City of God - Augustine

In 410AD King Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The mere thought of barbarians conquering the most powerful nation on earth was inconceivable. The Empire that had ruled the world had been defeated and the wealth of the city was decimated. Shock and horror was soon followed by pointed accusations. Despite the Edict of Thessalonica in 380AD that had endorsed Nicene Christianity as the state religion Rome was still largely divided into pagan and Christian groups. The pagans began to circulate rumors that Christians were culpable for the decimation of Rome, they had caused Rome to turn her back on her true pagan gods. In particular, Zosimus, a Roman historian, claimed that “Christianity, through its abandonment of the ancient traditional rites, had weakened the Empire's political virtues, and that the poor decisions of the Imperial government that led to the sack were due to the lack of the gods' care.” 1

When Marcellinus, a Roman Christian official in North Africa, wrote Augustine a letter asking his opinion about the charges being made against Christianity, Augustine enthusiastically took up his pen. He was to spend the next thirteen years writing his response, which would become the City of God, in which his goal would be to absolve Christianity for the fall of Rome. 

I’ve been having stress dreams about how to tackle this book. How can one give a summation of a book that covers literally everything? Philip Schaff’s translation is 728 pages in length, not the longest book I’ve read, but Augustine is… more complicated. His side bar discussions are epic rabbit trails including a discussion on the aesthetics of male nipples and the longevity of peacock meat. He delves into the history of the world and the origin of evil, speculates on how animals dispersed after the flood, and argues with Plato, Varro, Origen, Tertullian and so many others. 

Augustine could have used an editor. Maybe that’s sacrilegious to say, but I’m in good company. Possidius, Augustine’s close friend and biographer, complained that Augustine wrote so much “that scarcely any student would be able to read and know them all,” 2 and Isidore of Seville cautioned that anyone claiming to have read all of his works was a liar. 3 (Granted, this last claim has more to do with their accessibility during the Middle Ages than the enormity of the corpus…but still…kind of the same thing.) 

For the last year I have spent a lot of time reading through some of the satirists of the first century, like Horace, Persius, Petronius and Juvenal. They were the clarion call for a society careening off the rails; a society where men became gods and dictated morality, while they themselves debauched with impunity. In many ways, four hundred years later, even after Rome has become christianized, Augustine’s claims have a similar ring to them. 

Augustine’s first ten chapters examine the claim of Zosimus with a critical eye: What has paganism contributed to the health and moral fabric of Rome? He begins his attack with the pagan literary hero Homer. If the gods can protect cities, why did they allow Troy to burn? If it was to punish Paris for his adultery, what about the fratricide of Romulus? Instead of being punished for murdering his brother the gods illogically became his guardian. As Augustine picks his way through Homer finding moral failings of the gods and showcasing their lack of omniscience, he argues in Book III.2: 

“Gods, then, so great as Apollo and Neptune, in ignorance of the cheat that was to defraud them of their wages, built the wall of Troy for nothing but thanks from a thankless people. There may be some doubt as to whether it is not a worse crime to believe such persons to be gods, than to cheat such gods.”

Augustine is critical of Rome’s origin story. The mother of Romulus and Remus was a vestal virgin named Sylvia. How could the gods allow the sacrilege of her impregnation? Granted…she was walking through the sacred grove dedicated to Mars…what was Mars supposed to do? Not rape her?

This reminds me of Nero and the rape of the vestal virgin Rubia, which demonstrates Augustine’s point: Far from exemplifying honor and virtue, these pagan gods promote piracy and take what they will with impunity. If they reflect the powerful, reveling in their glory and taking what they desire as their due, what are mere mortals to emulate? And more dangerously- what about men who fashion themselves as gods? There is no such thing as chastity and virtue in the pagan god code of honor, and we’ve seen where this has lead Caligula, Nero and Domitian.

In the Confessions Augustine cautioned that allowing Terence to be read would likely corrupt school boys: While Jupiter pours himself through the skylight into Danaë’s lap, the youth thinks: “Well, a poor fellow like me can’t do that, but I have imitated him in the other thing and what fun it was!” (Confessions 1.16:26) The scene not only serves to work up the lusts of a dissolute youth, but it also fosters a dangerous conception of masculinity. Are these their role models? Are these same gods that are transforming themselves into bulls and swans and having their way with unsuspecting maidens even capable of morality?

Next, Augustine goes into the disasters of the history of Rome with apparent relish. (III.18: “The Disasters Suffered by the Romans in the Punic Wars, Which Were Not Mitigated by the Protection of the Gods”, III.20: “Of the Destruction of the Saguntines, Who Received No Help from the Roman Gods, Though Perishing on Account of Their Fidelity to Rome,” etc.) You can almost see the fifty-nine year old Augustine, hunched over his writing desk, the psalms plastered to his stucco walls, enthusiastically writing each failure of the pagan gods.

And then Augustine sharpens his attack. The decline of morality in Rome can not entirely be blamed on the pagan gods, but rather the humans that worship them and the cesspool of debauchery that has come to constitute pagan ritual worship. This worship called for an emulation of lust and avarice rather than virtue. 

In Book VII Augustine delves into the obscene worship rituals in honor of Bacchus and his coterie. Brides are outraged by the “god” Priupus [VII.24], and men are castrated in honor of the Great Mother [VII.25-26]. In VII.34-35 Augustine talks about the discovery of the sacred writings of the legendary second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. Numa is credited with the creation of Rome’s most important political and religious institutions, (as well as the creation of a twelve month calendar.)  One fateful day, his writings are discovered by a farmer in Janiculum, and the senate deemed these rites to be so dangerous that they demanded the book to be burned. 4

We’ve heard a description of worship getting out of hand in the satires of Persius, what Kirk Freundenburg referred to as “Nero’s Orgasmatron.”4  Persius argues that the citizens of Rome have prostituted themselves on the altar of Nero, hoping for scraps of the enormous wealth that has washed into the city after each foreign conquest. They have lost their moral plumb line and are willing to put up with obscenity if it comes with a seven course meal. It seems obvious that it wasn’t “through the abandonment of the ancient traditional rites” that the Empire’s virtue has become weakened, but rather because of them.

