Hesiod

Two poems and a body of fragments. The Theogony and the Works and Days are transmitted complete. The Catalogue of Women survives only in fragments. The sources cite them by “F” numbers (F 198, 199, 204, 271, 272). West treats the poem as pseudo-Hesiodic and sixth-century.^[1] West does not name the edition behind his “F” numbers. Elsewhere in the same volume Hesiod’s fragments are cited from Merkelbach and West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford 1967).^[2]

Editions named in the sources. For the Theogony, the reference edition is West’s commentary (Oxford 1966). Katz uses it, for instance, on Hesiod’s genitive plural θεᾶν (theān), “of goddesses” (twice), against Homer’s consistent θεάων (theaōn).^[3] Apart from the ancient editions described below, the sources on this site do not discuss the manuscript tradition of Hesiod, so this page says nothing about it.

Ancient editors. Hellenistic scholars worked on Hesiod from the start. At Alexandria, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus all wrote on the poems. At Pergamon, Crates of Mallos did the same.^[4] Only three poems were edited and commented on: the Theogony, the Works and Days and the Shield. These three alone have scholia in the medieval manuscripts. The Catalogue of Women was accepted as genuine at Alexandria and at Pergamon, yet no ancient commentary on it survives. Aristophanes of Byzantium judged the Shield spurious.^[5]

Proems were doubted more than whole poems. Praxiphanes, Aristarchus and Crates all rejected the proem of the Works and Days, and Crates rejected the Theogony’s too. A proem could be dropped because it was tied to the occasion of a rhapsode’s performance.^[6] The Works and Days reached Alexandria in a longer form, with a section on bird omens after line 828. Apollonius of Rhodes held that section spurious, and it is now lost.^[7]

Papyri of the Hesiodic poems are plentiful. They were still circulating in Egypt in the fourth century AD.^[8]

Text used here. Hesiod is quoted from the Perseus Digital Library, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The text is that of H. G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Classical Library, London and New York 1914). The Perseus header names Evelyn-White as editor of the Theogony and as translator of the Works and Days. Where a metrical point depends on a reading, the line is checked against what West or Katz print.

Silence of the ancient handbook. Hephaestion’s Enchiridion draws most of its hexameter examples from Homer. It attributes no quotation to Hesiod. The Homer page gives the ancient metricians’ view of the hexameter. West’s Prosody chapter cites Hesiod twice. One citation is for the two lines below. The other is for words and names beginning with σκ- and ζ- that exceptionally fail to “make position” (lengthen the syllable before them) “in Hesiod and Homer”.^[9]

A prosodic variant preserved in the tradition. At Theogony 319 the sequence stop + nasal (ἔτικτε πνέουσαν) is treated as releasing the syllable, so that -τε remains short. The same happens in ἀκροκνέφαιος at Works and Days 567 (scanned — ⏑ ⏑ — —). Both are “exceptional”, since the nasals are “seldom” so treated before the fifth century.^[10] The Perseus text prints both lines as West reads them.

Hesiod uses the same hexameter as Homer. West’s description of the metre^[1] applies to him without change, since the hexameter of the two poets is one metre.^[2] The account of the epic line holds for both poets. The placing of — — — — words at the line-end is nearly identical in Hesiod and Homer.^[3] What the sources say specifically about Hesiod is a short list of prosodic details. They are the whole of what this site can state.

The opening of the Theogony. The first four lines already show the main varieties of caesura.

Line 1 is the rarer type, in which one long word fills the entire third foot and the caesura comes after the fourth princeps.^[2] Here Ἑλικωνιάδων occupies the third foot entirely. This caesura, after the seventh element, comes about once in a hundred lines. It is usually there to accommodate a proper name, as here.^[4]

Line 2 has the feminine caesura, after the first short of the third foot. After μέγα it has word-end at the end of an uncontracted fourth foot: the bucolic caesura.^[5] τε is long before ζ-.

Line 3 has the masculine caesura, after the long of the third foot. Its -ρὶ, in the princeps, is lengthened by the stop + liquid at the start of κρήνην. Lengthening of a final syllable by an initial stop + liquid is largely restricted to the princeps.^[6] Early poetry normally lets a syllable stay short before stop + liquid only at the beginning of a word.^[7] Line 4 has the feminine caesura, and -ος is lengthened, again in the princeps, before Κρ-.

Where Hesiod is laxer than Homer. A consonant group “makes position” when it lengthens the syllable before it. In two Hesiodic lines a stop followed by a nasal does not make position. This treatment is rare before the fifth century:^[8]

Theogony 319 is also the line West quotes (without reference) as one that breaks Hermann’s Bridge. Hermann’s Bridge forbids word-end between the two shorts of the fourth biceps. Here word-end falls there (πνέουσαν ¦ ἀμαιμάκετον). Homer allows this only about once in 550 lines.^[5] So the same line illustrates two licences at once.

