Study guide
Theogony
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Overview
- Author
- Hesiod of Ascra in Boeotia, the first Greek poet to name himself in his own work (line 22); also author of the Works and Days
- Composed
- Probably around 700 BC, perhaps a little earlier; whether it is older or younger than the Iliad and Odyssey is disputed
- Genre
- Hexameter poem on the origins and genealogy of the gods (a 'theogony'), framed as a hymn to the Muses
- Metre and dialect
- Dactylic hexameter, in the same mixed, mainly Ionic literary language as Homeric epic, with some Boeotian and Aeolic touches
- Length
- 1,022 lines in the manuscripts; the last two lines lead into a separate poem, the Catalogue of Women
- Subject
- The history of the universe from Chaos to the reign of Zeus: three generations of divine kings (Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus), the wars that decide the succession, and the distribution of honours under Zeus
- Key figures
- The Muses, Gaia (Earth), Ouranos (Heaven), Kronos, Rhea, Zeus, Prometheus, the first woman, Hecate, the Hundred-Handers, Typhoeus
- Near Eastern parallels
- The Hurrian–Hittite Kumarbi cycle (Kingship in Heaven, Song of Ullikummi) and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, both with a succession of divine kings won by force
- Translations on the site
- Charles Abraham Elton (verse, 1812), A. W. Mair (prose, 1908) and Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb prose, 1914), the edition quoted in this guide
- Key themes
- Order out of chaos; the justice and power of Zeus; cunning against force; the origin of sacrifice, fire and woman; poetic truth and falsehood; the place of humans among the gods
Context
Hesiod is the first Greek poet who tells us about himself. In the Theogony he names himself as the shepherd to whom the Muses appeared under Mount Helicon (22–34); in the Works and Days he adds that his father gave up a poor living as a sea-trader at Cyme in Aeolis and settled at Ascra, a village under Helicon in Boeotia that he describes as bad in winter, harsh in summer and never good. The Works and Days, addressed to his brother Perses after a dispute over their inheritance, is a poem of advice about justice, farming and the calendar; with the Theogony it forms the core of what antiquity called 'Hesiod'. Ancient readers also ascribed to him the Shield of Heracles and the Catalogue of Women, which survives in fragments and was composed later (West 1966) (Most 2018) (Lamberton 1988).
The only date Hesiod gives us is indirect. In the Works and Days he says that he once sailed across the narrow strait to Chalcis in Euboea, to the funeral games of a nobleman called Amphidamas, won a tripod there with a song, and dedicated it to the Muses of Helicon, 'where they first set me on the path of clear song'. Amphidamas seems to have died in the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria, usually placed in the late eighth century, and many scholars connect the victory song with the Theogony itself. A date around 700 BC is generally accepted, though some put the poem a generation or two earlier. Later Greeks told a story of a 'Contest of Homer and Hesiod' at those very games, which Hesiod won because he sang of farming and peace rather than war (West 1966) (Graziosi 2002).
The poem's subject is the generation of the gods and of the world they rule. It begins from Chaos, Earth, Tartarus and Eros, traces the families of the primordial powers, the Titans and the sea-gods, and tells how the kingship of heaven passed by violence from Ouranos (Heaven) to his son Kronos and from Kronos to Zeus. Zeus then defeats the Titans and the monster Typhoeus, is chosen king by the other gods and distributes their honours, and the poem closes with his marriages and the births of the younger gods and heroes. The genealogies are not a mere list: in Hesiod a name is often an idea, and the children of Night or of Strife form a moral map of the troubles of human life (Clay 2003) (Hamilton 1989).
The Theogony is a Greek poem with a long eastern ancestry. Since the 1930s the decipherment of Hittite tablets from Hattusa has revealed a Hurrian myth of 'Kingship in Heaven' in which the god Kumarbi castrates his father Anu, swallows what he has bitten off, and is eventually overthrown by the storm god Teshub; a sequel, the Song of Ullikummi, tells of a stone monster raised against the storm god, much as Typhoeus is raised against Zeus. The Babylonian Enuma Elish, which the site holds in L. W. King's translation, tells how the younger gods defeat the primeval waters and make Marduk their king. Hesiod's succession myth belongs to this family of stories, though it is thoroughly reshaped for a Greek audience (Güterbock 1948) (Walcot 1966) (West 1997) (López-Ruiz 2010).
Evelyn-White's Loeb prose translation (1914), quoted throughout this guide, keeps the Greek line numbers in its margins, which are used for all references here ('Theog. 26–28'). The site also holds Charles Abraham Elton's rhyming verse rendering of 1812, an elegant Regency version that expands freely, and A. W. Mair's Oxford prose translation of 1908, with a good introduction. Modern readers will also want M. L. West's World's Classics translation and Glenn Most's Loeb, which reflect the text and interpretation established in West's great commentary of 1966 (West 1966) (West 1988) (Most 2018) (Athanassakis 1983).
Plot overview
The poem begins with a long hymn to the Muses of Helicon. Hesiod tells how they came to him as he was shepherding his lambs, mocked shepherds as 'mere bellies', gave him a laurel staff and breathed a divine voice into him so that he could sing of the gods. He then describes their birth from Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory), their song on Olympus and their gifts to kings and singers, and calls on them to tell how the world began.
First came Chaos, then Earth, Tartarus and Eros. Earth bears Heaven, and from their union come the Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. Heaven hides his children inside Earth; she makes a sickle of flint, and her youngest son Kronos castrates his father. From the blood spring the Erinyes, the Giants and the ash-tree nymphs, and from the severed members in the sea Aphrodite is born. Hesiod then traces the descendants of Night, of Pontus (Sea), of Ocean and Tethys and of the other Titans, pausing to praise Styx and Hecate, whom Zeus honoured above all.
Kronos swallows the children Rhea bears him, for fear of being overthrown by a son, until Rhea, advised by Earth and Heaven, hides the newborn Zeus in Crete and gives Kronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Zeus grows up, forces Kronos to vomit up his brothers and sisters, and receives the thunderbolt from the Cyclopes. Prometheus, son of the Titan Iapetus, twice tries to outwit Zeus, first in the division of the sacrificial ox at Mecone and then by stealing fire; Zeus punishes men by having the first woman made, and Prometheus by chaining him to be torn by an eagle.
Zeus and the Olympians, after ten years of indecisive war against the Titans, free the Hundred-Handers, and with their help and the full blaze of Zeus's thunderbolts the Titans are defeated and imprisoned in Tartarus, which Hesiod describes at length. Earth bears one last monster, Typhoeus, whom Zeus burns and hurls into Tartarus. The gods then make Zeus their king. He swallows his first wife Metis, marries Themis, Eurynome, Demeter, Mnemosyne, Leto and finally Hera, and fathers the younger gods; the poem ends with the goddesses who bore children to mortal men and a call to the Muses to sing next of mortal women.