Varro has a solution. Since Homer and Hesiod say such awkward things about the gods, and put the gods in such a negative light, there must be different types of revelation that fall into different categories of theology: mythical, physical and political. The mythic is within the purview of the poets, the physical: the philosopher, and the political: ordinary citizens. Sounds simple enough. 

“In the first of these theologies are found many fictions unworthy of the dignity and nature of immortal beings. For in this kind of theology one divinity [Minerva] was born from another’s head, a second [Bacchus] from a thigh, a third [Pegasus] from drops of blood; some gods [e.g.Mercury] were thieves, others [e.g. Jupiter] adulterers, and still others [Apollo] slaves of men, and in general deeds are attributed to gods which are not merely human but abnormal.” 

[VI.5] 

Varro then delineates where the appropriate worship and knowledge of each theology takes place: “The first kind of theology is suitable for the theater; the second, for the world; the third, for the city.” [VI.5] Augustine finds this logic confusing. Isn’t the city part of the world? And aren’t theaters usually in cities? At the end of Varro’s forty-one books instead of a systematic theology, Augustine finds systematic confusion. At the end human learning “however broad and deep, is of no avail.” [VI.6] And he argues that Varro’s final product is “so close in the fellowship of falsehood as to delight the demons whose only battle is with teaching of truth.” [VI.6]

The problem with this tripartite system is that the theater is one of the few egalitarian spaces. Maybe the upper echelons of society get better seats, but all classes and genders were allowed to participate, and here in this space the spectators become active participants in a type of formative theology. The narrative always emphasizes the logic and might of imperial power. In the mock battles of the circus the emperor, cloaked in divine authority, chooses who lives and who dies.

Some theologians argued that for the persecuted Christian glory and honor were still within their grasp despite the details of their death. Tertullian discussed the spectacle of Christian martyrdom in An Address to the Martyrs and concluded that even for the mutilated bodies of the murdered Christians glory was still available, won from the trial of a gruesome public death. But Augustine would disagree. The quest for glory leads to self love, which further leads to the love of power and dominion, and all of this leads to pride. 

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God: “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head””

[XIV.28]

For the Christian our example is the “self emptying humility of the cross.” 6 There was nothing glorious in Christ’s death. There was nothing glorious in the humiliation of the cross, but for the Christian that is not the end of the story. What was glorious was His conquering of sin and death and His resurrection. 

“Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 
[Philippians 2:9-11]

For the Christian, everything is done for the glory of God. All spectacles are for His name and His honor: 

“When raised to Him, our heart becomes his altar; His only Son is the priest who wins us for his favor…We burn the sweetest incense in His sight when we are aflame with holy piety and love. As the best gift we consecrate and surrender to Him our very selves which He has given us.’ 

[X.3]

While the gratuitous sex and murder has become a stumbling block for the “theology of the theater,” Christ’s humility has become the stumbling block for the philosophers. They are repulsed by his humanity. Why would God leave the sanctity of heaven to debase himself as a man, why would he humble himself by taking on the form of a servant?  The philosophers trust in themselves and their ability to intellectually pursue virtue. Augustine is unimpressed: 

“You drive men, therefore, into the most palpable error. And yet you are not ashamed of doing so much harm, though you call yourself a lover of virtue and wisdom. Had you been true and faithful in this profession, you would have recognized Christ, the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, and would not, in pride and vain science, have revolted from His wholesome humanity…But He fulfills what the holy prophets truly predict regarding Him: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nought the prudence of the prudent.” 

[X.28]

For Rome, moral depravity didn't begin in 313AD with the Edict of Milan or in 380AD with the Edict of Thessalonica; it didn’t begin with Romulus and Remus or Numa, rather it was the foundation the city was built on; it is the foundation all human cities are built on. Augustine brings up another fratricide: the story of Cain and Abel.  While Romulus and Remus represent a city divided against itself, the story of Cain and Abel represent the enmity between the two cities: the city of man and the City of God. Cain’s battle wasn’t with his brother, it was against his envious heart. 

“The root of the trouble was that diabolical envy which moves evil men to hate those who are good for no other reason than that they are good…the fact is that in everyone ‘the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” 

[XV.5]

This war between spirit and flesh is ultimately the battle of the two cities. The earthly city is preoccupied with a longing of ‘belonging’ here in this world and the other is “City of longings for God.” [XV.21] And the victory won’t be shed by our blood and what we contribute to the fight, but by what has already been accomplished by our mediator and king: the God-Man Jesus Christ. 

Both cities occupy the same temporal place, one is symbolically called Jerusalem, or vision of peace, and the other Babylon or Babel which represents confusion. The battle field is not a physical place but rather the hearts and minds of men, and it exists beyond tribes and countries. Here, in this world both Christians and pagans will suffer tribulation: 

“For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they have issued from the same press. So, too, the tide of trouble will test, purify, and improve the good, but beat, crush and wash away the wicked. So it is that, under the weight of the same affliction, the wicked deny and blaspheme God, and the good pray to Him and praise Him. The difference is not what people suffer but in the way they suffer. The same shaking that makes fetid water stink makes perfume issue a more pleasant odor.” 

[I.8]

The next 500 pages serve as a warning for everyone to recognize the active battle between these two cities: the city of the flesh and the city of the spirit. Augustine believes that the real calamity isn’t the destruction of a city but rather the destruction of a heart saturated in moral depravity.

Ultimately this book is a call to action for Augustine’s fellow Christians. A call to emulate the humility and compassion of our savior. A call to emulate his life and death, dying to self that He might be glorified. Thanks to the grace of God through Jesus, the trials and tribulations of the Christian are not meaningless but serve to draw them closer to God. The world is a living system of entropy. It will fail, it will be destroyed. The hope isn’t that the Christian will not suffer, but rather that she will bear her sufferings with a “stout heart, and with a fortitude that find its strength in faith.” [XXII.22] The goal isn’t to survive well in this life, but to wait with hope and expectation for the next.

1. Mitchell, Stephen.  A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284–641. Blackwell Publishing, 2007. page 27.

2. Possidius, Life of St. Augustine XVIII

3. PL 83.1109

4. This article offers a different option, arguing that it wasn’t the danger of evil or moral corruption the senate found to be scandalizing, but rather Numa’s apparent Hellenism. 

