Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

steals, didactic, shapes, inheritance, justice, liver, trickster, property, creation, Metis, fire, sea, Kronos, expertise, Gaea, evils, overthrown, farming, bones, Perses, agriculture, Zeus, astronomy, heroic, Homer

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Hesiod (750BC-660BC)

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around the same time as Homer

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one of the first European poets to regard himself as a topic

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Hesiod and           Homer established Greek religious customs

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major source on Greek mythology,               farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek                   astronomy, and ancient time-keeping

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Homer composed             heroic epic, Hesiod composed                 didactic epic (emphasizing instructional and informative qualities)

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unlike Homer, Hesiod tells us a bit about himself

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from Ascra

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an awful place in the winter, miserable in the summer, nice never

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his father emigrated there because of poverty

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Theogony

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                creation myth

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shares a great deal with similar stories from the Near East

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process of disorder to order

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out of chaos emerges         Gaea [GUY-ah] (Earth) who in turn produces Uranus [UR-in-us] (the sky), these two have sex, but then Uranus stuffs the offspring back into Gaea because he is scared of being                     overthrown. Gaea conspires with her youngest son,             Kronos, and once when Gaea comes down with romance in his mind, Kronos takes the sickle given to him and castrates his father Uranus, the severed genitals are tossed into the       sea and out of the foam that surrounds them comes the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite. Now Kronos starts reproducing and devours his own children (Goya's painting in Madrid). The youngest child now         Zeus, assisted by Gaea, has a conflict with his father Kronos, and Zeus finally triumphs, his weapon of choice being the thunderbolt. Violence, betrayal, illicit sexuality and generational conflict characterize this creation myth.

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Zeus has to fight for supremacy, has to overcome the Titans: Atlas and his brother Prometheus

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Prometheus story: he is a                   trickster, he tricks Zeus, were going to have a sacrifice, take slaughtered animal, Prometheus hides the good meat and wraps the           bones in glistening white fat, then Zeus finds there is only bones inside and is very angry, in retaliation, Zeus withdraws         fire from men (when Gods quarrel, we suffer). Prometheus             steals the fire back, gives it to men, Zeus has Prometheus tied to a crag, where an eagle comes down and devours his           liver everyday and it regenerates by night, and for a punishment gives mankind women in the form of Pandora, she gets gifts from all the gods, she is very beautiful, Prometheus' half-wit brother Epimetheus accepts her, bad mistake, Pandora then releases from a jar all of the           evils in the world. This myth explains why we sacrifice the way we do, why we have fire, why we have women, and why we have hope (it was left in the jar from which the evils sprang).

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Zeus then sets about reproducing

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with           Metis

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challenges her to a game of changing             shapes, he says I bet you can't turn into a fly, she does, and when she's in mid-air he grabs her and swallows her, and then gives birth himself, to the goddess Athena, who is born fully armed out of his head

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genuine polytheism

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a number of gods with Zeus very much at the top

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each with various areas of                   expertise

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after triumphing by force, Zeus comes to be identifying with the principle of               justice

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The Works and Days

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one great subject of this work is justice

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Hesiod has a brother,             Perses, frequently called by Hesiod a nitwit, because he has cheated Hesiod from his                       inheritance

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the control of                 property by a family was a topic of enormous importance to the Greeks all the way through the Greek ages

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Hesiod tries to tell his brother that there are two kinds of strife: good kind that makes you want to excel, and then the bad kind which leads to quarreling

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much general advice of                       agriculture, what is appropriate to the various seasons, and folk beliefs of what you should or should not do in the fields