Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield

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JHU Press, 02 օգս, 2004 թ. - 162 էջ

Hesiod belongs to the transitional period in Greek civilization between the oral tradition and the introduction of a written alphabet. His two major surviving works, the Theogony and the Works and Days, address the divine and the mundane, respectively. The Theogony traces the origins of the Greek gods and recounts the events surrounding the crowning of Zeus as their king. A manual of moral instruction in verse, the Works and Days was addressed to farmers and peasants.

Introducing his celebrated translations of these two poems and of the Shield, a very ancient poem of disputed authorship, Apostolos Athanassakis positions Hesiod simultaneously as a philosopher-poet, a bard with deep roots in the culture of his native Boeotia, and the heir to a long tradition of Hellenic poetry. For this eagerly anticipated revised edition, Athanassakis has provided an expanded introduction on Hesiod and his work, subtly amended his faithful translations, significantly augmented the notes and index, and updated the bibliography. Already a classic, Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield is now more valuable than ever for students of Greek mythology and literature.

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Հեղինակի մասին (2004)

The poet Hesiod tells us that his father gave up sea-trading and moved from Ascra to Boeotia, that as he himself tended sheep on Mount Helicon the Muses commanded him to sing of the gods, and that he won a tripod for a funeral song at Chalcis. The poems credited to him with certainty are: the Theogony, an attempt to bring order into the otherwise chaotic material of Greek mythology through genealogies and anecdotes about the gods; and The Works and Days, a wise sermon addressed to his brother Perses as a result of a dispute over their dead father's estate. This latter work presents the injustice of the world with mythological examples and memorable images, and concludes with a collection of folk wisdom. Uncertain attributions are the Shield of Heracles and the Catalogue of Women. Hesiod is a didactic and individualistic poet who is often compared and contrasted with Homer, as both are representative of early epic style. "Hesiod is earth-bound and dun colored; indeed part of his purpose is to discredit the brilliance and the ideals of heroism glorified in the homeric tradition. But Hesiod, too, is poetry, though of a different order... " (Moses Hadas, N.Y. Times). Apostolos N. Athanassakis (ATHENS, GR) is professor emeritus in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he held the Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies from 2001 to 2011. Among his many translations is The Homeric Hymns.

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