Theogony, Works and Days (Oxford World's Classics) | Hesiod | Ian Myles Slater on: West's Hesiod...

Theogony, Works and Days (Oxford World's Classics) | Hesiod | The Ancient Greek's handbook

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Theogony, Works an...

	Theogony, Works and Days (Oxford World's Classics) Hesiod Oxford University Press, USA, 1999 - 112 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This new, fully-annotated translation by a leading expert on Hesiodic poems combines accuracy with readability and includes an introduction and explanatory notes on these two works by one of the oldest known Greek poets. The Theogony contains a systematic genealogy and account of the struggles of the gods, and the Works and Days offers a compendium of moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry.

Ian Myles Slater on: West's Hesiod Translation

Some of the other reviews offered with M.L. West's translation of Hesiod's "Theogony" and "Works and Days" for the Oxford World's Classics actually refer to Dorothea Wender's verse translation of the same works, plus a charming version of the collection of lyrics attributed to Theognis, published in the Penguin Classics. That is a worthwhile version -- although the joining of the peasant-oriented Boeotian Hesiod to the mainly aristocratic, and partly Athenian, "Theognis" corpus is a little odd.

West's version of the two main Hesiodic poems is, however, in prose, and offers the latest in textual and historical scholarship -- although this is not very obviously on display. West, who has edited much (perhaps by now all) of the "Hesiodic" corpus, with substantial technical commentaries (along with a good deal of Homer and the "Homeric Hymns"), offers here his best reading of the two long poems which seem most firmly attributed Hesiod. (Although some, including Wender, would prefer two poets, in addition to the problem of interpolations).

West's commentary, although useful, is surprisingly sparse, given what he could have offered; a lot of detailed argument has been converted into the translation itself.

"Theogony," for those not familiar with the work even by reputation, is the story of the origins and struggles of the gods of Classical Greece. Although the meter and basic style are those of the Homeric epics, and the gods are mainly the same, many details are different (Zeus is a younger son, not the eldest, for example), and the struggles between various generations are the foreground story, not a long-concluded background to the reign of Zeus. We meet Heaven, and his sons and daughters, culminating in the rebellion of the Titans, then the Olympians, who wage war against their father and his fellow-Titans, and so on. It is an extremely violent story, full of abusive parents, mutilations inflicted by rebellious offspring, divine cannibalism, and a whole succession of other behaviors the Greeks themselves considered repellent. The philosophers had real problems with this work -- one can understand from it why Plato wanted to ban poets from the ideal state.

Interspersed through the action are a number of catalogues of nature-deities, which are variously regarded by critics as interpolations or key structural elements. Many readers simply find them boring; it helps if you are using a translation which interprets the Greek names, which are usually charmingly appropriate for the natural element being personified.

"Works and Days" contains several important mythological passages, expanding and altering "Theogony," but is in the main a sort of sermon on how to be prosperous and righteous. It is packed with details of daily life, which readers will find either fascinating or tedious. and are sometimes rather opaque. West does a good job in making readable this combination of a sort of pagan equivalent of an Old Testament prophet with an Iron Age Farmer's Almanac, and his notes do help with some of the knottier passages. (Note that there is one recent translation-with-commentary of the "Works" which is dedicated almost entirely to making detailed agricultural and ethnographic sense of it; West clearly offers a more literary approach.)

The latter part of the twentieth century has seen a number of translations of the main Hesiodic poems, by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, R.M. Frazer, Richmond Lattimore, and, as noted above, Dorothea Wender (Penguin Classics), to join the old Evelyn-White bilingual edition for the Loeb Classical Library edition, with numerous attributed fragments. (A new Loeb edition has announced). There are also translations of single poems, by Norman O. Brown and by Richard S. Caldwell (both of the "Theogony") and Tandy and Neale ("Works and Days"). West offers a substantial alternative to the others, based on an exceptionally close knowledge of the textual problems.

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The Ancient Greek's handbook

"Theogony" is one of, if not "the", original sources of Greek mythology. Hesiod tells us the full genealogy and origins of the Greek gods, and how the hegemony of Zeus was established after bitter fights and prolific intercourse with godesses and human females. Perhaps the most impressive part of this poem is the story about the god Typhoon. Hesiod depicts a horrific set of disasters that happened to the Earth, with Typhoon apparently being an unimaginable electric storm. Scholars like Immanuel Velikovsky have taken this episode as proof that many centuries ago, Venus and Mars, then wandering cosmic bodies, came very close to each other in a location near the Earth, which presumably caused our planet's rotation to stop, with the following earthquakes, electric storms and the like. In fact, reading that passage by Hesiod strongly seemed to me to be the writing of very old memories of a defining catastrophe that left an indelible mark on human memory. Be that true or not, the poem is very powerful.

"Works and Days" is a very different story. After Hesiod's father died, his apparently indolent brother Perses tried to rob him of part of the inheritance. We all know how bitter fights among siblings can be, especially about inheritances. So Hesiod decided to write a book to teach his brother some lessons, beginning with a little history and theology, and then some practical advice on how to make a decent living by hard work and honesty. The result is a simply wonderful account of some important myths, like the ages through which man has passed (Golden, Silver, Heroic, Bronze and our own), as well as Pandora's myth. He also tells us about Prometheus, the Christ-like figure of the Greeks. After that, Hesiod tells us how a Greek farmer should plan his activities for the year, with delicious depictions of the seasons and very concrete information about their way of life.

It is a very pleasant experience to go down to the very sources of our culture, especially when written in Hesiod's light, brief and humorous way. A very old masterpiece whhich is very important for how much of it we have carried to the present day.

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Easily read Hesiod

This is the 4th translation of the Theogony that I've read over about 40 years of interest. I always felt that Hesiod's "Descent of the Gods" was cosmogony as much as theogony, and that "myth" provided a basis, perhaps unconscious, for much of what came later with the "materialist" pre-Socratic nature philosophers. The other translations were by Caldwell, Brown and Lattimore. I prefer Caldwell's for the detail in his footnotes and interseting Introduction, but this one is easily readable. Caldwell's version is in fact based upon the work of M. L. West, the author of this one. West is considered by many to be the authority.

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Very interesting

I found this book quite interesting. It provided alot of good information for someone who was interested in learning about other religions.

Thoreau Is Hesiod Reincarnated

Many readers focus on the Theogony, which is the ancient Greeks Creation Story, and which Hesiod articulated masterfully. The descriptions of the battles between Zeus and the Titans made for vivid and stirring oration in the hands of a great speaker, as he boasts that he was by citing his awards. However, I was more intrigued by Works and Days. The advice of Hesiod was, indeed, sagacious: "It is good to take from what is available, but sorrow to the heart to be wanting what is not." And I liked this one: "Right gets the upper hand over violence in the end." At times he seemed like Thoreau incarnate preaching industry and self-reliance from his little cabin on Walden Pond: "Avoid shady seats and sleeping til sunrise at harvest time, when the sun parches the skin. At that time get on with it and gather home the harvest, rising before dawn so that your livelihood may be assured. For the morning accounts for a third of the work." Or this one: "For property is as life to wretched mortals." Some of his advice is quaint, as when a man should take a wife. The thing of it is that so much of what passed for wisdom in ancient days would still pass for it today.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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