The Works of Hesiod, Callimachus, and Theognis

The poet Hesiod tells us that his father gave up sea-trading and moved from Ascra to Boeotia, that as he himself tended sheep on Mount Helicon the Muses commanded him to sing of the gods, and that he won a tripod for a funeral song at Chalcis. The poems credited to him with certainty are: the Theogony, an attempt to bring order into the otherwise chaotic material of Greek mythology through genealogies and anecdotes about the gods; and The Works and Days, a wise sermon addressed to his brother Perses as a result of a dispute over their dead father's estate. This latter work presents the injustice of the world with mythological examples and memorable images, and concludes with a collection of folk wisdom. Uncertain attributions are the Shield of Heracles and the Catalogue of Women. Hesiod is a didactic and individualistic poet who is often compared and contrasted with Homer, as both are representative of early epic style. "Hesiod is earth-bound and dun colored; indeed part of his purpose is to discredit the brilliance and the ideals of heroism glorified in the homeric tradition. But Hesiod, too, is poetry, though of a different order... " (Moses Hadas, N.Y. Times). Callimachus was an Alexandrine grammarian and poet. He was a native of Cyrene in Africa. He lived at Alexandria where was a cataloguer of the famous library of Alexandria, from about 260 B.C. until his death about 240 B.C. Among his students were Arostophanes of Byzantium and Apollonius Rhodius Callimachus wrote numerous works on a variety of subjects, but of these only his poems exist, which are characterized by elegance and learning. In his day he was widely admired and later served as a model for Catullus and the Roman elegiac poets, especially Ovid.