Part by part
Part 1: The Hymn to the Muses and Hesiod's Consecration
Theog. 1–115
Summary
The poem opens like a hymn: 'From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing'. Hesiod describes the Muses dancing on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, bathing in its springs and going out by night to sing of the gods, from Zeus and Hera down to Earth, Ocean and Night. One day, he says, they taught Hesiod glorious song as he shepherded his lambs below the mountain, and he reports their first words to him: shepherds are base things and mere bellies; the Muses know how to tell many falsehoods that resemble the truth, and how to tell the truth when they wish.
The goddesses gave him a staff of laurel and breathed into him a divine voice, so that he might celebrate what will be and what was before, and told him to sing of the race of the gods, and of the Muses themselves first and last. With a proverbial question ('why all this about oak or stone?') Hesiod breaks off and begins again, this time with the Muses on Olympus, who delight their father with song about the gods, Zeus and the race of men.
He tells of their birth: Zeus lay with Mnemosyne (Memory) for nine nights in Pieria, and she bore nine daughters, whom he names, ending with Calliope, the chief of them, who attends on kings. The Muses give honoured kings sweet speech, so that they settle disputes with straight judgements and persuade the people with gentle words; singers come from the Muses and Apollo, and the song of a singer makes a grieving man forget his sorrow. The proem ends with a prayer that the Muses tell the whole story from the beginning: how gods, earth, rivers, sea and stars came to be, and which of them came first.
Analysis
This proem is the longest surviving hymn to the Muses and the earliest scene of poetic initiation in Greek literature. Its first-person story turns the poet into a figure in his own poem: the man who wrote 'Hesiod' in line 22 says 'me' in line 24, and the change of grammatical person is the first trace in Greek of an author speaking of himself by name. Whether the scene records an experience, a ritual or a traditional fiction of the poet's calling is much debated, and it has invited comparison with the calls of Hebrew prophets such as Amos, taken from following the flock (Lamberton 1988) (Nagy 1990) (West 1966).
The Muses' words (27–28) have become the classic Greek statement about poetic truth. They echo Homer's description of Odysseus telling lies 'like the truth' (Odyssey 19.203), and they warn that the same divine source can inspire falsehood as well as truth. Many readers take Hesiod to be setting his own true account of the gods against other poets, perhaps Homer; others think the ambiguity is deliberate and that the poem never lets its audience be quite sure (Pucci 1977) (Clay 2003).
The hymn already contains the poem's argument in miniature. The Muses' song moves from the first gods to Zeus, 'the most excellent among the gods', and ends with his victory over Kronos and his fair distribution of honours (71–74). The passage on the Muses' gift to kings (80–93) connects the order of heaven to the order of human society: just judgement and persuasive speech in the assembly are an earthly reflection of the justice of Zeus, a theme that the Works and Days develops (Solmsen 1949) (Clay 2003).
‘Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.’
The Muses' first words to Hesiod: a rebuke to the shepherd's lowly life and a warning that poetry can deceive as well as reveal.
breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime
The gift of song is a gift of knowledge, like that of a prophet; the poet's authority comes from the goddesses, not from himself.
a forgetting of ills and a rest from sorrow
The children of Memory bring forgetfulness: song preserves the past and, in doing so, frees its hearers from their present cares.
Part 2: Chaos, Gaia, Eros and the Fall of Ouranos
Theog. 116–210
Summary
'Verily at the first Chaos came to be,' Hesiod begins; then Earth, the secure seat of the gods, misty Tartarus deep beneath her, and Eros, fairest of the immortals, who loosens limbs and overcomes the minds of gods and men. From Chaos come Erebus and black Night, and from Night, joined with Erebus, come Aether (the bright upper air) and Day. Earth by herself bears starry Heaven (Ouranos) to cover her, the mountains and the barren sea, Pontus.
Then Earth lies with Heaven and bears the twelve Titans, from Oceanus to Kronos, the youngest and most terrible, who hates his father. She also bears the three Cyclopes, who will make the thunderbolt for Zeus, and three sons of enormous strength, Cottus, Briareos and Gyes, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. Heaven hates his children and hides them in the depths of Earth as soon as they are born, and Earth groans under the strain.
Earth makes a great sickle of grey flint and asks her sons to punish their father. Only Kronos dares. When Heaven comes at night to lie with Earth, Kronos reaches from his hiding place and cuts off his father's genitals. From the drops of blood Earth bears the Erinyes, the Giants and the ash-tree nymphs; the genitals fall into the sea, a white foam gathers round them, and from it grows Aphrodite, who comes ashore at Cyprus with Eros and Desire as her companions. Heaven calls his sons Titans, 'Strainers', and warns that vengeance will follow.
Analysis
Hesiod's 'Chaos' is not a jumble of matter, as in later usage, but a gap or yawning space; the word is related to the Greek verb for gaping. The first powers are not created by anyone; they simply 'came to be'. The cosmos takes shape through sexual generation, and also through its opposite: some beings, like Heaven and Sea, are born from a single parent, while others come from union in love. Early Greek philosophers such as Anaximander inherited this question of how the many came from the one (West 1966) (Clay 2003).
Eros appears among the very first powers, before there is anyone to love. He is the force that makes all later generation possible, and his description (120–122) as one who 'unnerves the limbs' and overcomes reason is borrowed from the language of love poetry. Placing desire at the origin of the world makes it a cosmic principle rather than a personal emotion, an idea that later thinkers from Parmenides to Plato's Symposium took up (West 1966) (Most 2018).
The castration of Ouranos is the first act of the succession myth, and its closest parallel is the Hurrian story in which Kumarbi bites off the genitals of Anu, the sky god. Earth, who is wronged by Ouranos and plans his punishment, is the hidden power behind each change of ruler in the poem. The birth of Aphrodite from the severed members joins violence and beauty at the root of the world; the honours given to her (203–206), including 'deceits', anticipate the deceptive gift of the first woman (Güterbock 1948) (West 1997) (Zeitlin 1996).
Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth
The beginning of the cosmogony. Chaos is a gap, not disorder; Earth is the first solid ground for everything that follows.
Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.
Eros as a primordial cosmic force, described in the language of lyric desire.
‘Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.’
Kronos accepts his mother's plan, repeating her words: the son justifies violence against his father as just punishment.
Part 3: The Children of Night and of Pontus
Theog. 211–336
Summary
Night, without a partner, bears a series of dark powers: Doom, Fate and Death, Sleep and Dreams, Blame and Woe, the Hesperides who guard the golden apples beyond Ocean, the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos) who punish the sins of gods and men, Nemesis, Deceit, Friendship, Old Age and Strife. Strife in turn bears Toil, Forgetfulness, Famine, Sorrows, Battles, Murders, Quarrels, Lies, Disputes, Lawlessness, Ruin and Oath, who most troubles men when anyone swears falsely.
