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THE POEMS OF HESIOD AND HOMER

The Poems   of  Hesiod

The Development of  Hero    Cult

The Poems   of  Homer

The earliest works of Greek literature, the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, are explored in this chapter. In
his Theogony (ca. 700 BC), Hesiod tries to account in poetic form for the origin of the universe and the
generations of the gods, culminating in the just and equitable reign of Zeus in Hesiod’s own day. Later,
Hesiod composed the Works and Days, which uses the mythical accounts of Prometheus and Pandora to
explain the condition of Hesiod’s contemporaries on the human level: the need to work hard for a living;
the place of women in society; the role of animal sacrifice in maintaining relations between men and gods;
and the justice meted out by earthly kings as an imperfect reflection of the justice of Zeus, the king of the
gods. Intermediate between men and gods are “heroes,” mortals who become objects of cult following
their death. The cult of heroes originates in Greece during the Dark Age, and a fascinating archaeological
discovery near the modern town of Lefkandi has provided us with what appears to be early evidence for
the development of hero cult. Stories about the gods and about the men and women who were to become
objects of hero cult had circulated for hundreds of years in the form of orally composed poetic accounts.
The culmination of this tradition, which stretches back to the Mycenaean Period, can be found in the epic
poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which recount events supposedly connected with the Trojan
War, a legendary occurrence that the Greeks imagined to have taken place at the end of what we would
call the Mycenaean Period. These poems are regarded today as being among the greatest masterpieces of
Western literature; they were felt by the ancient Greeks to be not only literary creations of the first
magnitude but embodiments of Greek culture, history, and identity.

In  chapter 2,  we  saw a   number  of  features    that    characterized   the development of  Greek

civilization in the eighth century BC. These included the introduction of alphabetic writing; the willing
adoption of elements of oriental influence; the beginnings of a period of Greek expansion throughout the
Mediterranean region; the arousal of a Panhellenic sentiment in response to that expansion; the
development of the polis as the basis for Greek social and political life; and the importance of communal
cult as a catalyst for the creation of the polis. All of these features can be illustrated from a reading of the
poetry of Hesiod, who was himself born in the second half of the eighth century (probably between about
750 and 720 BC). His writings are among the earliest works of Greek literature that are available to us.
We will consider in this chapter the surviving works of Hesiod, as well as the great epic poems of
Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Poems of Hesiod