Unit Six:

HESIODPeasant Farmer in a Changing

Time

Read: Hesiod, Works and Days

According to Herodotus it was Homer and Hesiod who did the most to shape the Pantheon of the Greeks. The writings of Homer and Hesiod areour best record of the attitudes, aimsand anxieties of Greeks in the 8th

through the 6th centuries BCE.

Homer reflected the sentiments andconcerns of the warrior classes, bythe 8th century BCE, a decliningbreed.

Hesiod expressed the anxiety of thesmall farmer in a transitional agewhen more populous city states(polis) had begun to replace thefeudal courts of the warlords andland barons.

Athens: the Acropolis

The polis in Greece was a small urban center and its surrounding agricultural area which supported polis residents. In Hesiod’s time the polis system was developing law codes, civil courts, and large armies, transforming civil life in Greece from widely spaced feudal estates to densely settled cities.

Agora of Athens Athens Acropolis

For Hesiod the irony of Greek life presented men with two types of strife:

" Strife is no only child. Upon the earth two Strifes exist; The one is praised by those who cometo know her, The other blamed."

It had been Pandora who had allowed all but hope to escape from her chest into the world.

In Theogony, Hesiod hopes for relief from the social anxiety of his class in the character of Zeus, who brought order to the world as he matured into the guardian of Fairness and Justice.

In Works and Days

"This son of Kronos made this law for men:That animals and fish and winged birds Should eat each other, for they have no law. But mankind has the law of right from him, . . .

Hesiod, the small farmer of the generation after Homer, was the younger brother of Perses.

As a result of the practice that the oldest son inherited the family property (primogeniture), Hesiod lost his livelihood as a farmer.

When the family farm was taken from him by the decision of the court in the nearby emerging city state (polis). The evolving laws of men in the polis destroyed Hesiod’s way-of-life.

The evolution of the Ages of Men:

1st = Gold 2nd = Silver3rd = Bronze4th = Heroes (age of Troy)5th = Iron = Hesiod's age

Read in Works and Days what Hesiod has to say about the ages of men.

More than the Deeds of the Divine, Hesiod also Gave Practical Advice

From line 404 to the end of Works and Days ,Hesiod gives "practical" advice for life on the farm, such as:

“Bring home a wife when you are ripe for it;”

“Don't let a boy of twelve years, or twelvemonths, Sit on a tomb or other sacred thing;It will unman the baby, or the boy."

• "Pandora, for the gifts which all the gods Had given her, this ruin of mankind.“

• "Don't let a woman, wiggling her behind, And flattering and coaxing, take you in; She wants your barn: woman is a cheat."

• "First, get a house, a woman, and an ox for ploughing.Let the woman be a slave, Unmarried, who can help youin the fields,"