5. Freudenburg, Kirk. Satires of Rome: Threatening poses from Lucilius to Juvenal. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

6. Wetzel, James, editor. Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide. Jennifer Herdt “The theater of the virtues: Augustine’s critique of pagan mimesis”, Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

Resources: 

City Of God, translation by Philip Schaff 

Plutarch on Numa in Parallel Lives 

Letter on the Spectacles - Tertullian 
An Address to the Martyrs - Tertullian 

The Satires of Persius

In high school my sister and I took a community college English class together. As somewhat sheltered homeschoolers this was the big time. We were surrounded by worldly and knowledgable people; we held our own and tried to convince ourselves we weren’t socially awkward. 

One of the short stories we had to read and discuss was “The Rocking Horse Winner” (1926) by D.H. Lawrence. The basic plot is this: a family is struggling financially, the mother insists it’s because they are unlucky, she has thrown away her life on a worthless man and now she’s trapped in a house that whispers “More money! There must be more money!” Her son attempts to rectify the situation by betting on horse races. Luckily he has a little trick up his sleeve that involves riding his rocking-horse into a moment of ecstasy when the name of the next winner is revealed. This works! He starts surreptitiously giving his mother his winnings, but her response is to become even more avaricious. Her hunger for more drives him into a frenzy of rocking-horse riding…that eventually leads to him once again picking a winner and simultaneously dying of brain fever. So in a nutshell, this is a didactic lesson on the danger of chasing after wealth that is forever just outside your grasp. 

I was young and innocent. In class when lewd suggestions were made about Paul’s rocking-horse business, I stood up and eloquently defended him. There was nothing untoward about rocking yourself into a trance. Totally normal behavior. Here’s a quote: 

“When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking horse, starring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy bright.” 

(Side note: D.H. Lawrence isn’t really known for chaste and innocent writing. The Rainbow (1915) was censured after an obscenity trial and over one thousand copies were seized and destroyed…) 

I refused to read anything sexual between the lines. I think my professor probably thought I was adorably naive. His response to my tirade was something along the lines of “…huh..” Still, there’s a difference between being naive and innocent, and willfully obtuse. And this is the accusation Persius makes against the Roman aristocracy. 

Like Paul, riding his rocking-horse into a state of “frenzy”, Persius argues that Nero has rode the aristocracy into a paroxysm of debauchery and moral debasement. The aristocracy aren’t innocent bystanders, they are complicit. And after each “riding” they emphatically beg for more. 

First, a little context. It’s 59 AD, and Nero has finally become a man. He’s been the caesar for the last five years, but there’s been rumors that he’s been entirely controlled by his mother, Agrippina, and the rumors aren’t hard to believe. (One of his first acts, after deifying his uncle Claudius, whom he was rumored to have poisoned with mushrooms, was to elect his mother “The Best of Mothers” and leave all “public and private affairs to her capable hands.”1) But it’s November and his Mother has been dead since March, when he had her murdered, and now it’s time to celebrate the trimming of his first beard hair. The celebration commences with a bit of poetry as Nero takes his place among the gods. The most distinguished of citizens were “offered” compulsory participation in his Juvenilia and those that weren’t debasing themselves on the stage were fighting each other in the stands for the bits and bobbles being thrown at them. To get on his bad side all one needed to do was applaud slightly less emphatically than everyone else. 

Suetonius says that at first Nero practiced his vices with reserve. He was seventeen when appointed caesar, and more interested in singing and preening than affairs of state. But now, five years later, he has come into his own. Convinced like many of his predecessors that he is a god, Apollo himself, his compulsory hero worship takes a turn for the worse. 

“His vices gaining strength by degrees, he laid aside his jocular amusements and all disguise; breaking into enormous crimes, without the least attempt to conceal them.” 2

“Besides the abuse of free-born lads, and the debauch of married women, he committed a rape upon Rubria, a Vestal Virgin. He was upon the point of marrying Acte, his freedwomen, having suborned some men of consular rank to swear that she was of royal descent. He gelded the boy Sporus, and endeavored to transform him into a woman. He even went so far as to marry him, with all the usual formalities of a marriage settlement, the rose-colored nuptial veil, and numerous company at the wedding. When the ceremony was over, he had him conducted like a bride to his own house and treated him as his wife. It was jocularly observed by some person, ‘that it would have been well for mankind, had such a wife fallen to the lot of his father Domitius.’ This Sporus, he carried about with him in a litter round the column assemblies and fairs of Greece, and afterwards at Rome through the Sigillaria, dressed in the rich attire of an empress; kissing him from time to time as they rode together…” 3

I’m leaving so much out…but the point has been made. He has insulted the gods by raping a vestal virgin, he has insulted societal decorum by his attempt to marry a freedwoman and he has insulted nature with his marriage to Sporus. His absolute power has quickly led to absolute corruption. And yet the people do nothing! They cheer for the newlyweds, they attend his poetry recitations and applaud, (granted there are five thousand “Augustan” soldiers making sure the crowd appropriately responds…but still.) (According to Dio the citizens were supposed to follow the lead of the soldiers/cheerleaders and proclaim: “Hurrah for Caesar! He’s Apollo! Augustus! A match for the Pythian himself! We swear by your own self, O Caesar, no one defeats you!”) 4

And this is where Persius comes in. In his prologue he immediately gets to the point: 

That’s not how I suddenly became a poet,

By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene, 

Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus

I leave the Muses, and Pirene’s pale

Spring, to those with busts to which

A crown of ivy clings; a semi-pagan

I bring my song to the bards’ holy rites.

What teaches the parrot to squawk: “Hello!”

And urges the magpie to try human speech? 

Hunger, that master of arts, and dispenser of skills, 

For if there’s the gleam of a hope of crafty gain, 

You’ll hear crow-poets and magpie-poetesses

Singing in praise of Pegasian nectar. 

