Hēsiŏdus

, a celebrated poet, born at Ascra in Bœotia. His father’s name was Dius, and his mother’s Pycimede. He lived in the age of Homer, and even obtained a poetical prize in competition with him, according to Varro and Plutarch. Quintilian, Phi lost ratus, and others maintain that Hesiod lived before the age of Homer; but Velleius Paterculus and others support that he flourished about 100 years after him. Hesiod is the first who wrote a poem on agriculture. This composition is called The Works and the Days ; and besides the instructions which are given to the cultivator of the field, the reader is pleased to find many moral reflections worthy of a refined So crates or a Plato. His Theogony is a miscellaneous narration executed without art, precision, choice, judgment, or connection, yet it is the more valuable for the faithful account it gives of the gods of antiquity. His Shield of Hercules is but a fragment of a larger poem, in which it is supposed he gave an account of the most celebrated heroines among the ancients. Hesiod, without being master of the fire and sublimity of Homer, is admired for the elegance of his diction, and the sweetne of his poetry. Besides these poems he wrote others, now lost. Pausanias says that, in his age, Hesiod’s verses were still written on tablets in the temple of the Muses, of which the poet was a priest. If we believe Clement of Alexandria , bk. 6 , Stromateis , the poet borrowed much from Musæus. One of Lucian’s dialogues bears the name of Hesiod , and in it the poet is introduced as speaking of himself. Virgil, in his Georgics, has imitated the compositions of Hesiod, and taken his opera and dies for model, as he acknowledges. Cicero strongly commends him, and the Greeks were so partial to his poetry and moral instructions, that they ordered their children to learn all by heart. Hesiod was murdered by the sons of Ganyctor of Naupactum, and his body was thrown into the sea. Some dolphins brought back the body to the shore, which was immediately known, and the murderers were discovered by the poet’s dogs, and thrown into the sea. If Hesiod flourished in the age of Homer, he lived 907 B.C. The best editions of this poet are that of Robinson, 4to, Oxford, 1737; that of Loesner, 8vo, Lipscomb, 1778; and that of Parma, 4to, 1785. Cicero , Letters to his Friends , bk. 6 , ltr. 18 .— Pausanias , bk. 9 , ch. 3 , . — Quintilian , bk. 10 , ch. 1 .— Paterculus. — Varro. — Plutarch , Septem Sapientium Convivium , & De Sollertia Animalium .