Monthly Archives: August 2011

Adonis & The Phoenix

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[An aside to the Boeotian Theoi blog project.]

As I alluded in my previous post, I’ve been noticing a vague connection between Adonis and the Phoenix as recognised in Hellenic myth. As per Herodotus and Ovid, the phoenix is reborn from an encasement in myrrh (Ovid also includes herbs), and myrrh is an important part of the story of Adonis’ birth.

A surviving fragment of Hesiod‘s Ehoiai describes Adonis’ parents as “Phoenix and Alphesiboea”, though this is identified as Phoenix, son of Agenor. Still, it was mis-remembering this fragment that inspired this painting of mine.

As well as the mythological connections of being born from an encasement of myrrh (think about it, it’s a tree resin, and Adonis is typically described as being born literally from myrrh bark, which has to be cut into to gather the resin; myrrh resin was basically His amniotic fluid), Adonis and the phoenix basically both have life-death-rebirth mythologies (though Theoi Project ignores Adonis’ veneration as a deity [yet, oddly, accepts Kybele as being thoroughly Hellenised], even a vague familiarity with the Adonia is enough proof of not only His being regarded as reborn, but also of deification), even if you consider Herodotus’ rather bizarre account of a younger phoenix encasing its deceased father in myrrh, thus becoming the father to the reborn phoenix (as well as its own grandpa — holy shit, the ancient Greeks really did invent everything).

Interestingly, though the phoenix is typically described as being a variegated saffron-to-scarlet colour, there’s an anthropological theory identifying the phoenix with Old World Flamingoes (and this theory is apparently supported by biologists naming the order, family, and genus of all species of flamingo) because the salt flats where flamingoes are fond of nesting can become far too hot for humans, or many (if any) other predators to walk across, and anybody who’s watched the air over an outdoor grill in the summer would know that the extra-hot air sort of “dances”, which could create the illusion of flame. To protect the egg from the heat, flamingoes build nests of mud, which keep the egg cool enough not to cook, but which could also look like perhaps a mound of ash from a distance. The Greater Flamingo, which is native to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and SW Asia (making it the most widespread flamingo), does have variegated colouring, even if not matching the classical description of the phoenix. In fact, the Hellenistic mosaic above (found in the former ancient suburb of Daphne, in what is now Antakya, Turkey) certainly seems to support the identification with flamingoes and the phoenix.

Though initially an association I formed from a mis-remembering, I’ve grown to further and further associate the phoenix with Adonis, and I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but simply couldn’t think of an appropriate moment to post it.

Ares & Aphrodite & Adonis & The Phoenix

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Eros was out with Aphrodite, and the Goddess commented on the body of Ares as He practised His battle exercises, and pondered out loud to Her friend how exciting it would be to be in his arms and beneath Him. You see, as much as She loved and took satisfaction from doting on Her husband, Hephaistos, while the Smith of the Theoi had great arms, that was about it — he was dwarven and his spine crooked, and His face so far from conventionally attractive that His own parthenogenic mother was said to have thrown the quasimodian child from Olympos, crippling Him. Aphrodite alone saw a beauty in Him beyond the gifts He fashioned for Her, and truly loved Him, but He was merely a good husband: Reliable, well-providing, and They shared a bond almost familial. Ares, on the other hand, She suggested to Eros, would make a magnificient lover: Exciting, daring, and what She’d heard from mortal women was that what soldiers lacked in money, skills, and conversation, they made up for in bed.

Eros remarked that it was near Her birthday, and so if Ares was what She wanted….

Ares then approached the pair and poked fun at Eros’ delicate features and small arrows when compared to his own javelin. Eros’ then pulled one from His quiver and wished it an absurd weight for its metal. He handed it to Ares, saying, “This one is far heavier than it looks, try it and see.” Ares scoffed, and took the arrow, which he quickly learned surely must outweigh his own weapon in spite of being less than a third the length and a quarter its thickness. Realising He’d been tricked, his face became sour and he attempted to return it, saying, “It is too heavy, take it back.” Eros replied, “Keep it, it is a gift”, and Aphrodite smiled when Ares threw the empowered arrow to the ground in frustration, scratching His own foot with it as it landed.

The affair was conducted as any illicit affair, which for Aphrodite always remained exciting and worth every second They risked exposure — while Zeus’ affairs were no secret, as a married woman, Aphrodite was held to greater expectations of fidelity, and while She loathed the double-standard, She revelled in the excitement it created, always unsure of whether She feared or yearned for the affair to be found out.