Pontus, the Sea, fathers Nereus, the truthful Old Man of the Sea, and also Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. Nereus and Doris have fifty daughters, the Nereids, whom Hesiod names one by one, among them Amphitrite, Thetis and Galatea. Thaumas and Electra have Iris and the Harpies.
From Phorcys and Ceto descends a race of monsters: the Graiae, grey from birth; the Gorgons, of whom only Medusa is mortal, and from whose severed head spring Pegasus and Chrysaor; then Geryones, Echidna (half nymph, half snake), and Echidna's children by Typhaon: Orthus, Cerberus, the Hydra of Lerna and the Chimaera, and then the Sphinx and the Nemean lion. Many of these are killed by heroes, especially Heracles. The section ends with the serpent that guards the golden apples.
Analysis
The children of Night are personifications, and their arrangement is a kind of moral philosophy. Death, Old Age, Deceit and Strife are among the conditions of mortal existence, and they belong to the dark, fatherless line of Night rather than to the gods of Olympus. The list of Strife's children reads like an inventory of social disorder and leads up to Oath, which punishes perjury; justice is already implied in the shape of the genealogy. In the Works and Days Hesiod corrects himself and says there are two Strifes, one destructive and one that drives men to honest competition (West 1966) (Clay 2003) (Hamilton 1989).
The line of Pontus is the opposite of Night's: it begins with Nereus, who 'is true and lies not', and his fifty daughters, whose names (Calm, Wave, Swift, Gift-giver and so on) evoke the moods of the sea. Their catalogue, like the later catalogue of rivers and Oceanids, shows the pleasure that oral poetry took in naming and its power to make lists beautiful (West 1966) (Most 2018).
The monsters descended from Phorcys and Ceto represent what stands outside the ordered world: they live at its edges, in caves, beyond Ocean or under the earth. Almost every one is named together with the hero who destroyed it, so that the catalogue anticipates the role of heroes, above all Heracles, in completing the work of Zeus by clearing the world of disorder (Clay 2003).
And Night bare hateful Doom and black Fate and Death
Night's children are the dark necessities of mortal life, born without a father.
And Sea begat Nereus, the eldest of his children, who is true and lies not
The truthful Old Man of the Sea balances the deceitful children of Night and Strife.
half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake
Echidna, the mother of monsters, combines beauty and horror; she embodies the mixed forms that the new order will destroy.
Part 4: The Children of Ocean and the Titans; Styx and Hecate
Theog. 337–452
Summary
Tethys bears to Ocean the rivers of the world, from the Nile and the Danube (Ister) to the Scamander of Troy, and a holy company of daughters, the Oceanids, who with Apollo and the rivers have the care of young men. Hesiod names forty-one, chief among them Styx, and says there are three thousand more.
The other Titans have their children: Theia and Hyperion bear the Sun, the Moon and Dawn; Dawn bears the winds and the stars. Styx, married to Pallas, bears Emulation, Victory, Strength and Force, who live always with Zeus, because Styx was the first to bring her children to his side when he summoned the gods to fight the Titans and promised to keep or increase their honours. Zeus made her the great oath of the gods.
Phoebe and Coeus have Leto and Asteria, and Asteria bears Hecate, 'whom Zeus the son of Cronos honoured above all'. A hymn of some forty lines follows: Hecate holds a share in earth, sea and heaven; whoever sacrifices and prays to her receives wealth and success; she helps kings in judgement, men in assembly and war, athletes, horsemen, fishermen and herdsmen; and Zeus made her a nurse of the young.
Analysis
The story of Styx is a small political model of Zeus's rule. He does not simply seize power; he wins allies by promising that those who join him will keep their honours and that those who had none under Kronos will receive them 'as is just'. Strength (Kratos) and Force (Bia), who live with him always, show that his justice rests on power, a pairing famous from the opening of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (Solmsen 1949) (Clay 2003).
The hymn to Hecate (411–452) is the most surprising passage in the poem. Hecate, later a goddess of witchcraft and crossroads, appears here as a benign power who can give or withhold any blessing. The enthusiasm of the passage led some scholars to think it an interpolation or evidence of a personal or family cult; it has even been noticed that her father is called Perses, the name of Hesiod's brother. Most modern critics accept it as Hesiodic and see Hecate, who keeps her old honours in every realm under Zeus, as a figure of the continuity between the old order and the new and of the mediation between gods and men (West 1966) (Clay 2003) (Montanari 2009).
The phrase 'only child' (426, 448) matters. Unlike the sons of Ouranos and Kronos, Hecate has no brother who might threaten Zeus, and her inclusion in his order shows how a single female power can be honoured without danger, in contrast with the later swallowing of Metis (Clay 2003).
for her he appointed to be the great oath of the gods
Styx's reward for her early support: Zeus's order begins with alliances and honours fairly given.
whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls upon Hecate
Hecate's universal role in worship: the one goddess whose power touches every sphere of human life.
privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea
Hecate keeps her share from the Titan age in all three realms, unlike any other god.
Part 5: Kronos Swallows His Children; the Birth of Zeus
Theog. 453–506
Summary
Rhea bears Kronos six children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus. Warned by Earth and Heaven that he is destined to be overthrown by his own son, Kronos swallows each of them as soon as it is born, and Rhea is consumed by grief.
When she is about to give birth to Zeus, Rhea asks her parents for a plan. They send her to Lyctus in Crete, where Earth takes the baby and hides him in a cave on Mount Aegeum. To Kronos she gives a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallows, not knowing that his son has survived.
Zeus grows quickly. Kronos, deceived by Earth's cunning, vomits up his children, the stone first; Zeus sets it up at Pytho (Delphi) below Parnassus as a sign and a wonder to mortals. He frees his father's brothers, the Cyclopes, whom Ouranos had bound, and in gratitude they give him the thunder and the thunderbolt, by which he rules mortals and immortals.
Analysis
The second act of the succession myth repeats the first with a variation. Ouranos pushes his children back into their mother; Kronos takes them into himself, as if to make himself both father and mother and so stop time. In each case the father tries to prevent the next generation and fails because a mother sides with her youngest son. Zeus will break the cycle by swallowing Metis and so taking the threat of the future inside himself (Clay 2003) (Vernant 1980).
Here the Near Eastern parallel is especially close. In the Hurrian myth Kumarbi, pregnant with the gods he has swallowed, is given a stone, and the storm god Teshub emerges to overthrow him; a stone also seems to have been set up as a cult object. Hesiod's stone at Delphi, shown to visitors in later times, connects his myth to a real place of worship, as the cave in Crete connects it to Cretan cults of a divine child (Güterbock 1948) (West 1997) (West 1966).
