Hesiod and Ancient Greek Religion

Summary

The two works of Hesiod (c. 7th century bce), the Theogony and the Works and Days, were second only to the Homeric epics in their influence on Greek education, art, literature, and philosophy. Herodotus goes so far as to claim that Homer and Hesiod “made a theogony for the Greeks, gave the gods their epithets, distinguished their honors and skills, and indicated their forms” (2.53). Hesiod’s Theogony provided a framework for thinking about the origins of the gods and the cosmos, which can be called theology, while the Works and Days set out the coordinates of the human condition in relation to those gods. That framework could be modified, questioned, and even rejected, but it offered a common foundation for the Greeks scattered in their separate communities and subsequently also for the Romans—and finally us. This article concentrates on the works themselves and focuses on their conceptions of the gods and their influence on human life and, in turn, the obligations of human beings vis-à-vis those divine powers.