Like
Homer, Hesiod lived long before Thales, which was demonstrably so long ago that
time itself, counted in centuries, seems to have lost its significance.
According to some accounts, Homer preceded Hesiod by at least four hundred
years. According to others, they lived at about the same time, in the eighth
century BC, and there is even an old legend about a poetic contest between them
(Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi), which, however, is quite blurry as to who
won.
I
was familiar with Hesiod since childhood through his poem Theogony,
which I read in Professor Kuhn’s retelling, in his outstanding work Legends
and Myths of Ancient Greece, one of the formative books in my life.
Hesiod’s other famous poem Works and Days has earned him the title father
of Greek didactic poetry, being a moralistic tale of life and labor,
sprinkled with all sorts of precepts, fables, and allegories.
Hesiod’s
moralistic approach to life makes an interesting contrast between him and
Homer, whose gods are amoral and fickle. This is how unfamiliarly for the
readers of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Zeus is described in the Works
and Days:
“Through him mortal men are famed or
unfamed, sung or unsung alike, as great Zeus wills. For, easily he makes
strong, and brings the strong low, easily he humbles the proud, and raises the
obscure, and easily he straightens the crooked, and blasts the proud. So is
there no way to escape the will of Zeus.
“Listen to right, and foster not
violence. The better path is to go by on the other side toward Justice, for it
beats Outrage, when she comes at length to the end of the race. For those who
practice violence and cruel deeds, far-seeing Zeus ordains punishment… You
princes mark this well too, for the gods are nearby men, and mark all those who
oppress their fellows… Lay up these things within your heart, and listen to
what is right. For whoever knows the right, and is ready to speak it, Zeus
gives him prosperity, but whoever hurts justice, and sins beyond repair, that
man’s generation is left obscure thereafter.”
This
truly sounds like a didactic passage from the Bible, except that Hesiod uses
the name Zeus, where the Bible speaks of God. Let us also notice his
monotheistic tendency, far more pronounced than in Homer, in whom monotheism
manifests itself obliquely as the force behind the law of fate.
Ironically,
despite all his religious moralism, Hesiod is banned from Plato’s Politeia,
on a par with Homer, and there is a twofold reason for that. On the one hand,
many gods of Hesiod continue to act immorally, as they all did in Homer’s
poems. On the other, Plato objects to Hesiod instilling the fear of death in
people, whereas young men must not be taught to fear death, lest they will act
less bravely in battle…
Commenting
on Plato’s first point, this is true that in Theogony the moralist
Hesiod does allow his gods to act randomly, erratically, and immorally, but
Plato misses his intention to contrast such behavior to Zeus’s monotheistic triumph
at the end of these heavenly squabbles and indignities, and thus Zeus installs
himself as the sole ruler of the universe, and the enforcer of the Moral Law of
Heaven, reducing all other gods and goddesses to strictly subordinate
positions. As for Plato’s second point, the fact that he raises the question of
the fear of death in his indirect philosophical polemic with Hesiod,
establishes the latter’s credentials as a bona fide philosopher by ipse
dixit, ipse being Plato, of course.
We
can go on with Hesiod’s qualifications as a philosopher, but what we have said
already is sufficient for the decisive verdict of quod erat demonstrandum.
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