Then Aphrodite learned of Her carrying of twins, at a time when clearly She would be unable to pass Them off as Her husband’s. As She fretted over this with the Kharietes, Hephaistos overheard, and devised a humiliation for the pair. Being not only a master craftsman, but also inventor, He was finished with His trap long before Aphrodite even began to show, and even managed the assistance of Apollon. When Aphrodite met with Ares in one of the magnificent rooms of Her palace built by Hephaistos, when the weight of their bodies combined (so as not to accidentally ensnare Kypris on her own) shiofted to the centre of the bed, a heavy net fell upon Them, and Apollon illuminated the room so that the outer wall was transparent, and all of Olympos could see Them in such a precarious state.

Aphrodite and Ares endured stares and pointed fingers and even laughter, and so when Ares and Aphrodite were finally freed, Ares flew into a rage, and took it out on Eros, for passing Him the arrow that made Him look a fool. In a panic to cease the beatings, Eros offered Ares and Kypris a compromise: He would convince Hera to grant Aphrodite a divorce, which would free the pair up to be together. Hera was receptive to this offer, but only if Aphrodite could find Hephaistos a suitable wife, so She arranged Hephaistos to be wed to Aglaia.

But Aphrodite is a fickle woman, and so after the birth of the twins, Phobos and Deimos, She bore Ares a daughter, Harmonia, conceived post-divorce, and soon grew weary of the soldier’s schedule, and took other lovers. Ares didn’t notice at first, then denied it when He did notice, until….

A young woman named Symrnah had offended Aphrodite for failure to honour the Goddess in Her due measure. in retaliation, She cursed the girl with a lust for her own father, driving the girl, in shame, to rape her father as he slept. He awoke and threatened Smyrnah, so she fled, and Eros took pity on the poor girl, and transformed her into a myrrh shrub, so that in death, she’d have no choice but to honour the goddess through the resin the bush produced.

One day out, when a priestess was harvesting myrrh resin, she cut into Smyrnah’s bush, and an infant began to push its head through the wound of the bark. Aphrodite came to see what was going on, and immediately claimed the child when She saw Him and then saw His future face, and saw He was destined to be quite lovely. To protect the child from Ares, She made an arrangement with Persephone, but as He grew up lovely, Persephone refused to give Him up to Aphrodite when She came to claim Him. Apollon offered to take in the youth as the women quarrelled, eventually taking the matter to Zeus, who suggested that a third of the year, the boy could live with Persephone, and for a third, He could live with Aphrodite, and the final portion of the year was for the youth Himself to decide.

Aphrodite chose to avoid the criticisms of Her affair with Ares by declining to marry Him after She and Hephaistos had their own dissolved; it just seemed easier, even though there was an assumption of exclusivity, what with the children and all. Still, Ares was jealous, so She and Persephone realised that Zeus only said “a third of the year”, He didn’t specify that it needed to be one-hundred-twenty days all in a row, so She made all attempts to arrange Adonis’ days with Her while Ares was away.

Still, word quickly came around to Ares that His beloved Aphrodite wasn’t keeping fidelity toward him; and to His own horror, He learned that this other man was a beautiful, effeminate youth who was said to be passed back-and-forth between Kypris and Kore like an accessory, and when not with them, would “lay as a woman” with Apollon, or so they said. Clearly, something would have to be done.

One day, when Aphrodite and Adonis were out in Her garden, Ares transformed Himself into a massive wild boar and charged the youth at full speed, goring vital organs and then tossing the boy into the air before turning around and taking off back to where He came from.

As Aphrodite wailed, tears poured from Her lovely face, and then Zephyros carried them as anemone poppy seeds on His breath, spreading and germinating the flower, creating a trail leading all to the torn body of the dying Adonis. When Ares came in His own form, Aphrodite recognised His eyes in the boar, and would not let Him touch Her. Persephone offered to take Him to the underworld, where His body remained lifeless while roses sprang up in the middle of the lettuce patch from the blood where the beauteous Adonis had died.

The following year, the Phoenix was due for renewal, and so began collecting myrrh resin for its egg. As it coaxed the beads of gum from the shrubberies, eventually it came upon Smyrnah’s bush, and dug its claws deep into the bark, which soon pulled out the long golden hairs of Aphrodite’s beloved youth, who soon after pulled himself from the wound in the wood, for it was the deep love bestowed upon Him in life that renewed Him, love deeper than that which Aphrodite gave to Ares, for Ares was known to be immortal, so He didn’t need it.

Potential garden income?

