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Hesiod's Theogony

Hesiod's Theogony

Richard Caldwell

University of Southern California (Emeritus)

1987 • 0-941051-00-5 • paper • 138 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $9.95

Hesiod's straightforward account of family conflict among the gods is the best and earliest evidence of what the ancient Greeks believed about the beginning of the world. Includes Hesiod's Works and Days, lines 1-201, and the Library of Apollodorus.

| About the Author | Table of Contents | Preface |

 Description                                             

English translation. Hesiod's straightforward account of family conflict among the gods is the best and earliest evidence of what the ancient Greeks believed about the beginning of the world. Includes Hesiod's Works and Days, lines 1-201, and the Library of Apollodorus.

 Author                                                    

Richard Caldwell is Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California. His PhD is from the University of Texas and he specializes in both the Classics and psychoanalysis. He has written the popular transation of Hesiod's Theogony and a new prose translation of Vergil's Aeneid.

 Table of Contents                                     

Preface
Introduction
    The Structure of the Theogony
    Greece before Hesiod
    Hesiod and the Theogonic Tradition
    Near Eastern Theogonies
Hediod's Theogony
Interpretation:
    The Psychology of the Succession Myth
    Appendix A: Hesiod, Works and Days 1-201
    Appendix B: The Library of Apollodoros
    Index

 From the Preface                                   

      Hesiod's Theogony is our best and earliest evidence for what the ancient Greeks believed about the beginning of the world and its divine governance. It is a relatively short (1020 lines, in the version that we know) and straightforward account of family relationships and conflicts among the gods, culminating in the reign of Zeus and his establishment of a permanent divine order. But, underlying the genealogical lists and categorical descriptions of battles, begettings, monsters, nymphs, and remote places, the Theogony is also a complex and powerful statement of the connection between family status and the drive for power.

      Trying to sort out the descriptive and architectural aspects of the poem from the psychological and, in a sense, philosophical is only one of several problems confronting a student of the Theogony. From our perspective, long after the crystallization of Greek myth into a systematic structure, the emphases in the Theogony seem misplaced. The major Olympian gods and goddesses, with the exception of Zeus and Aphrodite, are scarcely mentioned, while minor deities like Styx and Hekate receive lengthy portrayals and detailed attention is paid to water-nymphs, multiple-headed monsters, and the cartography of the underworld. Furthermore, the Theogony is perhaps the most problematic Greek text we have. We cannot say with certainty whether Hesiod wrote it, dictated it, or simply sang it, when it was composed (and when written down<197>the two may be separate questions), how much of it is traditional and how much original, whether Hesiod is the author of all, part, or none of it, in fact whether there ever was an actual poet named Hesiod. And these uncertainties apply not only to the poem as a whole, but even more to separate sections and even individual lines.

      I have tried to help the student of the Theogony confront these problems by providing as much information about the poem as seemed appropriate in a book of this size. Since I presuppose from the reader knowledge neither of the Greek language nor of Greek myth, I have attempted to answer in the commentary every question which might occur to such a reader, as well as every question which, in my opinion, should arise. I have also made my translation as literal as possible. My motive was to avoid putting anything external between Hesiod and the reader, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that an absolutely literal translation seemed to convey the archaic, almost ritualistic, atmosphere of the original better than a less accurate rendering.