[Persius, Prologue to the Satires. Translated by A.S. Kline, 2011]

Unlike Hesiod, who tends his sheep and then is visited by the Muses; a mortal, handpicked by the gods to reveal the creation of the world, Persius is driven by a different muse, hunger. Not physical hunger, but moral emaciation. Helikon (the mountain of Hesiod’s Muses) has been replaced by the twin peaks of Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and Dionysus - the gods of poetic inspiration. Only, Nero has elbowed Apollo out of the way, so in Persius’ retelling it is Nero in the mist and haze waiting to reveal his cosmogenic reality, but Persius walks the other way. The crown of ivy no longer represents victory and honor, but moral turpitude. The aristocracy has lost respectability, toadying to a monster for the chance to live another day in a modicum of pleasure. In this world, the only way to survive is to become semi-pagan. All worship has become corrupted, the gods have become a laughing stock, and either they exist and don’t care (allowing their vestal virgins to be raped with impunity without lightning striking from heaven) or they have left long ago. 

Here stands Persius, a lonely poet, hemmed in on every side with vice and corruption. Juvenal summarizes the zeitgeist under Domitian in a similar way, arguing that when morality has been tossed in the bin and “Flabby impotence takes him a wife…etc” (J.S.1.19-50) -to not write satire is what comes hard. He has been driven to write by the incomprehensible wickedness that permeates everything. Like Juvenal and Horace and the rest of the Roman satirists, Persius is compelled to write, it is his civic duty. 

Satire 1

-O troubled humanity! O the emptiness of life! 

-Who wants to read about that? 

-Are you asking me? No one, by Hercules!

-No one? 

-No one or two. 

-That’s wretched pathetic. 

-Why? Because the noble ‘Trojans’ and their women 

Happen to prefer Attius Labeo’s Iliad to my verse? 

Nonsense. If turbid Rome weighs something lightly

Don’t go looking for fault in the scales, don’t look 

Beyond yourself…

[P.S1.1-10] 

He begins with his accusation: Rome is too busy hellenizing itself to realize there’s a moral famine. They have become obsessed with all things Trojan, not the Homeric version, but rather the hack-poet version of Labeo who has translated the Iliad into Latin and spoon fed it to the masses. 

A great example of this is Petronius’ Satyricon. Everyone is constantly referencing the Iliad, but out of context and incorrectly. Everything is a farce. It’s a psychedelic world of crazy, where name dropping Homer moves you one seat closer to the place of honor at a dinner that is more like a musical comedy. 

Kirk Freudenburg says this about Persius: “He alerts us to the problem in the opening lines of his first hexameter poem. Labeo’s tight Latin translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, he tells us, are all the rage, a quick and easy Homeric fix for upwardly mobile Romans who have fallen behind in their Greek; all those “Polydamases” and “Trojan Women” who cannot manage their Homer in the original.” 5

Why is this significant? Because saturated in the cult of Troy they have forgotten themselves. The scales are broken. The Delphic oracle is suppressed, there is no desire to “know thyself”…the only desire is to stroke along with the current of popular trends. To survive. 

But Persius argues that this is not survival. They have lost their moral compass, that have lost the ability for thoughtful criticism that comes only with painstaking work. They have taken the easy road and it has led to moral prostitution. 

Neatly, in a white toga, wearing your birthday ring

Of sardonyx, you’ll read to the audience from your 

Tall seat, while you gargle with water to rinse your

Fickle throat, your expressive [ejaculating] eyes moved to tears

Then you’ll watch as grown men tremble, their sober

Manner and tranquil voices gone, as your poetry stirs

Their loins, your rhythmic verse works away inside. 

So, old man, you compose tit-bits, for other’s ears

To make even your decrepit skin and bones cry “Stop!” 

[P.S1.18-26]

Freudenburg has an amazing take on all of this: “But what, from one angle, looks like an exciting new world of governance and good taste, with emperor and aristocrats performing “in concert” to the rhythms of Nero’s pounding new beat, from another angle, Persius’ angle, looks like nothing more than a cheap pornographic sideshow featuring Nero’s outsized dick performing spectacular feats of multiple-penetration on Rome’s eager and amazingly orgasmic aristocracy. It is a jarring spectacle, hard to look at.” 6

Yikes? (I’ve come a long way since the “Rocking-Horse Winner…) 

The rest of Satire 1 deals with the problem of what to do in a world where criticism is dead and everyone is too afraid to tell the truth. 

Then say ‘I love the truth, tell me the truth about myself.

How can I? Do you want me to say you’re talking rubbish,

Baldy, you with your fat belly sticking out a foot and a half? 

[P.S1.62-64]

The safer course is to only speak truth behind the back of your patron and those in power. (Patronage destroys the ability to speak truth objectively.) Juvenal comes up with another option: only lampoon those who have been dead for a long time, but even this plan is not failsafe. His criticisms of the dead seem a bit too contemporary and he is exiled by Domitian until Nerva becomes emperor. 

Truth telling always comes with a risk. The very thing that drove Persius to begin his project, hunger, ironically will be the thing that keeps the populace trapped. The risk of becoming hungry is too much to bear. So they continue to flatter, they deify Nero and tell him he’s the best they’ve ever had. There’s too much risk in alienating a matricidal tyrant, alienation means no invitation to dinner. 

While it’s tempting to read Petronius as a veiled critique of all things Neronian…Freudenburg and others argue that is too simplistic. There’s another person, standing off in the shadows of hypocrisy. 

Seneca. 

In “The Apocolocyntosis” Seneca writes a bit of eulogy propaganda. After being banished by Claudius, Agrippina had called him back to be her son’s tutor. Now Claudius is dead and although Nero has deified him Seneca writes a short story that throws him into hell as the perpetual secretary of Caligula. Poetic justice is served. 

Or is it? One of the fathers of stoicism has tutored the world’s most un-stoic tyrant. Seneca teaches everything in moderation; Nero’s life is a study in excess. Nero has showed himself an unruly pupil, but what Seneca has become is worse. Remember the Juvenilia? Taking his place beside Nero on stage stood Seneca and Burrus. Dio writes: “like teachers, prompting him (Nero); they would wave their arms and togas at every utterance of his and lead others to do the same.”  7

Seneca has lost his credibility and it won’t be long before he takes his place in the long list of compulsive suicides. In the end the question becomes: what drives a person to debase themselves? What whispers haunt them, driving them on until they become unrecognizable? Is it the whispering voice of “More money! There must be more money!” Or during the mercurial reign of tyrants is it “More life! Anything for one more day!” When the poets and philosophers have become little more than “crow-poets and magpie-poetesses” pecking at shiny objects there is no one left to speak truth. 

