HESIOD (Greek, flourished 750 BCE)
Hesiod was a poet who flourished around 750 BCE, roughly the same time as Homer. He is credited with two works believed to be authentic. The Works and Days is a sort of "farmer's almanac" in which he instructs his brother Perses in the arts of agriculture. In the process he dispenses moral advice on how to live one's best life, and recounts myths like "The Myth of the Ages," the names of which are the Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron (the present). The Theogony, as its title suggests, recounts "the birth of the gods"--that is, foundational mythology.
- Further poems, referred to as the "Hesiodic corpus," have been attributed to Hesiod, but today their authenticity is doubted.
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