Hesiods

Hesiods is a term that may refer to the body of works attributed to Hesiod, the early Greek poet who likely lived in the late 8th century BCE in Ascra, Boeotia. In modern references, Hesiod is treated as a single author, and the plural Hesiods is rarely used; the phrase Hesiodic works or Hesiod’s poems is more common. Hesiod is one of the earliest named poets in Greek literature, and his writings helped establish a tradition of didactic and mythological poetry.

The Hesiodic corpus consists mainly of didactic and mythological poems composed in dactylic hexameter. The two best-known works are Theogony, which presents the origins and genealogies of the gods and the ordering of the cosmos, and Works and Days, a farmer’s almanac that blends practical agricultural advice with ethical instruction and mythic prologues, including the five ages of man. Other works associated with the Hesiodic tradition include the Catalogue of Women, a largely fragmentary genealogical epic, and the Shield of Heracles, a myth-based poem known from fragments and later quotations. The authorship and dating of some texts are uncertain, and much of what survives exists only in later copies or quotations.

Hesiod’s poetry influenced later Greek religion, cosmology, and moral instruction, offering a more agricultural, terrestrial perspective compared with the heroic epic tradition of Homer. His works helped shape early Greek thought on divine kinship, human labor, and social order, and they remained central to the Greek literary and intellectual tradition throughout antiquity.