascra was subject, agriculture was held degrading to a freeman. (Heraclid. Pont. 42.) In order to account for this phenomenon, it must be supposed that Hesiod was a poet of the people and peasantry rather than of the ruling nobles, but that afterwards, when the warlike spirit of the heroic ages subsided, and peaceful pursuits began to be held in higher esteem, the poet of the plough also rose from his obscurity, and was looked upon as a sage; nay, the very contrast with the Homeric poetry may have contributed to raise his fame. At all events, the poem, notwithstanding its want of unity and the incoherence of its parts, gives to us an attractive picture of the simplicity of the early Greek mode of life, of their manners and their domestic relations. (Comp. Twesten, Commentat. Critica de Hesiodi Carmine, quod inscrib. Opera et Dies, Kiel, 1815, 8vo.; F. L. Hug, Hesiodi Ἔργα μέγαλα, Freiburg, 1835 ; Ranke, De Hesiodi Op. et Diebus, 1838, 4to ; Lehrs, Quaest. Epic. p. 180, &c.; G. Hermann, in the vol. 21.2. p. 117, &c.)

2. Θεογονία.

This poem was, as we remarked above, not considered by Hesiod's countrymen to be a genuine production of the poet. It presents, indeed, great differences from the preceding one: its very subject is apparently foreign to the homely author of the Ἔργα; but the Alexandrian grammarians, especially Zenodotus and Aristarchus, appear to have had no doubt about its genuineness (Schol. Venet. ad Il. 18.39), though their opinion cannot be taken to mean anything else than that the poem contained nothing that was opposed to the character of the Hesiodic school; and thus much we may therefore take for granted, that the Theogony is not the production of the same poet as the Ἔργα, and that it probably belongs to a later date. In order to understand why the ancients, nevertheless, regarded the Theogony as an Hesiodic work, we must recollect the traditions of the poet's parentage, and the marvellous events of his life. It was on mount Helicon, the ancient seat of the Thracian muses, that he was believed to have been born and bred, and his descent was traced to Apollo; the idea of his having composed a work on the genealogies of the gods and heroes cannot therefore have appeared to the ancients as very surprising. That the author of the Theogony was a Boeotian is evident, from certain peculiarities of the language. The Theogony gives an account of the origin of the world and the birth of the gods, explaining the whole order of nature in a series of genealogies, for every part of physical as well as moral nature there appears personified in the character of a distinct being. The whole concludes with an account of some of the most illustrious heroes, whereby the poem enters into some kind of connection with the Homeric epics. The whole poem may be divided into three parts: 1. The cosmogony, which widely differs from the simple Homeric notion (Il. 14.200), and afterwards served as the groundwork for the various physical speculations of the Greek philosophers, who looked upon the Theogony of Hesiod as containing in an allegorical form all the physical wisdom that they were able to propound, though Hesiod himself was believed not to have been aware of the profound philosophical and theological wisdom he was uttering. The cosmogony extends from 5.116 to 452. 2. The theogony, in the strict sense of the word, from 453 to 962; and 3. the last portion, which is in fact a heroogony, being an account of the heroes born by mortal mothers whose charms had drawn the immortals from Olympus. This part is very brief, extending only fron 5.963 to 1021, and forms the transition to the Eoeae, of which we shall speak presently. If we ask for the sources from which Hesiod drew his information respecting the origin of the world and the gods, the answer cannot be much more than a conjecture, for there is no direct information on the point. Herodotus asserts that Homer and Hesiod made the theogony of the Greeks; and, in reference to Hesiod in particular, this probably means that Hesiod collected and combined into a system the various local legends, especially of northern Greece, such as they had been handed down by priests and bards. The assertion of Herodotus further obliges us to take into consideration the fact, that in the earliest Greek theology the gods do not appear in any definite forms, whereas Hesiod strives to anthropomorphise all of them, the ancient elementary gods as well as the later dynasties of Cronus and Zeus. Now both the system of the gods and the forms under which he conceived them afterwards became firmly established in Greece, and, considered in this way, the assertion of Herodotus is perfectly correct. Whether the form in which the Theogony has come down to us is the original and genuine one, and whether it is complete or only a fragment, is a question which has been much discussed in modern times. There can be little doubt but that in the course of time the poets of the Hesiodic school and the rhapsodists introduced various interpolations, which produced many of the inequalities both in the substance and form of the poem which we now perceive; many parts also may have been lost. Hermann has endeavored to show that there exist no less than seven different introductions to the Theogony, and that consequently there existed as many different recensions and editions of it. But as our present form itself belongs to a very early date, it would be useless to attempt to determine what part of it formed the original kernel, and what is to be considered as later addition or interpolation. (Comp. Creuzer and Hermann, Brief über Hom. und Hes., Heidelberg, 1817, 8vo.; F. K. L. Sickler, (Cadmus I. Erklürung der Theogonie des Hesiod, Hildburghausen, 181, 4to. ; J. D. Guigniant, De la Théogonie d'Hesiod, Paris, 1335, 8vo.; J. C. Mützell, De Emendatione Theogoniae Hesiodi, Lips. 1833, 8vo.; A. Soetbeer, Versuch die Urform der Hesiod. Theogonie nachzuweisen, Berlin, 1837, 8vo.; O. F. Gruppe, Ueber die Theog, des Hesiod, ihr Verderbniss und ihre ursprüngliche Beschaffenheit, Berlin, 1841, 8vo. The last two works are useless and futile attempts; comp. Th. Kock, De pristina Theogoniae Hesiodeae Forma, pars. i. Vratislav. 1842, 8vo.)

