Contains all known works by Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield of Heracles, and Fragments.
Three works have survived which are attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles. Other works attributed to him are only found now in fragments. The surviving works and fragments were all written in the conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, meter, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer’s work and from the Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod’s Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognized as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).
Some scholars have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge, for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse. He had a passion for systematizing and explaining things. Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates a deep interest in a wide range of ‘philosophical’ issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b-987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod (Theogony 116-53) and Homer (Iliad 14.201, 246).
He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in a tone of voice that has been described as having a grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days, where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behavior and happiness through the silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different worldviews, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy.