Hesiodic Voices: Studies in the Ancient Reception of Hesiod’s Works and Days

This book selects central texts illustrating the literary reception of Hesiod’s Works and Days in antiquity and considers how these moments were crucial in fashioning the idea of ‘didactic literature’. A central chapter considers the development of ancient ideas about didactic poetry, relying not so much on explicit critical theory as on how Hesiod was read and used from the earliest period of reception onwards. Other chapters consider Hesiodic reception in the archaic poetry of Alcaeus and Simonides, in the classical prose of Plato, Xenophon and Isocrates, in the Aesopic tradition, and in the imperial prose of Dio Chrysostom and Lucian; there is also a groundbreaking study of Plutarch’s extensive commentary on the Works and Days and an account of ancient ideas of Hesiod’s linguistic style. This is a major and innovative contribution to the study of Hesiod’s remarkable poem and to the Greek literary engagement with the past.