Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/19

 Life of Hesiod. — Our information respecting Hesiod is derived in the main from notices and allusions in the works attributed to him, and to these must be added certain traditions concerning his death and burial gathered from later writers.

Hesiod's father (whose name, by a perversion of Works and Days, 299 Πέρση δῖον γένος to Πέρση Δίου γένος was thought to have been Dius) was a native of Cyme in Aeolis, where he was a seafaring trader and, perhaps, also a farmer. He was forced by poverty to leave his native place, and returned to continental Greece, where he settled at Ascra near Thespiae in Boeotia (Works and Days, 636 ff.). Either in Cyme or Ascra, two sons, Hesiod and Perses, were born to the settler, and these, after his death, divided the farm between them. Perses, however, who is represented as an idler and spendthrift, obtained and kept the larger share by bribing the corrupt "lords" who ruled from Thespiae (Works and Days, 37-39). While his brother wasted his patrimony and ultimately came to want (Works and Days, 34 ff.), Hesiod lived a farmer's life until, according to the very early tradition preserved by the author of the Theogony (22-23), the Muses met him as he was tending sheep on Mt. Helicon and "taught him a glorious song" — doubtless the Works and Days. The only other personal reference is to his victory in a poetical contest at the funeral games of Amphidamas at Chalcis in Euboea, where he won the prize, a tripod, which he dedicated to the Muses of Helicon (Works and Days, 651-9).

Before we go on to the story of Hesiod's death, it will be well to inquire how far the "autobiographical" notices can be treated as historical, xiii