The thunderbolt is the gift that makes Zeus king. It comes from the Cyclopes whom he released, so that his rule is founded on a debt of gratitude as well as on force. From this point on, the narrative of the poem becomes the narrative of Zeus's establishment of his power (Clay 2003).
that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods
Kronos' motive is the preservation of kingship; the swallowing is a political act.
wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled
A rare exclamation from the narrator: the clever god is outwitted by a trick.
to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men
The stone at Delphi links the myth to visible cult and to the reader's own world.
Part 6: Prometheus and the First Woman
Theog. 507–616
Summary
Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene have four sons: Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus and Epimetheus. Zeus strikes the arrogant Menoetius down to Erebus, sets Atlas to hold up the sky at the ends of the earth, and binds Prometheus with chains and a shaft through his middle, sending an eagle to eat his immortal liver, which grows back every night, until Heracles kills the bird with Zeus's consent.
The cause of the punishment is then told. When gods and men were settling their dispute at Mecone, Prometheus divided an ox: for men he wrapped the meat and fatty entrails in the stomach, and for Zeus he dressed up the bare bones in shining fat. Zeus, though he saw through the trick, chose the bones, and that is why men burn bones for the gods. In anger Zeus withheld fire from men; Prometheus stole it in a hollow fennel stalk.
As a price for fire Zeus had Hephaestus make out of earth the likeness of a modest maiden; Athena dressed her in silver clothing, a veil and garlands, and Hephaestus made her a golden crown worked with creatures. Gods and men marvelled at this 'beautiful evil'. From her, Hesiod says, comes the race of women, who live among men like drones among bees, consuming the produce of others. A man who avoids marriage has no one to care for him in old age; a man who marries, even happily, finds evil mixed with good. Not even Prometheus could escape the will of Zeus.
Analysis
The Prometheus story explains three features of the human condition: the form of sacrifice, in which men eat the meat and the gods receive smoke from the bones; the possession of fire; and the existence of women, marriage and toil. Jean-Pierre Vernant showed that these are bound together by a logic of exchange and concealment: each gift hides its opposite, the good meat inside the ugly stomach, the bones inside the fat, fire inside the fennel stalk, an evil inside a beautiful form. The sacrifice at Mecone marks the separation of men from gods (Vernant 1980) (West 1966).
The woman is not named in the Theogony; the name Pandora, 'all gifts', appears only in the parallel version in the Works and Days (47–105), where she opens a jar and releases all evils into the world, leaving only Hope inside. The Theogony's version is shorter and moves directly from the making of the woman to a general account of 'the race of women'. The simile of the drones, which reverses the real roles of the sexes among bees, has become a central text in the study of Greek misogyny (Zeitlin 1996) (Loraux 1993) (Sussman 1978).
Hesiod's attitude is not simple. He insists that a man who refuses marriage suffers too, and that a good wife can make good contend with evil; the woman is a necessary evil, the condition of human continuity as well as of human hardship. Patricia Marquardt has argued that Hesiod's view of women is ambiguous rather than merely hostile, and Froma Zeitlin that the first woman stands for the whole order of culture which divides men from gods (Marquardt 1982) (Zeitlin 1996).
because of this the tribes of men upon earth burn white bones to the deathless gods upon fragrant altars
An aetiology of sacrifice: a ritual practice is explained by a story of divine trickery.
But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing
The famous paradox of the first woman, a kalon kakon, beautiful outside and harmful within.
So it is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus
The moral of the episode, which places cunning and its punishment within Zeus's order.
Part 7: The Titanomachy
Theog. 617–735
Summary
Ouranos had bound the Hundred-Handers, Cottus, Briareos and Gyes, beneath the earth. Now Zeus and the other children of Kronos, on Earth's advice, bring them back to the light, for the war between the Titans on Mount Othrys and the Olympians has lasted ten years without decision. Zeus feeds them nectar and ambrosia and asks them to remember his kindness and fight; Cottus promises their help.
Battle is joined. The Hundred-Handers hurl huge rocks; the sea roars, the earth crashes, heaven groans, Olympus shakes to its foundations and the tremor reaches Tartarus. Then Zeus no longer holds back his might. He strides from Olympus hurling lightning; the earth burns, the forests crackle, the sea boils, heat seizes Chaos, and the noise is as if Earth and Heaven were falling together.
At the front of the battle Cottus, Briareos and Gyes launch three hundred rocks at once, overwhelm the Titans, bury them under the earth and bind them in chains in Tartarus, as far below the earth as heaven is above it: an anvil falling from heaven would take nine days to reach the earth, and nine more to reach Tartarus. There, behind gates of bronze set by Poseidon, the Titans are imprisoned, guarded by the Hundred-Handers.
Analysis
The Titanomachy is the poem's great battle scene, and its imagery of cosmic upheaval is meant to show that the war is not merely between two groups of gods but a struggle over the structure of the universe. When Zeus fights in his full power the world seems to return to its beginnings, with Earth and Heaven crashing together and heat seizing Chaos itself; his victory restores and fixes the separation of the parts of the cosmos (Clay 2003) (West 1966).
Zeus wins not by thunder alone but by intelligence and alliances. The Hundred-Handers are freed on Earth's advice, as the Cyclopes were, and they fight out of gratitude. Many critics see a tension between the two climaxes, Zeus's own aristeia (687–712) and the Hundred-Handers' decisive bombardment (713–720), and some think the passage combines different versions; others see a deliberate design in which Zeus's force and the loyalty he has earned complete each other (West 1966) (Hamilton 1989).
There are parallels in the Near East for a war between generations of gods, and Hesiod's account was itself one of several Greek versions, since a lost epic called the Titanomachy was ascribed to Eumelus of Corinth. The measurement of the distance to Tartarus by a falling anvil is a characteristically Hesiodic way of making the unimaginable concrete (West 1997) (Most 2018).
for ten full years, and the hard strife had no close or end for either side
The ten-year deadlock, like the ten years of the Trojan War, sets up the decisive intervention.
Then Zeus no longer held back his might
The turning point: Zeus enters the battle in person with the thunderbolt.
it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together
The war threatens to undo creation, reversing the first separation of Earth and Heaven.
Part 8: Tartarus and the House of Night
Theog. 736–819
Summary
Hesiod describes Tartarus and the underworld. There are the sources and limits of earth, Tartarus, sea and heaven, a damp and loathsome place that even the gods abhor; a vast chasm in which a man who passed the gates would be tossed by storm winds for a year before reaching the bottom.
There stands the house of Night, in front of which Atlas holds up the sky, and where Night and Day greet each other as they cross the bronze threshold, one going in as the other comes out, so that the house never holds both. There live Night's children, Sleep, who is kind to men, and Death, whose heart is iron and who holds fast whomever he seizes. There too are the halls of Hades and Persephone, guarded by a hound that fawns on those who enter and devours those who try to leave.
Hesiod then describes the house of Styx, a branch of Ocean whose cold water is the great oath of the gods: a god who swears falsely by it lies breathless for a year and is excluded from the gods' councils and feasts for nine years more. The passage ends with the bronze threshold, the Titans beyond Chaos, and the Hundred-Handers dwelling by Ocean, Briareos as Poseidon's son-in-law.
