Who is Hesiod?
We know a little bit more about him than we do about Homer.
For Homer, mostly knew just nothing. We were trying to extract from his own
work, ways we can maybe get a grip on what his identity is all about.
Hesiod actually tells us in his poetry who he is.
There's some more details that come out, we can extract some information from the
Theogony, but they're more useful one is from the poem we're not reading for this
class called the Works and Days where Hesiod talks about himself and his
brother. Hesiod we know lived in central Greece in
the eighth century B.C.E. His father came from the city of
[unknown], on the coast of Asia Minor, over across the Aegean, in modern day
Turkey. His father had been a merchant seaman, but
it was difficult to make ends meet. So, he went to Ascra, a small village on
the eastern side of Mount Helicon, in Boeotia, in central Greece, across the
Mediterranean or across the Aegean from Turkey.
He made a living at farming, we think. There, Hesiod and his brother, Perses,
were born. Hesiod becomes a poet from the muses
themselves. He says that, they actually come down from
Mount Helicon and, and instructed. So, the Muse's association with this
mountain grows out of Hesiod claiming to have been inspired at that point.
On Mount Helicon, he was busy tending flocks of lambs.
When they came over he was blown away and changed.
He is as feted as a poet in antiquity as Homer was.
For some people, after reading the two of them they think to themselves, that's hard
to imagine. Well, I think some of it comes with he,
Homer being a master of a poetic form using the narrative as a way to really
drive the story. He's master of something that most of us,
I think, probably still relate to which is a great narrative story.
Hesiod is master in a different way of what the epic is possible, what is
possible within an epic. And, I think, it's up to us to us to get
inside that story and figure out, you know, why is this one, one they thought
was so prominent and important. We hear in his Works and Days, as I said,
that we're not going to be reading for this course.
A lot of useful kinds of information, he has a kind of practical-minded side that
shows through in the Works and Days. It almost reads actually like an almanac.
Tells you the best times of year to do certain kinds of things, sailing, farming,
fishing, trading. And it also talks to you about, wisdom
that could help you negotiate through your day to day life.
And from a position in society that was not of grand importance, Hesiod is not
talking down from on high, you, in a way that Homer sometimes seemed to.
Hesiod, instead, can relate to human beings the way that, we all, need to take
care of what is necessary in our lives for keeping track of food and our trade
relationships and our fishing and our sailing.
But then also, he shows himself to have a pretty powerful eye when it comes to
trying to figure how the whole universe itself works not just the practical
questions of human life. And it's in the theogony, that we get that
story. The theogony, some myth classes would
actually start with that because it's a creation myth and it seems to be
intuitive. Well, creation myths should be at the
beginning of mythic traditions. I don't think that's probably necessarily,
intuitive with respect to the Greek and Roman material.
And again, it actually makes a little more sense to talk about something else first,
so that's why we started off with The Odyssey.
And Hesiod's story, I think is part of a larger, collection of these, epic tales,
but it does not have a, a, an obvious privacy because it's subject matter, is
the creation of the world. Homer and Hesiad, both, take that role of
priority among the rest. To get started on his story, Hesiod
engages in something that's a little strange with respect to Homer.
He doesn't jump right into the middle of the story.
He doesn't follow Homer's convention of building the whole epic into the first
word, and into the first line, and the first ten lines.
Instead, he starts off with a long, over 100 line, hymn to the muses.
He praises them and talks about what wonderful creatures they are.
When we move on to hymns, in fact, next week, that'll be our subject matter for
next week. We're looking at the Homeric hyms.
We're going to see that Hesiod's opening of his epic actually fits the form of what
a hymn is supposed to be, pretty directly. We have a personal relationship expressed
with the, with the muses. He praises them.
Talks, sings their praises. At the end, he, at the end of his near
over, just over 100 line introductory part where he's praising them, he says goodbye
to them. We'll see that, that happens as a normal
part of epic of, of, of, of [inaudible] hymns.
