Theogony vs Works and Days: Hesiod's Two Poems

Hesiod left two complete poems, and they answer each other. The Theogony asks where the gods came from and how Zeus ended up in charge. Works and Days takes that order as settled and asks what a man with a field and a dishonest brother should do about it. Both were composed around 700 BC in the same hexameter verse, and both can be read in an evening.

At a glance

	Theogony	Works and Days
Subject	The birth of the gods and the rise of Zeus	Honest work, justice, the farming year
Length	1,022 lines	828 lines
Addressed to	No one in particular	His brother Perses
Shape	Family lists broken by great battles	Argument, myth, then practical advice
Prometheus	Lines 507 to 616	Lines 42 to 105
The first woman	Unnamed, no jar	Pandora, with the jar and Hope

What the titles mean

Theogony means the birth of the gods, and the poem does what the word says. Works and Days names its two practical parts. The works are the labours of the year, from ploughing to sailing. The days are the closing list of lucky and unlucky days of the month, which runs from line 765 to the end.

The Theogony: who was born of whom

The poem opens with the Muses, who teach Hesiod to sing while he is keeping lambs under Mount Helicon. Then it goes back to the start of everything.

“Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth”
Theogony, lines 116 to 138

From there it is a family history with violence in every generation. Cronus castrates his father Uranus, swallows his own children and is overthrown by Zeus. The war with the Titans and the fight with Typhoeus settle the matter, and the poem ends with Zeus's marriages and the children goddesses bore to mortal men. For the whole sequence, read the Theogony part by part or follow the family tree.

Works and Days: a poem aimed at a brother

Works and Days has a grievance behind it. Hesiod says his brother Perses took the larger share of their inheritance and paid the local lords to judge in his favour, and the poem keeps turning back to him.

“Perses, lay up these things in your heart, and do not let that Strife who delights in mischief hold your heart back from work, while you peep and peer and listen to the wrangles of the court-house.”
Works and Days, lines 25 to 41

Hesiod tells us more about himself here than anywhere else. His father sailed from Aeolian Cyme to escape poverty and settled at Ascra, near Helicon, a village he calls bad in winter and sultry in summer. The second half gives the farmer's year by the stars, with advice on the plough, the harvest and the risks of going to sea.

“When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set.”
Works and Days, lines 383 to 404

It closes on the calendar of days, and on a line that any farmer would recognise.

“Sometimes a day is a stepmother, sometimes a mother.”
Works and Days, lines 822 to 828

The same story told twice: Prometheus and the first woman

The one long myth the two poems share shows how differently they work. In the Theogony, the contest between Prometheus and Zeus explains how Zeus cannot be cheated. The first woman appears as the price of stolen fire, made by Hephaestus and dressed by Athena, and she has no name.

“But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing, he brought her out, delighting in the finery which the bright-eyed daughter of a mighty father had given her, to the place where the other gods and men were. And wonder took hold of the deathless gods and mortal men when they saw that which was sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.”
Theogony, lines 585 to 589

In Works and Days the same story explains why people have to work at all. She now has a name, and every god adds something to her.

“And he called this woman Pandora, because all they who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift, a plague to men who eat bread.”
Works and Days, lines 69 to 82

Only this version has the jar. Hesiod's word means a large storage jar. The box everyone remembers came from Erasmus, whose Latin rendering in the sixteenth century changed the vessel.

“Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door”
Works and Days, lines 90 to 105

One Strife or two

The Theogony lists Strife among the children of Night, a single grim figure. Works and Days opens its argument by taking that back.

“So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two.”
Works and Days, lines 11 to 24

The second Strife is the good kind, the envy that makes a man plough because his neighbour is ploughing. Many scholars read that "after all" as Hesiod correcting his earlier poem, and it is one of the main reasons the Theogony is usually placed first.

Only in Works and Days: the five races

Lines 109 to 201 give the story of mankind's decline that later writers made famous: the golden race, the silver, the bronze, the heroes and the iron race of the present. The heroes interrupt the falling metals, since they are better than the bronze men before them. Then Hesiod reaches his own time, and speaks in his own voice.

“For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night”
Works and Days, lines 170 to 201

The Theogony has nothing like this. It looks only at the gods, and people barely appear except to pay for Prometheus.

Which should you read first?

The Theogony. It is the longer poem and the quicker read, since it moves from one catastrophe to the next, and Works and Days takes for granted the gods and the Prometheus story it tells. Start the other way round and much of the second poem's force is lost. Read the two together in Evelyn-White's 1914 translation, which is free on Project Gutenberg. Our illustrated edition uses that same translation for the Theogony alone.

Questions

What does Theogony mean?

The birth of the gods. The word joins the Greek theos, god, with a root meaning birth or descent.

Which came first, the Theogony or Works and Days?

Most scholars put the Theogony first. Neither poem carries a date, so the order rests on evidence inside them, such as the second poem correcting the first on Strife.

Who is Perses?

Hesiod's brother, the man Works and Days is addressed to. The poem accuses him of taking the larger share of their inheritance with the help of bribed lords.

Is Pandora in the Theogony?

The first woman is there, but she has no name. Hesiod calls her Pandora only in Works and Days.

Can I read both poems for free?

Yes. Hugh G. Evelyn-White's 1914 translation of both is in the public domain and on Project Gutenberg, as ebook 348.

Does Theogony Illustrated include Works and Days?

No. The illustrated edition holds the Theogony alone.