Foot notes:

1. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars: Nero Claudius Caesar. V.IX

2. Suetonius, V.XXVII

3. Suetonius V.XXVIII

4. Dio 62.20.5

5. Freudenburg, Kirk. Satires of Rome: Threatening poses from Lucilius to Juvenal. Cambridge University Press, 2001

6. Ibid. 

7. Dio 62.20.20

Resourses: 
The Satires of Persius 
Politics and Invective in Persius and Juvenal 
Nero: The End of a Dynasty 
The Rocking Horse Winner 

Hesiod - Works and Days

At the end of the Theogony, the genealogies of heroes emerge and begin to cement themselves into the histories of men. Hesiod has moved beyond the tradition of a local cult into a larger myth, creating a new story for a Panhellenic people. The most powerful families of Greece will trace their lineage to the age of Heroes and legitimize their divine authority to rule.

Now in Works and Days Hesiod circles back to discuss the origin of humans. There have been five different ages, five attempts at human creation, all of which have failed for a variety of different reasons. At the end of each epoch, each failure is destroyed or subsumed and the gods plunge their hands once more into the primordial sludge to begin again.

The first race of men, the Golden Age, was an age of ‘articulate folks’ that lived like Gods, ‘nothing to do with hard work or grief.’ [134] This Golden Age of men lacked the ability to reproduce, and having not been given the gift of immortality they died and were covered by the Earth. Because of their near perfection they became holy spirits and now take their place as invisible wardens for the whole human race. 

They roam all over the land, shrouded in mist,

Tending to justice, repaying criminal acts. 

And dispensing wealth. This is their royal honor. 

[145-149]*

The Olympians tried their hand at human generation again, this time with the Silver Age. They compensated for the singular flaw of the Golden Age by creating a race of men that could procreate, but this time the race is infantile and weak, being nursed by their mothers for a hundred years only to live a short and futile adulthood. The pacifism of the golden age has been replaced by fratricide:

They did not live very long, and pain at that,

Because of their lack of wits. They just 

could not stop hurting each other and could not bring themselves

To serve the Immortals, nor sacrifice at their altars

The way men ought to, wherever and whenever. 

[151-158]

Zeus, angered by their incompetence and their refusal/ inability to worship the gods, does away with the race, yet due to their simplicity they are not cast into Hades, but take their place as the Blessed underground mortals; second in status but still with a modicum of honor. 

Next, Zeus takes things into his own hands, too many Olympian cooks in the kitchen has had disastrous results. So Zeus single handedly creates the next race of ‘articulate folk’  in what will become the Bronze Age. This time instead of noble metals Zeus creates men from ash trees and his creation is even more disastrous than their predecessors. The Bronze age men look like monsters. In correcting for the weak and infantile men of the Silver Age Zeus has created a generation of cunning warriors with excessive physical strength, unable to restrain their penchant for violence or channel their gratuitous strength and power to meaningful ends, they are destined for anonymous deaths in the halls of Hades. 

They didn’t eat any food at all.

They had this kind of hard, untamable spirit. 

Shapeless hulks. Terrifically strong. Grapple hook hands

Grew out of their shoulders on thick stumps of arms, 

And they had bronze weapons, bronze houses, 

And their tools were bronze. No black iron back then. 

Finally they killed each other off with their own hands

And went down into the bone-chilling halls of Hades. 

And left no names behind. Astounding as they were, 

Black Death took them anyway, and they left the 

sun’s light. 

[170-178]

Another failure, another attempt. This time, the Age of Heroes, Zeus directs the lustful gaze of his compatriot gods (and himself) to the world of men. This is the race of heroes and demigods, a humanity mixed with both divine and mortal blood. The first cities (Thebes and Troy) are created and these men die in epic battles for the sake of honor and justice. 

And some, crossing the water in ships. 

Died at Troy, for the sake of beautiful Helen. 

And when Death’s veil had covered them over

Zeus granted them a life apart from other men, 

Settling them at the ends of the Earth. 

And there they live, free from care. 

In the Isles of the Blest, by Ocean’s deep stream. 

Blessed heroes for whom the life-giving Earth 

Bears sweet fruit reining three times a year. 

[182-194]

The flaw of the Age of Heroes is that it requires perpetual tending. When the gods withdraw from intercourse with mankind, what is left is a barren world, devoid of hope, and it is here that Hesiod and his brother Perses find themselves: The Iron age, where for those without power or legitimacy it is a struggle to survive. 

Then the fifth generation: Broad-browed Zeus 

Made still another race of articulate folk

To people the plentiful earth. 

I wish I had nothing to do with this fifth generation, 

Wish I had died before or been born after, 

Because this is the Iron Age. 

Not a day goes by 

A man doesn’t have some kind of trouble. 

Nights too, just wearing him down. 

I mean the gods send us terrible pain and vexation. 

[199-208]

Ultimately this age too will be destroyed. Men will start being born aged, with grey hair around their temples. They will be incapable of kindness and compassion but will spend their time bickering and fighting.  They will take justice into their own hands, forgetting the gods, forgetting their place in the cosmos. Mankind will destroy each other, goaded by envy and injustice, and ultimately only Shame and Suffering will be left and there will be no defense against evil. 

As Works and Days opens, Hesiod and his brother Perses find themselves living in Askra “bad in winter, godawful in summer nice never,” [709] in the midst of a feud. Perses has stolen his brother’s inheritance and then after presumably spending it all like a ‘damn fool’ he’s back…asking for more money. What Hesiod decides to do instead is give his brother a thousand line essay on how to live a better life, attempting to teach him a skill set (justice and hard work) so that he will no longer find himself begging for his survival.

Perses is a foil for this generation's tendency towards folly. What begins as sloth and laziness and a little dishonesty will sew the seed of their destruction. Perses has chosen injustice over justice, he has chosen sloth and laziness over hard work and perseverance, the simple option of stealing his brother's inheritance rather than labor for his food. Life is hard, and humans must toil, that is their lot. To struggle against the gods would only be foolish. 