Analysis
The description of Tartarus is the most repetitive and textually difficult part of the poem: several passages are doublets (736–739 is repeated at 807–810) and the sequence of places is hard to map. Many editors think the section has been expanded by later poets; West regarded parts of it as a series of alternative versions combined. Others argue that its circular, layered structure suits its subject, a place at the bottom of the world where the beginnings and limits of everything are found (West 1966) (Hamilton 1989) (Clay 2003).
Whatever its origin, the passage completes the map of Hesiod's cosmos. The Titans are banished to the place where Chaos still survives, at the roots of the ordered world. The alternation of Night and Day at a single threshold is an image of the regularity that Zeus's victory has established, and the oath of Styx gives the gods a system of justice among themselves, enforcing truth on Olympus (Clay 2003) (Solmsen 1949).
a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth
The measure of the universe: Tartarus is as far below the earth as heaven is above it.
where Night and Day draw near and greet one another as they pass the great threshold of bronze
A beautiful image of cosmic order: opposites alternate without meeting inside the house.
On those who go in he fawns with his tail and both his ears, but suffers them not to go out back again
The unnamed hound of Hades, the Cerberus of the catalogue of monsters.
Part 9: Typhoeus
Theog. 820–880
Summary
After Zeus has driven the Titans from heaven, Earth, in union with Tartarus and with the help of Aphrodite, bears her youngest child, Typhoeus. He has a hundred snake heads, flickering dark tongues and eyes flashing fire, and his voices make every kind of sound: speech the gods understand, the bellow of a bull, the roar of a lion, the yelping of puppies, a hiss that echoes from the mountains. He would have become king of gods and men if Zeus had not seen the danger at once.
Zeus thunders, and earth, heaven, sea and Tartarus resound; Olympus shakes beneath his feet. The fire of the monster and the fire of the thunderbolt set the sea seething, waves rage on the shore, and Hades and the Titans tremble below. Zeus leaps from Olympus, strikes Typhoeus and burns all his heads; the monster falls maimed, and the earth melts in the heat like tin in a crucible or iron in a forge. Zeus hurls him into Tartarus.
From Typhoeus come the irregular, damp winds that wreck ships and spoil the fields; the regular winds, Notus, Boreas and Zephyrus, are of divine birth and a blessing to men.
Analysis
Typhoeus is Earth's last attempt to change the succession, and the episode repeats the pattern in which a youngest son challenges the ruler. This time the challenger fails, and Zeus's kingship becomes final. His many voices, mingling divine speech with the noises of beasts, make him a figure of confusion, the opposite of the ordered song of the Muses with which the poem began (Clay 2003) (West 1966).
The episode has close Near Eastern parallels: the Song of Ullikummi, in which Kumarbi raises a stone monster against the storm god, and stories of the storm god's fight with a serpent, which Greek writers later set on Mount Kasios in Syria. Because the Titanomachy already seems to end the war, some scholars have regarded the Typhoeus episode as an interpolation, but most now defend it as the necessary last trial of the new king (West 1997) (Walcot 1966) (Bachvarova 2016).
The metallurgical similes (861–867) are unusual in early Greek poetry and show Hesiod drawing on the crafts of his own world. The account of the winds ends the episode with an aetiology, the habit of explaining present things by their divine origins that runs through the whole poem (West 1966).
From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues
The monstrous multiplicity of Typhoeus, Earth's last child and Zeus's last enemy.
he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it
The 'would have, if not' formula marks the last real danger to Zeus's rule.
melted as tin melts when heated by men’s art in channelled crucibles
A simile from the craftsman's workshop describes the fire of the cosmic battle.
Part 10: Zeus's Marriages and the Later Catalogue
Theog. 881–1022
Summary
When the gods have won their struggle for honours, they urge Zeus, on Earth's advice, to be their king, and he distributes their privileges. His first wife is Metis (Cunning Intelligence), wisest of gods and men. Earth and Heaven warn him that she is destined to bear first Athena and then a son who will be king of gods and men, so he deceives her with soft words and swallows her, that she may advise him of good and evil.
He then marries Themis (Right), who bears the Hours, Order, Justice and Peace, and the Fates; Eurynome, who bears the Graces; Demeter, mother of Persephone; Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses; Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis; and lastly Hera, who bears Hebe, Ares and Eileithyia. Zeus gives birth to Athena from his own head, and Hera, in anger, bears Hephaestus by herself. Evelyn-White here prints an additional passage, preserved by the ancient writer Galen, with a variant account of Metis. Further births follow: Triton, Panic and Fear, Harmonia, Hermes, Dionysus, Heracles; and marriages of Hephaestus, Dionysus and Heracles, who has been made immortal.
Hesiod bids farewell to the Olympians and asks the Muses to sing of the goddesses who lay with mortal men: Demeter with Iasion, Harmonia with Cadmus, Eos with Tithonus and Cephalus, Medea with Jason, Thetis with Peleus (the parents of Akhilleus), Aphrodite with Anchises, Circe and Calypso with Odysseus. The last two lines invite the Muses to sing next 'of the company of women', the transition to the Catalogue of Women.
Analysis
The swallowing of Metis ends the succession myth. Zeus does what his father and grandfather could not: he takes the dangerous future into his own body and with it the cunning intelligence that had always been the weapon of the next generation. His kingship is now both just and permanent. The marriage to Themis, which produces Order, Justice and Peace, shows that his rule is meant to be one of law, and the gods' election of him (881–885) presents it as consented to as well as won (Clay 2003) (Vernant 1980) (Lloyd-Jones 1971).
Where the authentic poem ends is one of the oldest questions about the Theogony. The text after the marriages becomes a list without the shaping force of the earlier narrative, its manner is close to the Catalogue of Women, and it shows signs of having been adapted to join the two poems; scholars have placed Hesiod's ending at 900, at 929, at 964 or at 1020, and some defend the whole. The final catalogue, with its goddesses and heroes such as Akhilleus and Aeneas, reaches into the age of heroes, linking divine history to human genealogy (West 1966) (Hunter 2005) (Kirk 1962).
Even if parts of the ending are later, the catalogue performs a real function: it carries the reader from the age of the gods to that of the heroes and implicitly to the present, showing how the order established by Zeus extends to mortals. The final births of heroes such as Heracles, who is made immortal, close the long story of strife with images of reconciliation (Clay 2003) (Hunter 2005).
they pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them, by Earth’s prompting. So he divided their dignities amongst them.
Zeus becomes king by the choice of the gods, and his first act is a fair distribution of honours.
that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil
By swallowing Metis Zeus makes cunning intelligence part of himself; the threat becomes his counsellor.
sing of the company of women
The closing lines hand on the song to the Catalogue of Women, the poem that followed the Theogony in antiquity.