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There’s a pagan/new age bookstore in Lansing that hosts live readers, mostly tarot, but if I can set something up, I’d be the only tea & coffee reader.

It looks, though, like I’d need to supply my own heat source for brewing, and when I do this at home, I usually just boil it on the stove — which is far from portable. It looks like I can get a portable single electric range burner for about $25; not unreasonable, but not really workable right now, as the commune is still plagued by financial dramas (mostly the house-mate’s). I also really should get a new tea pot, since I imagine more people will be receptive to loose-leaf tea readings than Greek coffee — I can heat the water in anything, but steeping loose-leaf in a pot rather than the teacup is best.

If anybody can add something to the Tip Jar for a donation, ‘twould be much appreciated.

Ares & Narkissos

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Perhaps some will find it odd, but in my reading (some tales for the first time, some for the first time in a very long time) for yesterday’s post, I noted some similarity to the nature of Ares’ mythos and my beloved Narkissos. Now, I make no secret of the fact of my reverence of Narkissos as a holy daimon, and feel His mythos alone are sufficient evidence that, even though without any evidence of ancient cult, this was likely His status in His native Thespiai.

…but I digress.

The most famous of Ares’ mythos, His adulterous affair with Aphrodite, is quite naturally suited to a cautionary tale against letting one’s ego run wild, while Narkissos’ is so deeply associated with the idea that one not even be familiar with the myth to have an idea what it must be about, so long as one has even a passing familiarity with what the English word “narcissism” means in casual every-day use.

The differences to each myth are important to consider, as they are clearly two stories with different intended audiences and so different nuances of morality lesson, but both carry an underlying theme of the dangers of letting one’s ego take control of one’s affections, and thus better judgement.

In “The Story of Narkissos”, we have a young man so consumed with the idea that no-one is good enough for His own affections that He’s cursed to stare Himself into a flower by deities closely bound to Eros; in some versions, He is portrayed as literally rejecting the Gods of Love, creating a hubristic bend to His own self-absorption.

Then we have the affair of Ares and Aphrodite.

I’m tempted to regard the story as the odd Roman influence in Hellenic mythology (as the pattern is usually in reverse), as both Venus and Mars are regarded as the patron and matron deities of Rome and a mythological narrative is an easy way to explain this. Unfortunately for my hypothesis, all I really have are my own suspicions, as the most basic elements of the myth pre-date any serious Roman influence by about five-hundred years, as best as we can tell, anyway. Still, interesting idea, and clearly a potential reason for the myth’s lasting popularity, if not at all a reason for the myth’s origin.

Regardless of the underlying origin of the myth, there are elements that clearly serve as a cautionary tale against unbridled ego and lust, and potentially against “class-climbing”.

Aphrodite is a married woman, and while infidelity in men has been accepted for millennia, not so much for women (in spite of all evidence to the contrary that women are just as much predisposed to it, if not actually possessing of a higher biological interest in multiple partners than men have), so their affair is conducted in secret — right from the beginning, this is something that is clearly not designed to be a story giving people the go-ahead to sleep around as a married woman or with married women, since even the theoi are given to a belief that it’s wrong1. At some point, Hephaistos decides to trap the problematic lovers, humiliating them for going behind His back and making Him look a fool.

Now, some of this is negated by the possible divorce of Aphrodite and Hephaistos; this is alluded to in Homer (in later naming Hephaistos’ wife as the Kharis Aglaia, Who bore Him the younger generation of Kharietes), and other poets describe it more explicitly — but then later Ares is the victim of Ahrodite’s infidelity with Adonis, giving Ares an irony of fate. Unfortunately for Adonis, His fate is to be far more tragic than Ares’, as Ares’ boar form gored the youth — but perhaps not-so-unfortunate, as Aphrodite’s love for Adonis renewed Him, finally making it clear to Ares His folly of ego, assuming that He could somehow be “enough” for Aphrodite’s affections.

In both stories, there is a variation of self-absorption that seals each fate: Narkissos staring Himself into a flower, Ares’ repeated humiliation — and each time, at the hands of men who can certainly be characterised as “weaker” (Hephaistos, the cripple, and Adonis, the effete). While certainly there are obvious differences in each story, they each share a common theme of “keep your ego in check”.

