Playing Hesiod
The 'Myth of the Races' in Classical Antiquity

This book analyzes important ancient responses to Hesiod's five-part narrative of human history as keys to their broader revisions of 'Hesiod'.

Helen Van Noorden (Author)

9781108730020, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 January 2019

360 pages
21.7 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.4 kg

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome.

1. Approaching Hesiod
2. Embedding the races in Hesiod
3. 'Hesiod's races and your own': Plato's 'Hesiodic' projects
4. 'They called her Justice…': reading Hesiod in Aratus' Phaenomena
5. Hesiod ad mea tempora in Ovid's Metamorphoses
6. Saeculo premimur graui: re-performing 'Hesiod' in Rome
Conclusion: playing Hesiod.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]