It’s what the hawk said high in the clouds

As he carried off a speckled-throated nightingale

Skewered on his talons. She complained something pitiful,

And he made this high and mighty speech to her: 

No sense in your crying. You’re in the grip of real strength now

And you’ll go where I take you, songbird or not.

I’ll make a meal of you if I want, or I might let you go. 

Only a fool struggles against his superiors. 

He not only gets beat, but humiliated as well. 

Thus spoke the hawk, the windlord, his long wings beating. 

[W&D 235-245]

Hesiod again tells the Prometheus story. In retribution for Prometheus giving fire back to humans, Zeus hides how to make a living from humans[60], forcing them to eke out their survival day in and day out. Part two of the curse was creating women, not as a helpmeet but as a ‘real pain for human beings.’[103] Hesiod will later caution his brother not to let a ‘sashaying female pull the wool over his eyes,’ they might look good on the outside but really they’re just fishing for your barn. “Trust a woman as you would a thief.”[419-421] As soon as this woman, Pandora, shows up, she immediately opens her jar and dumps petulance, misery, disease and famine all over the land. The only thing left clinging to the lip of the jar is hope. [117] 

The only way to survive, especially if you are poor, is to cultivate justice, yet only divine Justice can beat out Violence. Men have a propensity for injustice, where Lady Justice is dragged through the streets by corrupt judges, who swallow bribes and pervert their verdicts. Justice in the hands of humans tends toward corruption and chaos. Even after his soliloquy on the benefits of justice, to choose to live uprightly in a world of evil seems foolish. 

The eye of Zeus sees all and knows all, 

And if he wants, he’s looking here right now, 

And the kind of justice this city harbors 

Doesn’t fool him one bit. As for me, I’d as soon 

Not be a just man, not myself or my son. 

It’s no good at all for a man to be just

When the unjust man gets more than what’s just. 

But I don’t look for Zeus in his wisdom

To bring things to that pass for a long time. 

[306-315]

Rather than seek conquests and easy wealth, (like stealing his brother's inheritance), Hesiod urges his brother to return to a quiet life of farming; to quietly and with humility tend his crops; to work with his hands, or rather to work in any capacity so long as he does it diligently. Work is the antidote for hunger. The wealth of hard earned crops is the antidote for poverty which leads to crime and vice. 

Hunger is the lazy mans constant companion. 

Gods hate him, and men do too, the loafer 

Who lives like the stingless drones, wasting 

The hives honey without working themselves, 

Eating free. 

You’ve got to schedule your work 

So that your sheds will stay full of each season’s harvest.

It’s work that makes men rich in flocks and goods. 

When you work you're a lot dearer to the Gods

And to people too. Everybody hates a lie about. 

[350-354]

After his discussion on justice, we have come to the end of the homily portion of the poem. What follows is an agricultural treatise that is sometimes referred to as the 'Farmers Almanac' 1 The poem has moved from anthropology to didactic poetry with advice such as: 

“plant naked, plow naked, reap naked” 

[440]

Doing things right is the best thing in the world 

Just like doing ‘em wrong is the absolute worst. 

[530]

If you ever get the urge for hard seafaring 

When the Pleiades chased by gigantic Orion 

Fall into the misty sea, well forget it: 

All sorts of winds are whipping around then. 

[684-666]

It is here, that we begin to notice the mutability of Zeus. His mind is hard to predict, variable, changeable. Throughout the poem the other gods have slowly been relegated to the sidelines, and without the mediating role of Hekate [Theogony 415-450] Zeus alone controls the fate of mankind. "Little by little, the earlier guarantees and promises give way to growing uncertainty. And the gods, especially Zeus, contribute to it. Tellingly, in the later sections of the poem, Zeus, who had been previously said to grant prosperity [281, 379] is now named as the source of poverty. [637-38]"2 What began as a song of praise in the opening of the poem, now sounds a bit sinister.

Come sing Zeus’ praises, hymn your great Father

Through whom mortals are either

Renowned or unknown, famous or unnamed

As goes the will of great Zeus. 

Easy for Him to build up the strong

And tear the strong down. 

Easy for Him to diminish the mighty

And magnify the obscure.

Easy for Him to straighten the crooked

And wither the proud.

[2-11]

All throughout the Famers Almanac there are systems of order, the best days for planting and harvesting etc. But what if you do everything right? What if you remember to ‘never piss standing up while facing the sun’[806] or ‘never beget children after coming home from a burial’[815] and you always make sure to ‘never let boys of twelve sit on gravestones.’? Even if you do everything right, the gods owe you nothing. Humans have created order to ensure predictability, but the gods will never be caged in by predictions. It is man’s lot to get his work done as best he can and hope he doesn’t offend the gods.  

No matter what your situation, it is better to work. 

[359]

*All quotes from Works and Days are from: 
Lombardo, Stanley. Hesiod: Works and Days and Theogony. Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 1993.

1. Strauss, Jenny. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge, University Press, 2003.
2. Strauss, Jenny. Chapter 6: "Perspectives on Gods and Men"

Other Material: 
Hesiod- The Other Poet: Ancient Reception of Cultural Icon 
Introduction to Hesiod 

Hesiod - Theogony

There is a modern tendency to think of cosmogony as an attempt to substantiate foundational truth. In our modern brains we feel entitled to an origination story that is comprehensible and reductive. Carrying with us the pock marks of humanism, even at a subterranean level, we feel uncomfortable with the unknown. The humanist mantra is a rejection of dogma and superstition in exchange for critical thinking and rationalism; humans exist in the center of this world in an almost Copernican model. Nothing exists outside of our ability to comprehend.

At its heart cosmogony asks the question: How did we get here and what is our purpose? Beneath the narrative emerges an ordered system of belief that attempts to describe our creator and creation. Our modern approach to cosmogony looks similar to a lab with test tubes and beakers. Evidence is more important than narrative, and the “what" is frequently valued above the “why”.

Hesiod, writing between 750- 650 BC, very quickly locates himself geographically in the spectrum of knowledge. He is a mortal human, a shepherd, watching his flocks at the foot of Mount Helikon, and as such there are some things no mortal will ever truly understand. The Theogony doesn’t open with Hesiod, he’s not the protagonist; instead the narrative begins while the Muses are on Mount Helikon, where no human being can observe their sacred rites. 

