With Voice and Pen: Coming to Know Medieval Song and How It Was Made Includes CD Book

Theogony is on the dullish side. It moves along at a fine, brisk pace, but it's mostly just genealogy, with a few stories interspersed. I can see how it's important, as a sort of "myth central," but Hesiod is narrowly focused here on names, and parentage, and he's so reverent about "loud-thundering" Zeus that he can list page after page of the women Zeus slept with and the children he sired without ever giving a hint of the dramas or jealousies usually involved in these stories. Zeus comes across more as the valuable foundation stud in the Olympian breeding program than the randy, resourceful lover of later (and more entertaining) stories.

One thing that I did find interesting in Theogony, which is expanded upon in Works and Days, is the idea that Zeus is a god of justice and righteousness. That is certainly not a view that you see much in Homer, or generally depicted in other places. In Theogony it is the divinely gifted kings (gifted specifically by the Muses, not Zeus, but the Muses powers can be assumed to derive from Zeus I think) who are described as just and righteous.

"Whomsoever great Zeus' daughters favour among the kings that Zeus fosters, and turn their eyes upon him at his birth, upon his tongue they shed sweet dew, and out of his mouth the words flow honeyed; and the peoples all look to him as he decides what is to prevail with his straight judgments. His word is sure, and expertly he makes a quick end of even a great dispute."

In Works and Days these qualities are directly attributed to Zeus, the language used to describe Zeus sounding much like that used for God in the Hebrew scriptures.

"Muses from Pieria, who glorify by songs, come to me, tell of Zeus your father in your singing. Because of him mortal men are unmentioned and mentioned, spoken and unspoken of, according to great Zeus' will. For easily he makes strong, and easily he oppresses the strong, easily he diminishes the conspicuous one and magnifies the inconspicuous, and easily he makes the crooked straight and withers the proud - Zeus who thunders on high, who dwells in the highest mansions. O hearken as thou seest and hearest, and make judgments straight with righteousness, Lord"

Despite all this mightiness, Hesiod's Zeus can still be tricked out of the nicest bits of animal sacrifices by the crafty Prometheus, using the old "cover the bones with an attractive layer of fat" ploy, and out of fire (smuggled to mankind by Prometheus in a fennel tube. What is a fennel tube?), so he's not omniscient or omnipotent. Well, Hesiod is conflicted about whether Zeus actually knew about the sacrifice trick (In Theogony he says "Zeus, whose designs do not fail, recognized the trick and did not mistake it," whereas in Works and Days Zeus was "angry because Prometheus's crooked cunning had tricked him.") Still, as Oscar Wilde said, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative," and no one could accuse Hesiod of a lack of imagination, anyway.

Works and Days is much more entertaining than Theogony. It is an odd mix of myth, folk proverbs, and a whole lot of advice from Hesiod to his troublesome brother, Perses, on how to be a decent human being instead of a jerk. A lot of his advice concerns home economics and farming, and one of his tips involves naked farming, which I found an … interesting idea. "This is the rule of the land, both for those who live near the sea and for those who live in the winding glens far from the swelling sea, a rich terrain: naked sow and naked drive the oxen, and naked reap, if you want to bring in Demeter's works in all due season, so that you have each crop grow in season." It would certainly cut down on the laundry, anyway.

Not only does Hesiod advise his brother on farming, boating, and managing the help, he also tells him how to pick a good wife and how and where to urinate. And more. One can't help suspecting that, no matter how much of a clueless slacker Perses may have been, he would have had to have been extraordinarily good-natured to appreciate all this advice. (And sure, maybe Perses is just serving a literary function here, but isn't it more fun to assume he was real, and to imagine his reaction to his brother's book?)

This review is for M.L. West's translation of Theogony And Works And Days , which I note for my own information, as I also have Stanley Lombardo's version on the shelf waiting to be read. Since I don't know Greek I can't speak to the quality of translation (though, since it's an Oxford World's Classics, I'm sure it's fine), but it seemed to strike a nice balance by being modern but dignified (as dignified as you can be while discussing gods who behave like alley cats and the impropriety of passing gas in "rivers that flow to the sea."). I subtracted a star for Theogony, which is pretty boring, so this gets four stars.