Reading for Tuesday July 10, 2001

Norlin Reserve: Hesiod Theogony ll. 1-868 Price p. 11-19

We have all heard of the great epic poet Homer and many have read his Iliad or Odyssey. Very few, however, have heard of his contemporary Hesiod, whose poems were equally famed in antiquity. Where Homer's poems tell the tales of war and adventure in lengthy narratives, Hesiod wrote more compact compositions of what are today called "wisdom literature." His earliest poem, the Theogony was perhaps composed in the late 8th century BC. We say perhaps because it is uncertain that it was written down at this period. In fact, some would contend that Hesiod's poems were originally transmitted orally, memorized and recited by generation after generation of Greek musicians. Some even believe that Hesiod, like Homer, was not a real poet but a mythical figure identified with the group of poems which came to be recited orally in his name. In brief, Hesiod is an elusive figure.

His poems are elusive as well. The Theogony tells the story of the creation of the divine universe as the Greeks understood it. The Greek name theogonia simply means "the birth of the gods" and as you will see, the poem has everything to do with divine generation. Hesiod's gods are a primitive lot: constantly quarrelling; mutilating one another in bizarre ways; regenerating in endless permutations of mating-pairs, many of them incestuous. The products of this generation are also primitive and bizarre: the fifty-headed-hundred-armed giants Kottos, Briareos and Gyges; Typhoeus the monster with a hundred snake-heads; the lion-headed-goat-bodied-snake tailed Chimera. Even despite this apparent mayhem in the realm of the divine, Hesiod portrays the world with a certain sense of order. Indeed, he ultimately depicts the creation of order out of chaos, the establishment of a universe with distinct rules for gods and men and the sharp demarcation of just and unjust acts. In the midst of his complicated catalogs and endless schemes, we can detect a tenuous cosmological balance which accounts for but does not excuse a complicated universe.

Questions

1. How does Hesiod create a world in poetry? What are the principles which govern the world he creates?

2. Why so many Gods? Why might Hesiod be interested in listing them in catalogs? What associations does Hesiod make with certain gods: Gaia the Earth Goddess? Cronos the chief Titan? Zeus the chief Olympian?

3. Do you notice any change in the nature of each of the succeeding generations of gods? What role does the change of generations play in the struggles between the gods? What might this tell us about Greek society? Why do certain gods win out?

4. How do the gods mirror humanity and how do they differ from it? How do they mirror the forces of nature? How are natural forces sacralized in the Theogony and what does this tell us about the sacralization of these natural forces in Greek culture?

5. Do you sense an overriding conception of right and justice in the Theogony? On what is it based and how does it work?

6. Are immortals close to or detached from mortals? What happens if mortals cross immortals or do them an injustice?

7. How powerful are the gods? How much control does any one god have?