Hesiod, I, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia

Hesiod

Edited and Translated by Glenn W. Most

    For a wider audience, especially in this era of resurgent environmental verse, the day of the rural seer and sage may finally have arrived. Glenn Most's splendid new bilingual volume is, therefore, timely...It offers readers and scholars alike the most reliable prose translation and the richest supplementary materials available.
       --Richard Martin, New York Sun

    In the stimulating introduction to his new Loeb Classics two-volume edition of Hesiod, Glenn Most makes the case that we, too, should admire Hesiod for his powerful and unified worldview...The vast questions that are addressed in these poems--the origins of the gods, the way the world works, the reasons why things are as they are--can be seen as the first rumblings of natural science, physics, philosophy, theology, medicine, autobiography, agriculture, law, even history and textual criticism...Hesiod is our oldest source for many of the best-known and best-loved stories of Greek mythology...The disturbing moral complexity of the Hesiodic poems is all the more reason why we should continue to read and study them...No other modern English translation includes the fragmentary works or the ancient testimonia. If you already have some familiarity with Hesiod's two best-known works and you want to know more about the rest of the Hesiodic corpus and about the ancient reception of this canonical figure, then Most's new Loeb books will be essential. Most makes various important corrections and improvements in his translation...We may look back to Hesiod's poetry as representative of a cultural Golden Age when it was possible for a single work of literature to encompass the whole of traditional 'wisdom': high and low, ancient and modern, philosophical and poetic, practical and metaphysical. Perhaps even our Age of Iron could learn from him.
       --Emily Wilson, New Republic

  • Cover: Hesiod, I, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia
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The Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

Glenn W. Most is Professor of Greek Philology, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and Professor of Social Thought, University of Chicago.