Hesiod

" Hesiod, calling the lyre-player Linus "skilled in every kind of wisdom," does not shrink from calling a sailor too "wise," writing of one "in no way made wise in seamanship.

" And Hesiod:

Celmis again and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first found iron in Cyprus, and Delas, another Idaean, found the tempering of bronze, though Hesiod says it was a Scythian.

"Yet for all such verses," said Philip, "Homer was defeated by Hesiod.

And so it was that Homer took his revenge upon the Euboeans through his poetry.

Wishing nonetheless to draw him out, "And Hesiod, Alexander," he said, "do you judge him to be a poet worth little?

For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare, the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just:

Those, I said, that Hesiod and Homer and the other poets related.

There is, first of all, I said, the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge;

De mari autem prima sit consideratio, quod cum passim in iure aut nullius, aut commune, aut publicum iuris gentium dicatur, hae voces quid significent ita commodissime explicabitur, si Poetas ab Hesiodo omnes, et Philosophos;

aut enim plane hoc negandum est, aut asseverandum non ad bonam modo, verum etiam ad optimam aemulationem fieri, iuxta Hesiodum:

It will be most convenient to explain the signification of these terms if we follow the practice of all the poets since Hesiod, of the philosophers and jurists of the past, and distinguish certain epochs, the divisions of which are marked off perhaps not so much by intervals of time as by obvious logic and essential character.

There is a sixth, an introductory, manner of deception that produces gods, according to which they reckon the twelve gods — of whom Hesiod sings his own theogony, and all that Homer treats of as theology.

"for thrice ten thousand are upon the bountiful earth the immortal demons, guardians of mortal men.

" In this way too the Ascraean Hesiod hints at God:

Socrates.

Socrates.

Do you remember who Hesiod says the spirits are?

For he says that when I was prosecuting Timarchus I said that his lewdness was a matter of common report, and that Hesiod, a good poet, says, But Common Report dies never, the voice that tongues of many men do utter.

You know the words of Hesiod:

For while among the Greeks the most ancient class of the learned is that of the poets — since Homer and Hesiod lived before the founding of Rome, and Archilochus in the reign of Romulus — we Romans took up poetry later.

And to be permitted to converse with Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Hesiod — at how much, pray, do you value it?

the later, that which concerns Hesiod and Homer, is what I myself say.

for I suppose Hesiod and Homer flourished not more than four hundred years earlier than I;

But the poets who are said to have been earlier than these men were, in my opinion, later.

And, Perses, I would tell of true things.

nay, let us settle our dispute here with true judgement which is of Zeus and is perfect.

Muses of Pieria who give glory through song, come hither, tell of Zeus your father and chant his praise.

There is a sentence of Hesiod that has been much praised, that opinions which have prevailed amongst many nations, must have some foundation.

For no beings, except those that can form general maxims, are capable of possessing a right, which Hesiod, has placed in a clear point of view, observing “that the supreme Being has appointed laws for men;

To which rule Plato, in his third book of Laws, adapts the proverbial expression of Hesiod, that half is better than the whole.

I say he is youngest of the gods and ever young, while those early dealings with the gods which Hesiod and Parmenides relate, I take to have been the work of Necessity, not of Love, if there is any truth in those stories.

Every one would choose to have got children such as these rather than the human sort— merely from turning a glance upon Homer and Hesiod and all the other good poets, and envying the fine offspring they leave behind to procure them a glory immortally renewed in the memory of men.

he bought slaves at a great price, one to hold Homer by heart, another Hesiod;

For me to ask which was the elder, Homer or Hesiod, no more belongs to the matter than to know, since Hecuba was younger than Helen, why she bore her age so badly.

for example, Hesiod’s line:

He was charged with explaining this line as an injunction to refrain from no work, dishonest or disgraceful, but to do anything for gain.

Now, though Socrates would fully agree that it is a benefit and a blessing to a man to be a worker, and a disadvantage and an evil to be an idler — that work, in fact, is a blessing, idleness an evil — working, being a worker, meant to him doing good work;

Well does the poet Hesiod speak concerning such men;

for this is the reason, I think, that in our childhood we commit to memory the sentiments of the poets, that when we are men we may make use of them:

If you disregard the poet’s meter and examine only his thought, I think this will seem to you to be, not a poem of Hesiod, but an oracle directed against the politics of Demosthenes.

and Hesiod expressly represents her as a goddess, speaking in words that are very plain to those who are willing to understand, for he says, But Common Report dies never, the voice that tongues of many men do utter.

As for the person who neither knows nor can learn, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

If, then, you receive my words eagerly, you will belong to the second rank of those whom Hesiod praises;

And indeed, if any other has hymned virtue in like fashion, let us accept his words as bearing toward the same goal with ours.

For to lay up little upon little is rightly held by the poet to make for an addition no less to knowledge of any kind than to money.

And when he interprets Hesiod's Theogony — that is, the origin of the gods — he abolishes altogether the customary and received notions of the gods;

while in the second he sets out to accommodate the fables of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer to what he himself had said in the first book about the immortal gods, so that even the most ancient poets, who never so much as suspected these things, may seem to have been Stoics.

And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me— the Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus who holds the aegis:

As to the poetry of Homer and Hesiod and the rest, I would fain speak—for I think that I could silence those who chant their verses and prate about these poets in the Lyceum—but I perceive that I am being carried beyond the due limits which have been assigned to an introduction;

For some of my friends met me and related to me how, as they were sitting together in the Lyceum, three or four of the sophists of no repute— men who claim to know everything and are prompt to show their presence everywhere—were discussing the poets, especially the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, saying nothing original about them, but merely chanting their verses and repeating from memory the clevere …

As a case in point, one might cite the poetry of Hesiod and Theognis and Phocylides;

Or again, what would any of you give to meet with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?

this I learnt from Hesiod, who said, Work is no reproach.