And having bathed their silken skin in Permessos

Or in Horse Spring or the sacred creek Olmeios,

They begin their choral dance on Helikon’s summit

So lovely it pangs, and with power in their steps

Ascend veiled and misted in palpable air

Treading the night and in a voice beyond beauty

[5-10 trans: Stanley Lombardo]

Hesiod doesn’t go looking for the Muses, they come to him, while he his alone with his flock, and they don’t bring great tidings but rather they say: 

Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds: 

We know how to tell many believable lies

But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.

[28-30]

Hesiod does not claim to be infallible or omnipotent. He is a poor excuse for a shepherd, how could he possibly presume to describe the secrets of the universe? The Muses hand him a staff of laurel, and breathe into him a divine voice that will allow him to speak poetry of the past and future, and so he begins. 

(Hilariously Lucian, writing five hundred years later, is underwhelmed by Hesiod’s future telling abilities. This is understandable because the Theogony seems to end suspiciously in the past, with no hint of the future in sight. In his “Word with Hesiod” he lodges his complaint with the bard in an imaginary discussion: 

Either the alleged promise of the Muses to disclose the future to you was never given, and you are--excuse the expression--a liar: or it was given, and fulfilled, but you, niggard, have quietly pocketed the information, and refuse to impart it to them that have need: or, thirdly, you have composed a number of prophetic works, but have not yet given them to the world; they are reserved for some more suitable occasion. I do not presume to suggest, as a fourth possibility, that the Muses have only fulfilled half of their promise, and revoked the other,—which, observe, is recorded first in your poem. Now, if you will not enlighten me on this subject, who can? As the Gods are 'givers of good,' so you, their friends and pupils, should impart your knowledge frankly, and set our doubts at rest.)

To recap: Hesiod, a mere mortal, is shepherding his flocks, when the Muses emerge from the invisibility of the night to teach him divine secrets, in which he may or may not be able to discern fact from fiction. Truth is the gods and they will do with it what they want.

After the Muses prep Hesiod, he begs them to start at the beginning, the reverse order of the Muses opening hymn to the deities [10-20] that starts with Zeus and works it’s way back to Gaia, Oceans and the black one, Night. Hesiod wants to begin with Chaos.

If modern origin stories are held to a scientific standard, Hesiod and his contemporaries  

were playing jazz. The poet Jared Carter compares the oral tradition of poetry to a New Orleans jazz performance, the poets riff and play off each other, there are chord changes and shared melodies that build off of tradition. There is a common theme, but the poet is given much autonomy and freedom. 1

We can see this in how Hesiod and Homer differ in their birth narrative of Aphrodite. In Hesiod’s version Aphrodite is the product of her father, Ouranos’ castration, while in Homer’s version Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus sans castration. A bit different. 

Hesiod’s version is so graphic and extreme it would be wrong not to go into it in minute detail: 

In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss, 

But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being.

[16-17]

So far so good. But then Tartaros shows up, the dim underground world, and next Eros, who is allegedly the loveliest of all immortals. Eros ends up being a sidekick to Aphrodite, and doesn’t really have a prominent role to play in the Theogony outside of fomenting a general atmosphere of febrile desire. (If I had to distill the Theogony into one line it would be: A lot of nouns (person, place or thing) getting it on with other nouns in a frequently graphic and disturbing way.) 

Gaia gives birth to Oranos, the starry Heaven. “Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.”[26] And then without any sexual love (Hesiod feels its important we know this) she gives birth to the barren raging sea. [31] And this is where things start to go down hill. You know that part about the Heavens being the perfect fit for the Earth? Well, Ouranos has his way with his mother every evening when the sun sets, he envelops her. Their union produces the Titans, and Kronos, the youngest Titan is disgusted by his lecherous father. 

As Gaia gives birth to the Cyclopes her progeny becomes more and more monstrous and terrifying. The hundred handed monsters are strong and hulking and Ouranos loathes them. So he decides to stuff them back into the hollow of the Earth as soon as they are born and keep them there forever. 

Jenny Clay puts it this way: “Genealogy now gives way to narrative as Hesiod relates how Uranus refused to allow his offspring to be born, “but kept all of them hidden and did not allow them to come up into the light” [157] apparently by blocking the birth canal through continuous sexual intercourse.” 2  Yikes? 

Gaia comes up with a plan. A cunning and evil trick. She will goad her children into destroying the offending ‘member’ of their dysfunctional family. 

Listen to me, children, and we might yet get even 

With your criminal father for what he has done to us. 

After all, he started this whole ugly business. 

[165-167]

Her children are shocked and horrified at what their mother is asking of them, all but Kronos. 

I think I might be able to bring it off, Mother.

I can’t stand Father; he doesn’t even deserve the name. 

And after all, he started this whole ugly business. 

[171-173]

And thus the moral doctrine of vengeance is born, and the defendant limps up to the stand, her belly swollen with hundreds of children battling each other to escape and she makes her case: 

“He started it!” 

So that evening, when Ouranos descends over the earth, Kronos is waiting for his father. In an ambush, clutching the sickle his mother created for him out of flint, he reaches up with his left hand and: 

The fiendishly long and jagged sickle, pruning the genitals 

Of his own father with one swoop and tossing them 

Behind him, where they fell to no small effect

Earth soaked up all the bloody drops that spurted out, 

And as the seasons went by she gave birth to the Furies 

And to the Giants gleaming in full armor, spears in hand,

And to the Melia, as ash-tree nymphs are generally called. 

The genitals themselves, freshly cut with flint, were thrown

Clear of the mainland into the restless, white capped sea,

Where they floated a long time. A white foam from the god-flesh

Collected around them, and in that foam a maiden developed…

Aphrodite is her name in speech human and divine, since it was in foam

She was nourished. 

[188-91, 195-197]

By comparison, in Book Twenty of the Iliad (20.107) ...Apollon tells Aeneas that his mother, Aphrodite, is the daughter of Zeus. 

So there is something else going on here. These aren’t narratives that aspire toward truth of any kind. The details aren’t important, instead what emerges is the chaos and violence as gods run around begetting each other, this trajectory is not sustainable. The monsters get more and more terrifying and the cycle of revenge has been established. 