Characters
Mortals
- Hesiod
- The poet himself, who names himself in line 22 and tells how the Muses made him a singer while he was shepherding on Helicon. His persona as a farmer-poet from Ascra, developed further in the Works and Days, may be partly traditional, but it gave Greek literature its first authorial voice.
- The first woman (Pandora)
- Made of earth by Hephaestus and adorned by Athena as the price of fire, she is the 'beautiful evil' from whom the race of women descends. She is unnamed in the Theogony; in the Works and Days she is called Pandora and opens the jar of evils.
Olympians
- The Muses
- The nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who dance on Helicon and sing on Olympus. They give Hesiod his staff and voice, warn that they can speak falsehoods like the truth, and grant eloquence to kings. Calliope is the chief of them. They are the source of the poem's authority.
- Zeus
- Youngest son of Kronos and Rhea, saved from his father by a trick. He frees the Cyclopes and receives the thunderbolt, defeats the Titans and Typhoeus, is chosen king by the gods and distributes their honours. By swallowing Metis he ends the cycle of succession. His power and his justice are the goal of the whole poem.
- Aphrodite
- Born from the foam around the severed genitals of Ouranos, she lands at Cyprus with Eros and Desire as her attendants. Her portion is the whispering of girls, smiles, deceits and the sweetness of love.
- Athena
- Daughter of Metis, born from the head of Zeus after he has swallowed her mother: a goddess equal to her father in strength and wisdom who cannot threaten his rule.
- Hera
- Zeus's last wife, mother of Hebe, Ares and Eileithyia, who in anger bears Hephaestus without him. In the catalogue of monsters she rears the Hydra and the Nemean lion to trouble Heracles.
- Hephaestus
- The lame craftsman god, who models the first woman out of earth at Zeus's command and makes her golden crown.
Primordial powers
- Chaos
- The first being, a gap or void rather than a confused mass. From Chaos come Erebus and Night; at the end of the Titanomachy Chaos is seized by heat, and the Titans are imprisoned beyond it.
- Gaia (Earth)
- The second power to come into being and the mother of most of the gods. She bears Heaven, plots his castration, saves the infant Zeus from Kronos, advises the release of the Hundred-Handers, bears Typhoeus and finally urges the gods to make Zeus king. Behind every change of ruler stands her counsel.
- Eros
- Desire, fairest of the immortals, one of the first four powers. He has no parents and no story of his own, but makes all later generation possible; he accompanies Aphrodite at her birth.
- Night
- Daughter of Chaos and mother, mostly without a partner, of Death, Sleep, the Fates, Nemesis, Deceit, Old Age and Strife. Her house in the underworld, where she meets Day at the threshold, is one of the poem's most memorable images.
- Ouranos (Heaven)
- Son and husband of Earth, the first king. He hides his children inside Earth because he hates them and is castrated by Kronos. From his blood and severed members come the Erinyes, the Giants and Aphrodite. He names his sons Titans and foretells their punishment.
Titans
- Kronos
- The youngest Titan, 'the wily', who castrates his father and becomes king. Warned that his son will overthrow him, he swallows his children, is tricked into swallowing a stone in place of Zeus, and is finally defeated and confined in Tartarus.
- Rhea
- Sister and wife of Kronos and mother of the first Olympians. In her grief at Kronos' swallowing of her children she seeks her parents' help and saves Zeus by the trick of the swaddled stone.
- Prometheus
- Son of Iapetus, 'full of various wiles', who matches his intelligence against Zeus in the sacrifice at Mecone and by stealing fire. He is chained and tormented by an eagle until Heracles frees him. In Hesiod he is a trickster whose cleverness brings mankind both gain and loss, not yet the heroic benefactor of Aeschylus.
- Epimetheus
- Prometheus' 'scatter-brained' brother, 'Afterthought', who first received the woman from Zeus and so became a 'mischief to men'.
- Hecate
- Daughter of Perses and Asteria, a Titan-born goddess whom Zeus honours above all and allows to keep her privileges in earth, sea and heaven. In Hesiod she is a generous goddess of prosperity and success, quite unlike the sinister figure of later tradition.
- Styx
- The eldest daughter of Ocean, first to bring her children (Victory, Strength, Force and Emulation) to Zeus's side; in reward her water becomes the great oath of the gods.
- Atlas
- Son of Iapetus, condemned by Zeus to hold up the sky at the western edge of the world, in front of the house of Night.
Monsters
- The Hundred-Handers
- Cottus, Briareos and Gyes, sons of Earth and Heaven with a hundred arms and fifty heads each. Bound by Ouranos and freed by Zeus, they win the Titanomachy with their rocks and become guards of the Titans in Tartarus.
- The Cyclopes
- Brontes, Steropes and Arges ('Thunder', 'Lightning', 'Bright'), one-eyed sons of Earth and Heaven, who make the thunderbolt and give it to Zeus when he frees them.
- Echidna
- Half beautiful nymph and half monstrous snake, mother by Typhaon of Orthus, Cerberus, the Hydra and the Chimaera, and by Orthus of the Sphinx and the Nemean lion.
- Typhoeus
- Last child of Earth, fathered by Tartarus, with a hundred snake heads and many voices. His challenge to Zeus is the final threat to the new order; Zeus burns him and hurls him into Tartarus, and from him come the destructive winds.
Themes
The succession myth and the making of order
The backbone of the poem is the story of three generations of divine kings. Ouranos suppresses his children and is castrated by Kronos; Kronos swallows his children and is overthrown by Zeus; Zeus faces challenges from the Titans and Typhoeus and finally prevents any further succession by swallowing Metis. Each generation repeats and varies the crime of the last, and the cycle ends only when a ruler combines force with intelligence.
The story is also a cosmogony. The separation of Earth and Heaven, the imprisonment of disorder in Tartarus and the distribution of honours to the gods produce the stable universe that Hesiod's audience inhabits. Human institutions such as kingship, sacrifice and marriage are explained by being placed within this history (Clay 2003) (West 1966).
Force and cunning
Every change in the poem is won by a combination of violence and craft. Earth plans the ambush of Ouranos; Rhea deceives Kronos with a stone; Earth tricks Kronos into vomiting his children; Prometheus tries to deceive Zeus, and Zeus answers with the deceptive gift of the woman. Metis, whose name means cunning intelligence, is the final prize.
Zeus's superiority lies in his union of the two. He has the thunderbolt, Strength and Force, but he also sees through Prometheus' trick and outwits Metis. Vernant's studies of metis, the Greek idea of practical cunning, have made this a central approach to the poem (Vernant 1980) (Clay 2003).
The justice of Zeus
Zeus is presented not simply as the strongest god but as a just king who distributes honours fairly, keeps his promises to Styx and Hecate, and marries Themis, mother of Order, Justice and Peace. The proem connects his justice with that of earthly kings, who receive from the Muses the gift of straight judgement.