1: Of course, that’s not to say that women in Hellenic mythos are never allowed to own their own sexuality; from Athene resisting the advances of Hephaistos and raising His and Gaia’s jizz-spawn as Her own, to Demeter’s single motherhood, to Artemis cursing peeping toms watching her bathe, to Selene enchanting Her favourite twink to eternal youth and sleep so that She could lay with him. The difference for Aphrodite is that She’s married, and so fidelity is expected, as is being open to Her husband’s desires; if, like Demeter and Selene, She was unmarried, She could presumably bed and molest ALL THE MENS to Her liking. Which, yeah, compared to how Zeus’ mythos has him sticking his dick in everything, and as everything, is a total double standard and totally unfair, and Hera’s attempts at retribution hardly seem to get through to Him, but that’s not really the point of the mythos, now is it? No it’s not.

Boeotian Theoi: Ares

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CULT IN BOIOTIA (CENTRAL GREECE)

I) THEBES Chief City of Boiotia

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 10. 5 :
“The fountain [of Ismene, near Thebes in Boiotia] which they say is sacred to Ares, and they add that a Drakon was posted by Ares as a sentry over the spring.”

While I can agree with the sentiment that to deny War, or at least downplay it as one of Ares’ domains is to essentially revere a deity completely different from the one recognised throughout ancient Hellas, I’m also none too fond of this apparent trend of recognising the spear and denying the helm and shield. Both the “KGA [Kinder Gentler Ares]” and the “short-tempered … foul-mouthed … ultimate redneck” are both false images of the God.

While masculinity is certainly within Ares’ realm, as well as a protector, to characterise Him as merely a “protector of women” —in His mythos, unusually for a Hellenic God, He laid with no woman, mortal or immortal, by rape or abduction, and indeed, slew Halirrhothios for the attempted rape of Ares’ daughter Alkippe— he also rushed to the aid of His own son, Kyknos, when Kyknos was losing in battle with Herakles. He is a protector of those who need Him most; he’s not the father who would throw a boy into a cruel world unprepared and himself unprepared to give the boy any more aid than a gruff order to “man up”.

Also, He is the father of the Amazones (with the Nymphe Harmonia), and several named Amazones were in His especial favour — and unless you’ve been watching Steeve Reeves films, Amazones are clearly in no need of protection from mortal men. He is a patron of those who are independent, and who will not be owned or dominated by another.

He arrested the man Sisyphos, who dared to imprison Thanatos, preventing the death of mortal man. He purveys over not just civil order, but natural order.

While Ares’ patronage is, first and foremost, to warriors and soldiers, to concentrate on this and hypermasculinity is to somehow deny so many dazzling facets of the God that have little to do with that. It’s like how Apollon is a patron of music, but that’s hardly all Apollon is about.


In the town of Tanagra, the city’s naiad, Tanagra, was beloved of Ares. Corrina wrote of a boxing match between Ares and Hermes for the affections of Tanagra, with Ares as victor.

In Thebes, he was a lover of Erinys Telphousia (often understood as a guise of Demeter), and She bore Him the Ismenian Dragon, whose teeth were sowed by Kadmos and from them grew —full-formed and armoured— the Spartoi. Kadmos then earned Ares’ wrath, but was in Athene’s favour. Athene, as a war deity, has always struck me as a deity more interested in warfare and strategy, while Ares contrasts this as a lower-ranking officer, or at least one of very basic strategies that may win many battles, but could ultimately lose the war because of poor planning. The offspring of a bond between Ares and one of the Erinyes (“Furies”, to the Romans; “Dark Ones” and keepers of the gates to the Underworld’s Dungeons of the Damned) was a monster that Kadmos had to slay in order to reach the spring and found the city of Thebes — there’s that “short-tempered” warrior for you, a half-literate Freeper standing in the way of progress, and illustrating the folly of mixing war and retribution. And, in direct relation to the founding of Thebes, it’s clear that the fruits of Ares had to be destroyed for the city to even begin to happen by Athene’s will, which then can symbolically suggest that while Ares’ role as a war-god is important, what He does best is by no means a permanent solution, which is what Athene is there to offer.

Ancient Hellenes had mixed feelings toward Ares; He was necessary to protecting a town from attack and His favour necessary for winning any war, but His constant battle companions are Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror) — Ares has just as much a place in the events of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United $tates and the repugnant “Patriot Act” as he does in any just battle. Even as Aphrodite’s lover, He and the Goddess were caught in a literal trap net set by Hephaistos, exposing Ares and all his machismo to humiliation. And where Athene is clearly a learned general in the mythos, Ares is best described in the mythos as a soldier, one who takes orders — one who thinks the way He’s been trained to; and sure, the gods are not literally as They are in the mythos, but the mythos offers, at the very least, a grain of truth about Their natures.