Jenny Clay divides the Theogony into three major succession myths. The first is completed with the brutal narrative of Kronos castrating his father. Despite his methods, Ouranos was attempting to suppress the female generative force of Gaia which ultimately will lead to a radically destabilized cosmos. But Ouranos is instead suppressed and loses his ability to generate life in the process. After another two hundred lines of genealogies we come to Kronos who picks up the mantel from his father and begins the cycle again. Kronos and his sister Rheia produce the Olympians; Kronos is terrified that his offspring will “subdue” him, so he waits for each child to be born and then devours them. 

Rheia comes up with a plan to allow her youngest son to live. She will hide him away deep within the caverns of the earth and in his place swaddle a large stone. As one would expect, the plan works flawlessly, considering there is very little difference from a human baby and a rock. Eventually, after Zeus is strong and has finished appropriately flexing his glorious muscles, Gaia suggests to Kronos that he vomit up all his offspring (this part is a little hazy…) And the first thing Kronos vomits up is not a human baby after all…but a stone. 

Zeus took the stone and set it in the ground at Python (Delphi) 

Under Parnassoss’ hollows, a sign and wonder for men to come. 

And he freed his uncles, other sons of Ouranos

Who their father in a fit of idiocy had bound. 

They remembered his charity and in gratitude 

Gave him thunder and the flashing thunderbolt

And lightning, which enormous Earth had hidden before.

Trusting in these he rules mortals and immortals. 

[501-509]

Zeus has usurped his father, the second succession is accomplished with a military coup instead of castration, and now Zeus must battle and control the unruly gods. He punishes Atlas with infinite sky holding, Prometheus has a shaft driven through his middle and daily an eagle perches on the shaft and slowly eats his liver, only to have it grow back each night for a process of infinite liver consumption and regeneration. Moral of the story: Don’t mess with Zeus. But Prometheus is eventually saved from the eagle/liver ordeal and immediately schemes a way to give fire to mortals. Playing tricks on Zeus doesn’t go well, but this time it is not Prometheus who is punished, but the mortal men themselves. Their curse? Women. 

He made this lovely evil to balance the good,

Then led her off to the other gods and men 

Gorgeous in the finery of the owl-eyed daughter

Sired in power. And they were stunned,

Immortal gods and mortal men, when they saw 

The sheer deception, irresistible to men. 

From her is the race of female women, 

The deadly race and population of women

A great infestation among mortal men, 

…etc. 

[588-598]

Hesiod goes on in this misogynistic manner for another twenty lines, until he gets to his conclusion which is basically: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. If a man is fated to marry an abusive woman, there is no help for him, nothing can be done. He will live with pain in his heart, and mind and spirit suffering an incurable evil. Kind of intense. 

Finally we have arrived at the Titanomachy, the great ten year battle between Zeus and his Olympians, and the Titans. When Zeus finally wins, the gods persuade him to be their king, thus completing the last succession myth, god by election. 

His first act as King of the gods is to make Metis (translated: cunning intelligence) his wife. When Metis is about to deliver her first child, Athena, the ‘owl-eyed goddess,’ Zeus feels threatened, as his father and grandfather before him. His grandfather tried hiding his offspring in the womb of the earth with little success. Kronos had tried to swallow his children himself, burying them within his own ‘womb’ (It’s the end of the Bronze age…men have wombs too). Zeus decides he’ll try things a little differently and swallow both his wife and his future children all in one go, so he stuffs Metis into his stomach [895] and in doing so appropriates not only her cunning intelligence but also her female power of generation. Thirty-five lines later:

From his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena,

The awesome, battle-rousing, army- leading, untiring Lady

whose pleasure is fighting and the metallic din of war.

[929-934]

Zeus and Memory, “with the beautiful hair”, together create the nine Muses and at this point the poem has gone full circle. Creation of the physical world has been completed, Gaia is subdued, Metis has been incorporated into Zeus and succession is no longer a threat. Zeus persuades the gods to focus their sexual interest on mortals and procreation between the gods and mortals begins and culminates in the race of heroes. The last phase of history has begun. 

As the poem ends, the genealogies of heroes emerge and begin to cement themselves into the histories of men. Hesiod has moved beyond the tradition of a local cult into a larger myth, creating a new story for a Panhellenic people. The most powerful families of Iron Age Greece will trace their families lineage to the gods and legitimize their divine authority to rule.

I mentioned above that the point of cosmogony is ultimately to answer the questions: How did we get here and what is our purpose? Throughout the Theogony a world is crafted that is very dark and erratic. It is a world comprised of binary oppositions; between Eros, who brings things together with desire, and Eris, who tears things apart with strife. Men take their place, not as captains of their destinies, but haunted by them. 

Hesiod thinks poetry can help. 

…Happy is the man

Whom the Muses love. Sweet flows the voice from his mouth.

For if anyone is grieved, if his heart is sore

With fresh sorrow, if he is troubled, and a singer

Who serves the Muses chants the deeds of past men 

Or the blessed gods who have their homes on Olympus, 

He soon forgets his heartache, and of all his cares

He remembers none: the goddesses’ gift turns them aside. 

[97-104]

The Theogony doesn’t really discuss the purpose or even genesis of mortal men, they sort of show up as a side note; a counterpoint to the divine and immortal. Hesiod makes a claim that Zeus establishes justice for the gods and men…but it’s a “might makes right” form of justice and men are caught between the wiles and whims of the erratic deities (as Homer makes very apparent throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey.) Man’s lot is to survive. And when survival looks bleak there is always poetry to comfort even an isolated shepherd. 

Resources: 

Lucian- A Word with Hesiod 

Hesiod - Theogony  translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914

Hesiod: Works and Days and Theogony Translated by Stanley Lombardo (I heard a rumor that this is the best translation and it was amazing. The best by a long shot.) 

Literature and History: Before Orthodoxy: Hesiod's Theogony. 

Hesiod: The Other Poet - Hugo Koning 

Footnotes: 

All quotes from the text of the Theogony are from:  Lombardo, Stanley. Works and Days and Theogony. Hackett Publishing, 1993. 

1. Carter, Jared. “Hesiod: Poet and Peasant Overtures.” Chicago Review, Winter, 1990. 

2. Clay, Jenny Strauss. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge University Press, 2003.