Some metrically intractable words and names in the two poets begin with σκ- or ζ-. In them these groups exceptionally fail to make position: Σκάμανδρος (Skamandros) and Σκαμάνδριος (Skamandrios), σκέπαρνον (skeparnon), “adze”, σκιή (skiē), “shadow”, Ζάκυνθος (Zakynthos), Ζέλεια (Zeleia).^[9] A short final vowel before such a word stays short.

Prosody that differs from Homer’s. Hesiod’s text has the same mixture of dialects as Homer’s, with Ionic as its base.^[10] Some of the differences show in the scansion.

Short accusatives. The accusative plural of the first declension once ended in -ανς. Before a vowel the old ending gave a long syllable, and before a consonant a short one. Homer keeps this distinction faithfully: before a vowel his accusatives are always long, as in κούρᾱς ἀνέλοντο (kourās anelonto) (Od. 20.66). Hesiod has a number of short -ᾰς before a vowel, as in κούρᾰς ὁμόφρονας (kouras homophronas) (Th. 60).^[11]

Ancient scholars called these short forms Doric. A modern explanation is that singers took a short form from a formula where a consonant followed, and reused it before a vowel. Hesiod’s μετὰ τροπὰς ἠελίοιο (meta tropas ēelioio), “after the sun’s turning” (Op. 564), may have arisen in this way.^[12] The same uneven pattern, short -ᾰς in the first declension beside long -ους in the second, is common in Alcman and Stesichorus. Cassio takes it to link Hesiod with the traditions of lyric.^[13]

κᾰλός and ῐσος. Hesiod sometimes scans the first syllable of καλός (kalos), “beautiful”, and ἴσος (isos), “equal”, short (Th. 585; Op. 63, 752). These forms are younger than Homer’s long ones. They come from a later way of dividing the old consonant groups lw and sw between syllables. Hesiod still prefers the Homeric prosody. In the Theogony and Works and Days ἶσος has its long first syllable eight times and the short one once; καλός has the long one twelve times and the short one twice.^[14]

The lost [w]. Some words once began with the sound [w], which Ionic had lost. Hesiod ignores the lost sound more often than Homer does, and often in phrases of his own. In ἵν’ Ἑσπερίδες (hin’ Hesperides), “where the Hesperides …” (Th. 275), for example, ἵνα (hina) is elided before a word that once began with [w]. κᾰλὸν εἶδος (kalon eidos), “beautiful form” (Op. 63), is another example, since εἶδος too once began with [w].^[15] Hesiod also has more contracted forms than Homer, such as λουτρῷ (loutrōi), “in a bath” (Op. 753), for Homer’s λοετρ- (loetr-).^[16]

Forms chosen for the metre. The metre explains several of Hesiod’s forms. In many lines εἰς (eis), “into”, is required by the metre, as at Th. 292.^[14] δίη (diē) (Th. 260) is a feminine of δῖος (dīos), “divine”, made to fit, since δῖά τε (dīa te) would not scan.^[17] θεόσδοτος (theosdotos), “god-given” (Op. 320), stands where the regular θεόδοτος (theodotos) would not fit the hexameter.^[18] For the coldest month Hesiod uses the Ionic name Ληναιών (Lēnaiōn) (Op. 504), not the Boeotian Βουκάτιον (Boukation), though Βουκάτιον would also have scanned.^[16]

A rare word-end after a contracted fourth biceps. In the hexameter, word-division after a contracted biceps is frequent only in the first foot. In the fourth foot such a word usually has a long vowel in its final syllable. It practically never ends in a short open vowel (Wernicke’s Law). West’s example of the rare exception is Hesiodic:^[19]

A postpositive is a small word, like τε, that leans on the word before it. Θέμιν τε, counted with its postpositive, ends in the contracted fourth biceps, since τε is long before Μν-. West marks -μιν and Μνη- as the fourth and fifth principes. The first τε is lengthened before Ῥ-, in the second princeps.^[20]

The pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue. Its fragments fill the start of the line even less regularly than Homer does. F 199.3 and a line of F 204 clearly open with a trochaic first foot. These examples are late, from the sixth century. But West thinks such freedom in the first foot probably dates back to the beginnings of the hexameter.^[21] In F 198.2, Ὀδυσσῆος ἱερὴ ἴς (Odyssēos hierē is), “the holy strength of Odysseus”, the final -ος of Ὀδυσσῆος is lengthened before ἱερή. West explains this by an aspirate that still had consonantal value when the formula was made.^[22]

Composed as hexameter. Theogony 1–67 reads like a poem made in hexameters from the first.^[23] Apart from the prosodic points above, this is the only general statement about Hesiod’s versification in these sources. Beyond single lines (Th. 135, 319; Op. 567), no source used here gives figures for Hesiod’s caesurae, contraction or Hermann’s Bridge. So none are given on this page.