3. Ἠοῖαι or ἠοῖαι μεγάλαι, also called κατάλοψοι γυναικῶν.

The name ἠοῖαι was derived, according to the ancient grammarians, from the fact that the heroines who, by their connection with the immortal gods, had become the mothers of the most illustrious heroes, were introduced in the poem by the expression ἢ οἳη. The poem itself, which is lost, is said to have consisted of four books, the last of which was by far the longest, and was hence called ἠοῖαι μεγάλαι, whereas the titles κατάλογοι or ἠοῖαι belonged to the whole body of poetry, containing accounts of the women who had been beloved by the gods, and had thus become the mothers of the heroes in the various parts of Greece, from whom the ruling families derived their origin. The two last verses of the Theogony formed the beginning of the ἠοῖαι, which, from its nature, might justly be regarded as a continuation of the Theogony, being as a heroogony (ἡρωογονία) the natural sequel to the Theogony. The work, if we may regard it as one poem, thus contained the genealogies or pedigrees of the most illustrious Greek families. Whether the Eoeae or Catalogi was the work of one and the same poet was a disputed point among the ancients themselves. From a statement of the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (2.181), it appears that it consisted of several works, which were afterwards put together; and while Apollonius Rhodius and Crates of Mallus attributed it to Hesiod (Schol. ad Hes. Theog. 142), Aristophanes and Aristarchus were doubtful. (Anonym. Gram. in Göttling's ed. of Hes. p. 92; Schol. ad Hom. Il. 24.30 ; Suid. and Apollon. s. v. μαχλοσύνη.) The anonymous Greek grammarian just referred to states that the first fifty-six verses of the Hesiodic poem Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους (Scutum Herculis) belonged to the fourth book of the Eoeae, and it is generally supposed that this poem, or perhaps fragment of a poem, originally belonged to the Eoeae. The Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους, which is still extant, consists of three distinct parts; that from 5.1 to 56 was taken from the Eoeae, and is probably the most ancient portion; the second from 57 to 140, which must be connected with the verses 317 to 480; and the third from 141 to 317 contains the real description of the shield of Heracles, which is introduced in the account of the fight between Heracles and Cycnus. When therefore Apollonius Rhodius and others considered the Ἀσρὶς to be a genuine Hesiodic production, it still remains doubtful whether they meant the whole poem as it now stands, or only some particular portion of it. The description of the shield of Heracles is an imitation of the Homeric description of the shield of Achilles, but is done with less skill and ability. It should be remarked, that some modern critics are inclined to lock upon the Ἀσπίς as an independent poem, and wholly unconnected with the Eoeae, though they admit that it may contain various interpolations by later hands. The fragments of the Eoeae are collected in Lehmann, De Hesiodi Carminibus perditis, pars i. Berlin, 1828, in Göttling's edition of Hesiod, p. 209, &c., and in Hermann's Opuscula, vi. 1, p. 255, &c. We possess the titles of several Hesiodic poems, viz. Κήϋκος γάμοι, Θησέως εἰς Ἅιδην κατάβασις, and Ἐπιθαλάμιος Πηλέως καὶ Θέτιδος, but all these poems seem to have been only portions of the Eoeae. (Athen. 2.49 ; Plut. Sympos. 8.8; Paus. 9.31.5; Schol. ad Hes. Theog. 142; comp. C. Ch. Heyler, Ueber Hesiods Schild des Hercules, Worms, 1787, 8vo. ; F. Schlichtegroll, Ueber den Schild des Heracles nach Hesiod, Gotha, 1788, 8vo.; G. Hermann, Opusc. 6.2, p. 204, &c.; Marckscheffel, De Cutalogo et Eoeis Carminibus Hesiodeis, Vratislav. 1838, 8vo., and the same author's Hesiodi, Eumeli, Cinaethonis, &c., Fragmenta colley. emend. dispos., Lips. 1840, 8vo.)