So, he's positioned himself as a way to get inside a story, but he's going to get
inside a story through the muses and through giving ample and abundant praise
to them. He sings about their role in the cosmos,
talks about what their special skills and purview are, and then that farewell ends
with him, his relation or his, treatment of them on page six.
So, spending a little bit of time, getting to know what these muses are, and what
Hesiod has in mind with them, is a very beneficial way for us to get going.
Homer has a single muse, a nameless one and it inspires him.
He becomes a conduit for that muse. Hesiod has more, a more fleshed out
picture of what the muses are and what they do.
They give us a, give him a chance to have a fascinating meditation on what poetry's
all about. There are this collective group of three
of them that get inside of his head and give him insight.
They let him see past, present, and future.
He can see forward, he can see the now, and he can see backward.
He has a synoptic overview of things, that is reasonably compared, to a prophetic
insight. He's like an inspired prophet in the way
that he has knowledge of, of, that expands much beyond, what yours and mine does.
Poets are there in order to see things that normal human beings can't and then to
record them and pass them on. Poets recover past events, and then they
immortalize them for the future. He also has mentions a relationship
between the muses and kingship, or leadership.
The muses give you the power to be a good king.
And why is it that the same things that inspire great poetic insight also inspire
kingship? It could be that what Hesiod wants to do
is talk about poets as being in the same league as people that call the shots in a
political context. So, it could be him kind of elevating the
status of, of the poet. But I think the idea of a poet-ruler, a
poet-king, has enough cultural traction over the long sweep of history to suggest
that there's a, more than just a, a kind of, strategic relationship between these
two. In other words, more than just a poet kind
of trying to grab the authority of a politician by comparing himself to, to
that leader. Instead, I think there's a sense in Hesiod
that this grand synoptic vision of the world is really important, for lots of
things. Yeah, surely it's important if you want to
sing songs about all the knowledge that's around us.
But, there's a perspective, I think, that you get with the synoptic view of
something that is irreplaceable. It is much more important than just simply
knowing this factoid, that factoid, all the discrete little pieces of knowledge
that you can imagine in the world having a large purview, is something that is deeply
valuable, and actually, goes into what makes an effective ruler, what makes an
effective leader. From Hesiod and others, we know that
that's important, having an effective ruler.
And that that's not what acknowledges part of what makes that person effective.
The way it effects the person is that it makes the person better, with respect to
making judgments of fairness. The world is complex, things get out of,
out of whack, they get out of kilter. And in order to try to solve this stuff,
you have to appeal to people's basic notions of fairness.
That's a tricky thing. There's an intuitive sense of fairness
yes, but we trust some other people's judgment about fairness more than, some
people's judgment about fairness more than others.
Hesiod tells us it has a connection with that thing that makes poets able to a sing
about anything. A depth of knowledge.
So, the poets also, are learning from muses that we here can sing truth and they
can also sing lies, either one. So, from the muses themselves, we harken
back to our opening definition of myth in this class.
Remember, we said it was impossible to rule any of these things out.
Some claim that it's a lie. By definition, myth means something that
is not true. Other people claim that by definition myth
is an ultimate and profound truth. Well, right here, you know, [inaudible]
page one of Western poetry, Hesiod puts the same theory of mythology in the mouth
of the muses themselves. They can lie and they can tell the truth.
How do you know which one is the difference?
The outline of the poem to come appears we hear about the family of the gods that
we're going to learn about. We hear about Zeus, and we hear about the
family of men and powerful giants. Hesiod's laid the setting for us in his
opening hymn to the, to the muses and given us a, window into what's coming
next. And also, saying for those who are
watching this course who are younger, or for those that have younger children
watching the course, this part of it is where a lot of the bits come out that are
maybe on the farther on the PG-13 or rated R kind of scale.
So, not recommended for unaccompanied younger viewers what's coming up.
When we look at what happens in the Creation of Cosmos, we're going to see all
kinds of nasty things. And, I'll do my best to use language that
is not offensive, but I'm afraid that a lot of what we're going to talk about is
quite, well, can be offensive. Is quite detailed and graphic.
So, get prepared for violence and things that a little bit nasty that about to come
up with Hesiod's Theogony.