Readers have long asked how far the poem's justice is moral and how far it is simply the order imposed by the victor. Solmsen read Hesiod as the first Greek thinker to make Zeus the guarantor of a moral order, an idea developed by Aeschylus; Lloyd-Jones traced it through early Greek thought; others stress that Zeus's justice in the Theogony rests always on overwhelming force (Solmsen 1949) (Lloyd-Jones 1971).
Gods and mortals
The Theogony is about gods, but it keeps human beings in view: the shepherd-poet on Helicon, the kings and singers of the proem, the men who sacrifice at Mecone and receive the first woman, the sailors and farmers afflicted by the winds of Typhoeus, the heroes born of goddesses at the end. The story of Prometheus is the poem's account of the separation of mortals from immortals.
The human condition that emerges is one of mixture: men have fire and meat, but must burn bones for the gods; they have wives and children, but with them toil and grief. The Works and Days explores the same condition from the point of view of the farmer (Vernant 1980) (Clay 2003).
Truth, poetry and the Muses
The poem begins by reflecting on its own authority. The Muses tell Hesiod that they can speak falsehoods like the truth and the truth when they wish, and they give him a voice to sing of past and future. The proem then praises song as a source of forgetfulness and consolation.
This combination of claims has made the Theogony a starting point for the history of Greek ideas about fiction and truth. It shows that the earliest Greek poets were already conscious of the power of poetry to deceive, and it invites the reader to ask whether Hesiod's own account belongs among the Muses' true songs (Pucci 1977) (Lamberton 1988).
Female power and its control
Female figures are the most powerful agents of change in the poem: Earth plots against Ouranos, Rhea against Kronos, and Earth again advises Zeus and raises Typhoeus against him. Night produces whole families without a male partner. Yet the poem ends with female power absorbed into the male order: Metis is swallowed, Athena is born from Zeus's head, and the first woman is made as a punishment for men.
Feminist critics have read the poem as a mythical charter of patriarchy, in which the generative power of the mother is first necessary and then contained. Others point out that Hecate, Styx and the Muses are honoured partners in Zeus's order (Zeitlin 1996) (Loraux 1993) (Clay 2003).
Motifs
Swallowing
Kronos swallows his children, then a stone; Zeus swallows Metis. Swallowing is the poem's image of the attempt to stop time and contain the future. It succeeds only when Zeus absorbs intelligence rather than offspring (Clay 2003).
Catalogues of names
Large parts of the poem are lists: the Nereids, the rivers and Oceanids, the children of Night and Strife, the wives of Zeus. Names often carry meanings, so that a catalogue becomes a description of the world; the pleasure of naming is a central feature of the poem's oral style (West 1966) (Hamilton 1989).
Deceptive gifts
The stone in swaddling clothes, the portions at Mecone, fire in a fennel stalk and the beautiful woman are all gifts that hide their real nature. The pattern links the trickery of the succession myth with the human condition (Vernant 1980).
The youngest child
Kronos, Zeus and Typhoeus are each the youngest child of their mother, and each challenges the ruling power. The pattern, common in folk tale, makes Zeus's final victory over a younger challenger the end of a cycle (West 1966).
Aetiology
Hesiod constantly explains present realities by their origins: why men burn bones for the gods, why there is a stone at Delphi, where the destructive winds come from, why gods swear by Styx (West 1966).
Symbols
The sickle
Earth's sickle of grey flint, the weapon of the first revolt, stands for the violence that founds each new order and for the mother's role in the succession.
The thunderbolt
Made by the Cyclopes and given to Zeus in gratitude, it is the sign of his kingship and the force that defeats the Titans and Typhoeus.
The stone at Delphi
The stone that Kronos swallowed and vomited up, set up by Zeus at Pytho, is both a relic of the old order and a sign of the new, visible to mortals.
The laurel staff
The staff that the Muses give Hesiod marks him as their servant and gives his song the authority of a herald or prophet.
Fire in the fennel stalk
Prometheus' stolen fire stands for human technology and culture, won by theft and paid for with suffering.
Critical debates
Oral composition and Hesiod's persona
The Theogony uses the formulaic language of oral epic, and many scholars think it was composed in performance or in an oral tradition and only later written down. If so, how far does the first-person 'Hesiod' represent a real individual? Robert Lamberton's study treats the poet's biography in the poems as a construction shaped by tradition and performance.
Gregory Nagy has argued that 'Hesiod' is a Panhellenic figure, the idealized poet of a tradition that absorbed many local versions, and that the story of his consecration is a traditional myth of the poet. Others, including West, accept that a real poet named Hesiod composed the poem, perhaps with the help of writing, around 700 BC (Lamberton 1988) (Nagy 1990) (West 1966) (Montanari 2009).
Near Eastern origins
Since the publication of the Hittite Kumarbi texts, it has been clear that the succession myth has close parallels in the ancient Near East. Hans Güterbock called these texts 'oriental forerunners of Hesiod', and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East (1966) collected Hurrian, Hittite, Babylonian and Phoenician comparisons, including the Enuma Elish and the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos.
M. L. West's East Face of Helicon (1997) argued for extensive and detailed borrowing from the Near East into Greek poetry, Hesiod especially. Debate continues over the routes and dates of transmission (Bronze Age contacts, Cyprus, Phoenician traders in the eighth century) and over how much Hesiod transformed what he received; Carolina López-Ruiz and Mary Bachvarova have recently emphasized Phoenician and Anatolian channels (Güterbock 1948) (Walcot 1966) (West 1997) (López-Ruiz 2010) (Bachvarova 2016).
Misogyny and the first woman
Hesiod's account of the first woman and the 'race of women' is among the most hostile statements about women in Greek literature. Froma Zeitlin and Nicole Loraux have read it as a founding myth of Greek gender ideology, in which women form a separate 'race' and the male citizen imagines a world without them; Linda Sussman examined the economic logic of the drone simile.
Patricia Marquardt and others have argued that Hesiod's attitude is ambivalent: the woman is a beautiful evil but also the condition of human continuity, and the poem admits that a good wife exists. Vernant's structural reading places her within a system of exchanges that defines the human condition rather than simply blaming women (Zeitlin 1996) (Loraux 1993) (Marquardt 1982) (Sussman 1978) (Vernant 1980).
Structure and the end of the genuine poem
The Theogony moves between narrative and catalogue, and its structure has been described as loose, as built up in rings, or as a carefully balanced design. G. S. Kirk saw it as a compilation with later additions; Richard Hamilton and Jenny Strauss Clay have argued for deliberate architecture.
