Hesiod

Role: poet · First appears: Hesiod’s Works and Days · Part 3

Hesiod was a son of Dius and Pycimede, and the brother of Perses. In Works and Days, he refused to give Perses any more grain or measure, while advising him, “even with your brother smile—and get a witness.” He also recalled that he and Perses shared a father who used to sail on shipboard.

At Chalcis, Hesiod says he won a song contest at the games of Amphidamas and dedicated his tripod to the Muses of Helicon. Another account describes him and Homer as contemporaries and rivals in a contest of skill: although the Hellenes called for Homer to be crowned, King Paneides asked each poet to recite a passage, then awarded the crown to Hesiod. Hesiod won and dedicated the brazen tripod he received to the Muses. Aristophanes rejected the Precepts as a work of Hesiod.

As Hesiod approached the temple at Delphi, the prophetess warned that death awaited him in the pleasant grove of Nemean Zeus. At Oenoe in Locris, he stayed with Amphiphanes and Ganyetor, sons of Phegeus, unknowingly entering the place named in the oracle. One account says the brothers killed him, suspecting him of seducing their sister, and cast his body into the sea; another names Ctimenus and Antiphus, sons of Ganyetor, as his killers. On the third day dolphins brought Hesiod’s body to shore, where people recognized, mourned, and buried him. Later, the men of Orchomenus removed his body and buried it in their country.