Hesiod

This new, fully-annotated translation by a leading expert on Hesiodic poems combines accuracy with readability and includes an introduction and explanatory notes on these two works by one of the oldest known Greek poets. The Theogony contains a systematic genealogy and account of the struggles of the gods, and the Works and Days offers a compendium of moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry.

This study reveals the unity of Hesiod's vision of the Cosmos by reading both his poems as two complementary halves of a whole embracing the human and divine cosmos. In the Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod, roughly contemporary with Homer, does not describe the deeds of the heroes. He provides instead the earliest comprehensive account of the genesis of the Greek gods and the nature of human life that became the foundation for later Greek literature and philosophy.

"This is a significant book for early Greek historians and scholars of Greek literature. It's an original and important argument, and everyone working on archaic Greece will need to read this and take it into consideration."--Ian Morris, author of "Archaeology as Cultural History

In this pathbreaking book, which includes a powerful new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days by esteemed translator David Grene, Stephanie Nelson argues that a society's vision of farming contains deep indications about its view of the human place within nature, and our relationship to the divine. She contends that both Hesiod in the Works and Days and Vergil in the Georgics saw farming in this way, and so wrote their poems not only about farming itself, but also about its deeper ethical and religious implications. Hesiod, Nelson argues, saw farming as revealing that man must live by the sweat of his brow, and that good, for human beings, must always be accompanied by hardship. Within this vision justice, competition, cooperation, and the need for labor take their place alongside the uncertainties of the seasons and even of particular lucky and unlucky days to form a meaningful whole within which human life is an integral part. Vergil, Nelson argues, deliberately modeled his poem upon the Works and Days, and did so in order to reveal that his is a very different vision. Hesiod saw the hardship in farming; Vergil sees its violence as well. Farming is for him both our life within nature, and also our battle against her. Against the background of Hesiods poem, which found a single meaning for human life, Vergil thus creates a split vision and suggests that human beings may be radically alienated from both nature and the divine. Nelson argues that both the Georgics and the Works and Days have been misread because scholars have not seen the importance of the connection between the two poems, and because they have not seen that farming is the true concern of both, farming in its deepest and most profoundly unsettling sense.

The book introduces readers to the history and civilization of ancient Greece in all its complexity and variety, from its first beginnings in the Bronze Age (c. 3000 BC) through the Hellenistic Era (c. 150 BC). Employing a truly balanced approach to history -- integrating its political, military, social and cultural aspects -- the authors show how the early Greeks borrowed from their neighbours but eventually developed a distinctive culture all their own marked by astonishing creative, versatility, and resilience. They go on to trace the complex and surprising evolution of Greek civilization to its eventual dissolution as it merged with a variety of other cultures. Using the physical evidence of archaeology, the written testimony of literary texts and inscriptions, and anthropological models based on comparative studies, this book provides an account of the Greek world that is thoughtful and sophisticated while remaining accessible to readers who know little or nothing about Greece. The four renowned authors of this book, whose interests range from the study of women in the ancient world to military and diplomatic history, have produced a lively, up-to-date and balanced account of rich civilization.

The Mesopotamian influence on Greek mythology in literary works of the epic period is considerable - yet it is a largely unexplored field. In this book Charles Penglase investigates major Mesopotamian and Greek myths. His examination concentrates on journey myths. A major breakthrough is achieved in the recognition of the extent of Mesopotamian influence and in the understanding of the colourful myths involved.The results are of significant interest, especially to scholars and students of ancient Greek and Near Eastern religion and mythology.

In Volume One Barry Sandywell outlined and defended a central place for reflexivity in the human sciences. In this second equally outstanding volume, he reconstructs the origins of "European" reflection.

This second volume of Voegelin's magisterial Order and History, The World of the Polis explores the ancient Greek symbolization of human reality. Taking us from the origins of Greek culture in the Pre-Homeric Cretan civilizations, through the Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod, and the rise of philosophy with the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus, this masterful work concludes with the later period of the Skeptics.

In The World of the Polis, Voegelin traces the emergence of the forms of the city-state and of philosophy from the ancient symbolism of myth. He maintains that the limits and ultimate goals of human nature are constant and that the central problem of every society is the same -- "to create an order that will endow the fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human". Thus, Voegelin shows how "the meaning of existence" achieved concrete expression in the typical political, social, and religious institutions of Greece and in the productions of its poets and thinkers. He deals with more than fifty Greek writers in the course of his analysis of the rise of myth and its representation of the divine order of the cosmos as the first great symbolic form of order, one later supplanted by the leap in being reflected in the emergence of philosophy.

The book is a tour de force, a virtuoso performance by a philologist and philosopher of great power, learning, and imagination that places its subject matter in a new light. Scholars and students of political science, philosophy, and the history of ideas will find this work invaluable.