Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica

About this book

This volume collects the oldest Greek poetry after Homer. Hesiod's Works and Days gives a farmer's calendar and stern advice to his idle brother, and tells the myths of Pandora and the five ages of man; his Theogony tells how the gods were born from Chaos and how Zeus overthrew his father Kronos. The Homeric Hymns, once credited to Homer, praise the gods with lively stories: Demeter searching for her daughter Persephone, the baby Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle and inventing the lyre. The Homerica adds fragments of the lost epics and the comic Battle of the Frogs and Mice.

Context and significance

Hesiod lived in Boeotia around 700 BC and is the first Greek poet to speak in his own voice. This translation, of 1914, is by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, without the Greek text of the original Loeb edition. Read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey alongside it.

About the author