Hesiod: Epic Poems

Living at the foot of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sometime in the middle of the 8th century B.C., Hesiod is the oldest poet of the ancient Greek world, along with Homer. He is considered as the founder of Greek theological thought and he is the first to have introduced moral concepts, such as hope, justice, and hubris, in his poetry.

His epic poems were influenced by the oral Ionic tradition of dactylic hexameters. Only three survive intact and others in fragments.

Hesiod’s oldest poem, Theogony, narrates the creation of the world and of the gods, coming from the Night, the Sea and the union of Earth with Uranus. Works and Days is a hymn to Zeus, the powerful and just father of the Olympians. The third work, usually attributed to Hesiod, is The shield of Hercules, narrating the battle of Hercules and Cycnus, and describing the shield of the Theban hero.