The ending is particularly uncertain. The last part of the poem resembles the Catalogue of Women and seems to have been adapted to lead into it. Proposals for the end of the genuine poem include 900 (after the swallowing of Metis), 929 (after the births of Athena and Hephaestus), 964 (before the farewell to the Olympians) and 1020 (before the transition to the Catalogue). West's commentary discusses the problem in detail, and the essays edited by Richard Hunter examine the relationship between the two poems (Kirk 1962) (Hamilton 1989) (Clay 2003) (West 1966) (Hunter 2005).
Hesiod and Homer
Ancient writers argued about whether Homer or Hesiod was earlier; Herodotus placed them together as the poets who gave the Greeks their theogony. The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a work in its surviving form of the Roman period with older roots, imagines them competing at Chalcis.
West argued that the Theogony was older than the Iliad and Odyssey as we have them; most scholars think the poems roughly contemporary, and the question is complicated by their common oral tradition. Barbara Graziosi has examined how the ancient picture of Homer, including the Contest, was formed (West 1966) (Graziosi 2002) (Most 2018).
Justice and the reign of Zeus
Is the reign of Zeus a moral order or simply the victory of the strongest? Friedrich Solmsen saw Hesiod as the founder of a theological tradition, continued in Aeschylus, that makes Zeus the source of justice, and Hugh Lloyd-Jones traced the idea of the justice of Zeus through archaic Greek thought.
Clay reads the Theogony and Works and Days as complementary: the Theogony shows the establishment of order from the gods' point of view, the Works and Days its consequences for men. Others stress that Zeus's order rests on force and that the poem's sympathy sometimes seems to lie with the defeated (Solmsen 1949) (Lloyd-Jones 1971) (Clay 2003).
The Muses' lies
What do the Muses mean when they say they can tell falsehoods like the truth? Some take it as a criticism of other poets, especially Homer; some as a warning about the limits of human knowledge; some as a statement that all poetry is ambiguous.
Pietro Pucci's study of Hesiod's language argued that the poem constantly reflects on the relationship between truth and imitation, and Clay sees the Muses as reminding the audience that only divine knowledge is complete (Pucci 1977) (Clay 2003) (Lamberton 1988).
Key passages
From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing
The opening line places the poem under the authority of the Muses of Helicon, the mountain near Hesiod's home. It begins as a hymn, and the hymn frames the whole cosmogony.
we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.
The most quoted lines of the poem. The Muses claim power over both truth and falsehood, which raises the question of what kind of truth poetry can claim and perhaps distinguishes Hesiod's song from that of other poets.
Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth
The first words of the cosmogony. Nothing is created by a god; the first powers simply come to be. Chaos, a gaping void, is followed by Earth, the first solid foundation.
Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.
Eros is among the first powers, the principle of desire that drives all later generation. His power over reason applies to gods as well as men.
wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled
The narrator's exclamation captures the reversal of the succession myth: the god who swallows to prevent the future is deceived by a simple trick.
stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk
The theft of fire, the basis of human culture, is told in a single line. Its price will be the first woman.
But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing
The paradox of the 'beautiful evil' sums up Hesiod's view of the first woman: an object of wonder and desire that brings hardship. It is central to discussions of Greek misogyny.
So it is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus
The moral of the Prometheus episode affirms the supremacy of Zeus's mind, which no cunning can escape.
the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze
Sleep and Death are twin children of Night; Death's iron heart is a reminder of the limits of mortal life even in a poem about immortals.
they pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them, by Earth’s prompting. So he divided their dignities amongst them.
Zeus becomes king by the gods' consent and immediately distributes honours, the fulfilment of the promise announced in the proem.
Questions for study
What do the Muses mean when they say they can speak 'many false things as though they were true'?
Consider the echo of the Odyssey, the contrast between Hesiod and other poets, and the Muses' gifts to kings and singers.
Why does the poem begin with a long hymn to the Muses rather than with the first gods?
Think about poetic authority, the story of Hesiod's consecration, and how the hymn anticipates the triumph of Zeus.
How do the three stages of the succession myth resemble and differ from one another?
Compare Ouranos, Kronos and Zeus as fathers, the role of the mothers, and the significance of swallowing Metis.
What does Hesiod's 'Chaos' mean, and why does Eros appear among the first beings?
Think about the etymology of chaos and the importance of sexual generation in the poem.
How do the Kumarbi myths and the Enuma Elish help us read the Theogony, and what is distinctively Greek in Hesiod's version?
Compare the castration of Anu, the stone and Ullikummi, and Marduk's election as king.
Why does Hesiod devote so much space to Hecate?
Consider her privileges in all realms, her status as an only child, and her role as a mediator between gods and men.
What does the Prometheus story explain about the human condition?
Think about sacrifice, fire and the first woman, and Vernant's idea of concealed gifts.
Is the Theogony misogynistic? Compare its version of the first woman with the Pandora story of the Works and Days.
Consider the drone simile, the remarks on marriage, the jar and Hope in the Works and Days, and the role of goddesses in the poem.
Why is the Typhoeus episode necessary after the Titanomachy?
Think about Earth's role, the youngest-son pattern and the finality of Zeus's victory.
Where should the Theogony end? What is gained or lost if the final catalogue is not by Hesiod?
Consider the swallowing of Metis, the marriages of Zeus, the goddesses who lay with mortals and the transition to the Catalogue of Women.
Further reading
- Athanassakis, Apostolos N., trans. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
- Bachvarova, Mary R. From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- Clay, Jenny Strauss. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Graziosi, Barbara. Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Güterbock, Hans G. "The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod." American Journal of Archaeology 52.1 (1948): 123–134.
- Hamilton, Richard. The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
- Hunter, Richard, ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Kirk, G. S. "The Structure and Aim of the Theogony." In Hésiode et son influence, Entretiens sur l'Antiquité classique 7, 61–107. Vandœuvres-Genève: Fondation Hardt, 1962.
- Lamberton, Robert. Hesiod. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
- Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. The Justice of Zeus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
- López-Ruiz, Carolina. When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
- Loraux, Nicole. The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes. Trans. Caroline Levine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
- Marquardt, Patricia A. "Hesiod's Ambiguous View of Woman." Classical Philology 77.4 (1982): 283–291.
- Montanari, Franco, Antonios Rengakos and Christos Tsagalis, eds. Brill's Companion to Hesiod. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
- Most, Glenn W., ed. and trans. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Loeb Classical Library 57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; rev. ed. 2018.
- Nagy, Gregory. Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
- Pucci, Pietro. Hesiod and the Language of Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
- Solmsen, Friedrich. Hesiod and Aeschylus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949.
- Sussman, Linda S. "Workers and Drones: Labor, Idleness and Gender Definition in Hesiod's Beehive." Arethusa 11 (1978): 27–41.
- Vernant, Jean-Pierre. "The Myth of Prometheus in Hesiod." In Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd, 168–185. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980.
- Walcot, Peter. Hesiod and the Near East. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966.
- West, M. L., ed. Hesiod: Theogony. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
- West, M. L., trans. Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
- West, M. L. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
- Zeitlin, Froma I. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.