Hesiod (
Greek ?s??d?? Hesíodos) was a
Greek oral poet and is often identified as the first
economist[2][3][4]. His date is uncertain but leading scholars
[5][verification needed], agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the eighth century BC.
[dubious – discuss] Since at least
Herodotus's time (
Histories, 2.53), Hesiod and
Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired. Scholars disagree about who lived first, and the fourth-century BC
sophist Alcidamas'
Mouseion even brought them together in an imagined poetic
agon, the
Contest of Homer and Hesiod.
Aristarchus first argued for Homer's priority, a claim that was generally accepted by later antiquity.
[6]Hesiod's writings serve as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
Some scholars have doubted whether Hesiod alone conceived and wrote the poems attributed to him. For example, Symonds writes that "the first ten verses of the Works and Days are spurious—borrowed probably from some Orphic hymn to Zeus and recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias."[8]
As with Homer, legendary traditions have accumulated around Hesiod. Unlike Homer's case, however, some biographical details have survived a few details of Hesiod's life come from three references in Works and Days; some further inferences derive from his Theogony. His father came from Cyme in Aeolis, which lay between Ionia and the Troad in Northwestern Anatolia, but crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet near Thespiae in Boeotia named Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works, l. 640). Hesiod's patrimony there, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned a pair of lawsuits with his brother Perses, who won both under the same judges.
