Hesiod - Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield

HESIOD

Theogony,
Works and Days,
Shield

Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

SECOND EDITION

The first edition of this book was published with the generous assistance of the David M. Robinson Publication Fund.

1983, 2004 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2004

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hesiod.

[Selections. English. 2004]

Theogony ; Works and days ; Shield / Hesiod ; translation, introduction, and notes by Apostolos N. Athanassakis.2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8018-7984-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. HesiodTranslations into English. 2. Religious poetry, GreekTranslations into English. 3. Didactic poetry, GreekTranslations into English. 4. Heracles (Greek mythology)Poetry. 5. AgricultureGreecePoetry. 6. Gods, GreekPoetry.

I. Athanassakis, Apostolos N. II. Title.

PA4010.E5T5 2004

881.01dc22

2004002129

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

To Lloyd W. Daly, teacher and friend, with gratitude

The Greek text I have used in translating the Theogony, the Works and Days, and the Shield is that of Friedrich Solmsen (Oxford, 1970). The translation of the Theogony and the Works and Days follows the original line by line. Few exceptions have been made for cases in which this practice would result in ambiguous or hardly comprehensible English. I have done this probably at great cost. I know that a freer translation would be more elegant, and even more dynamic and moving. But these two poems are primary sources for Greek religion and mythology, and for the history of the development of Greek thought, and my aim is to provide especially the Greekless student of these subjects with a dependable translation to which convenient reference may be made for academic discussion and writing. In the translation of the Shield, I felt that I could afford the luxury of departing from this practice because the poem is not frequently studied as a primary source for Greek mythology and religion and because its structure and tempo made a freer rendition into English imperative. Let me assure my readers that I consider all three poems beautiful, and I hope that my departures from the literal meaning of the original do not make my translations unfaithful. I have tried to let Hesiod speak for himself and not to use his poetry as a spring-board for fanciful rhapsodizing of my own making. Classical texts of such importance and pristine dignity are only distorted and tarnished when they are made relevant to each passing fad.

The first man to whom I wish to record gratitude is Professor Lloyd W. Daly, who was an inspiring and patient teacher when I studied Hesiod as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. My debt to M. L. West for his masterful commentaries to the Theogony and the Works and Days is great. Carlo F. Russo is the only scholar who has treated the Shield with the seriousness and insightfulness it deserves, and the excellent introduction to his critical edition and commentary has been of inestimable value to me.

In my notes, there is considerable material from the beliefs and practices of the people of rural Greece. Classicists usually have such an attachment to pre-classical and classical Greece that they resent the intrusion of modern Greek survivals and instructive analogues. It is high time for this elitist trend to reverse itself, especially now that the tide of mass communications threatens to destroy in one or two generations what millennia have preserved. Relevant details from oral tradition and folk culture are every bit as important as the shards archeologists conscientiously collect and evaluate. To spurn them is to turn ones eyes away from what frequently turns out to be useful evidence.

The Johns Hopkins University Press published the first edition of my translation of Hesiods works in 1983, exactly twenty years ago as I write these lines. This first edition has been published many times during the last two decades, and the demand for the book has gone much beyond my expectations. Reception by the readership has been very warm. Poetry is untranslatable. Yet, the love of the ancient originals and the imperative need to share them with others, both as poetic achievements and as precious sources of information and knowledge, drive us to do the impossible. The present revision is a gentle one. Its principal aim is greater accuracy, the removal of words that are strikingly obsolete, and the reduction of overly long lines. The additions to the notes are lean, offering the reader critical information and fresh perspectives born of new research.

I have been fortunate to have had the benefit of extraordinarily competent assistance in the preparation of the present text. Anna Roberts and Liz Frech, both members of our staff, must be recognized here for all the valuable aid they offered me. I wish to thank Timothy S. Heckenlively, a doctoral candidate in our Department of Classics, for the genealogical charts and the bibliography, which are, for the most part, his work. Benjamin M. Wolkow, also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Classics, sustained the great burden of typing the entire text, as well as incorporating changes in translation and additions to the notes. His patience, enthusiasm, and razor-sharp editorial and philological skills have helped me enormously in the preparation of this revised edition.

There is no agreement among modern scholars as to Hesiods exact date. The best we can do is place him somewhere between the second half of the eighth century and the first quarter of the seventh. The prevalent opinion among Greeks of the classical period was that Hesiod was among the earliest poets and teachers of the race. They usually placed him after the mythical Orpheus and Mousaios and before Homer. But by the fifth century, the memory of what had happened three centuries earlier was blurred, and, despite the anecdotal poetic contest between Homer and Hesiod, there is no compelling reason for the assumption that Hesiod either preceded Homer or even that he was his contemporary. As for details concerning his life, it should be said that we ought to rely only on what Hesiod himself tells in the poems, either directly or by inference. Even if the information that he supplies is scant, it is better than all fanciful conjecture. Hesiod is Hesiods best biographer.

From Works and Days when to work. The poet became a moral and practical preceptor to his greedy brother, and thus, it seems, the Works and Days was born. The dispute may also have preceded the composition of his more ambitious Theogony, which in its present form antedates the Works and Days. It was probably composed sometime in the last quarter of the eighth century.

The date of the composition of Hesiods poems, especially of the Theogony, roughly coincided with the introduction of the alphabet to Greece. We do not know how long it took until the alphabet was first used in literary composition. Hesiod definitely belongs to that transitional period when the oral tradition was slowly coming to an end, and the written was taking its first, timid steps. If the Homeric epics were composed without the aid of writing, it follows a fortiori that the much shorter Hesiodic poems could have also been composed without the aid of writing. There is little or nothing in the poems of Hesiod that proves or disproves oral composition. Large sections of the poems were definitely part of traditional didactic lore. And if Hesiod employed writing, he did so not in our sense. It is entirely possible that he operated like a traditional oral poet except for some minimal use of the new art, perhaps as a sort of crude stenographic device, at least until later in his life when the finished poems could be committed to writing in their final form.