4. The Αἰγίμιος

The Αἰγίμιος, an epic poem, consisting of several books or rhapsodies on the story of Aegimius, the famous ancestral hero of the Dorians, and the mythical history of the Dorians in general. Some of the ancients attributed this poem to Cercops of Miletus. (Apollod. 2.1.3; D. L. 2.46.) The fragments of the Aegimius are collected in Göttling's edit. of Hesiod, p. 205, &c.

5. Μελαμποδία

Μελαμποδία, an epic poem, consisting of at least three books. Some of the ancients denied that this was an Hesiodic poem. (Paus. 9.31.4.) It contained the stories about the seer Melampus, and was thus of a similar character to the poems which celebrated the glory of the heroic families of the Greeks. Some writers consider the Melampodia to have been only a portion of the Eoeae, but there is no evidence for it, and others regard it as identical with the ἔπη μαντικά, an Hesiodic work mentioned by Pausanias. (l.c. ; comp. Athen. 2.47, xi. p. 498, xiii. p. 609 ; Clem. Al. Strom. vi. p. 751.) The fragments of the Melampodia are collected in Göttling's edit. of Hesiod, p. 228, &c.

6. Ἐξηγήσις ἐπὶ τέρασιν

Ἐξηγήσις ἐπὶ τέρασιν is mentioned as an Hesiodic work by Pausanias, and distinguished by him from another entitled ; but it is not improbable that both were identical with, or portions of, an astronomical work ascribed to Hesiod, under the title of ἀστρικὴ βίβλος or ἀστρολογία. (Athen. 11.491; Plut. dee Pyth. Orac. 18; Plin. Nat. 18.25.) See the fragments in Göttling's edit. of Hesiod, p. 207.

7. Χείρωνος ὑποθῆκαι

Χείρωνος ὑποθῆκαι seems to have been an imitation of the Ἔργα. The few fragments still extant are given by Göttling, l.c. p. 230, &c.

Other Works

Strabo (vii. p.436) speaks of a γῆς Περίοδος as the work of Hesiod, but from another passage (vii. p. 434) we see that he means a compilation made by Eratosthenes from the works of Hesiod. Respecting a poem called Περὶ ʽλδαίων Δακτύλων, which was likewise ascribed to Hesiod, see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 1156.