Theogony and Works and Days

Widely considered the first poet in the Western tradition to address the matter of his own experience, Hesiod occupies a seminalposition in literary history. The Theogony brings together and formalizesmany of the Greek myth narratives, detailing the genealogy of the Greek gods and their violent struggles for power. Works and Days seemson its faceto be a compendium of advice about managing a farm, but itranges far beyond this scope to meditate on the virtues of a good life, morality, justice, and the place of humans in the universe. Considered foundational texts of Western literature, these poems are concerned with orderliness and organization, and they proclaim those ideals from small scale to vast, from the legibility of a handful of seeds to the story of the cosmos. Presented here in a bilingual edition, Johnson's translation takes careto preserve Hesiod's expression of his themes in the structure of his lines and sentences, achieving a sonic and rhythmic balance that enables us to hear his music across the millennia.