I admit, I’m not especially fond of Ares, but where people who will gladly sing praises for their own rose-tinted versions of a swaggering warrior full of braggadocio who is somehow immune to being bested, much less shamed by “weaker” (which they claim is the true nature of “effeminate”) men, I give what is due to a warrior-god who is a doting father to His favourite son, and to the Amazones, and who reminds man of civil and natural order, but a deity who keeps company of some of the most dreadful daimones, and whose mythos can often serve as a warning against unbridled lust and against unbridled ego.

The Story of Pindar

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Pindar was born in the 65th Olympiad in Cynoscephalae, a village outside Thebes. His mother’s name was Cleodice and no-one can seem to decide if his father’s name was Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus. Unlike Hesiod, he seems to be from the ancient Boeotian equivalent of a bourgeoisie background, and clearly this is one of those things that hasn’t changed about Western Society, as unlike Hesiod, he included practically none of his family’s dirty laundry in his own work. Pindar’s got class, so there’s not much I can goof on (affectionately, of course). There’s a legend that his gift for “honey-like verse” came from having his mouth stung by a bee as a youth, and that’s seriously all anybody really knows about ol’ high-falutin’ Pindar until he was maybe twenty — of course, if you think about it, it’s far more impressive that Hesiod, being from a lower class tier, made it past that age, this was a time when the mathematically-average lifespan was 40-ish, but if one could make it past the age of 15-ish, when the typical life expectancy was around 55-ish and the higher your class, the more likely you were to live into your seventies1 — and making it past the age of twenty at a time prior to even 18th Century medicine is a far more impressive feat when you’re a toiler than when you’re from “elegant learning”. In poetry, Pindar was tutored by Corinna of Tanagra (a fellow Boeotian) and also relocated to Athens to be further instructed by Lasos of Hermione. By the age of twenty, he was commissioned for his first Victory Ode by a wealthy family from Thessaly. At about the age of thirty, Pindar was at the Pythian games where he met chariot winner and Sicilian prince Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas, and they became lifelong friends thereafter — it’s unfortunate that this seems to be one of the less slashtastic ancient Hellenic male-male friendships, but maybe I’m just letting my perversion show with that comment.

Er… *ahem!* Carry on!

So, it seems Pindar was a triple-threat lyric poet; he wrote the lyrics, he wrote the instrumental accompaniment, and he choreographed. In modern terms: Pindar was one melodramatic script away from being The Ultimate Theatre Geek™. Sometimes he’d train performers at his hime in Thebes, but he’d also get commissioned by patrons of the arts and would travel all over the ancient Hellenic world to put on shows. He was practically a celebrity, and like modern celebrities, there was sometimes rivalry for jobs, but Pindar’s got class — sure, some of his poetry reflects these rivalries, but only in vague metaphors, like with ravens and apes and shit like that. Even today, people speculate who this was really all about, but like I said, Pindar’s got class.

Still, Pindar got mixed up in politics. Once, after writing praise of Athens, the rival city of his home city of Thebes, fined him 5000 drachmae, and rumour has it that Athens responded with a gift of twice that. Other hometown drama llamas were ridden in on by the fact that he was a friend of Sicilian tyrant Hieron, the subject of one of Pindar’s first Pythian ode, and it was probably all this bullshit that later led him to write another ode denouncing all tyrants. It’s also been suggested all over the place (and at times seems rather apparent) that Pindar used his fame and his odes as a vehicle for advancing both personal interests and those of his friends. Alright, maybe Pindar’s class is limited, but still, man’s got it; after all, of his personal life, we have very little: his wife was Megacleia, and his son was named Daiphantus, and he had two daughtrers, Eumetis and Protomache. He lived in Thebes near the shrine of the oracle Alkmáon.

Pindar died at about the age of eighty2, and his daughters took home his ashes to Thebes, and the Thebans, despite visiting much drama upon the man in life, regarded his house as one of the city’s landmarks, a practical tourist attraction, and it is said that Alexander the Great so revered Pindar (possibly in no small part to the favourable writings he made of Alexandros I of Makedon) that when he had the city burned in the name of “building Hellenic unity”, Pindar’s house was the only one in the area left intact. Delphi’s Temple of Apollon displayed Pindar’s iron chair that he sat upon during the Theoxenia festival, and one of his daughters claimed to have inscribed a posthumous verse of Pindar’s honouring Persephone.

1: Seriously, in nearly 3000 years, we’ve only really gained about twenty years in life expectancy for the average person, and a statistically insignificant increase in life expectancy for higher classes, and the important factor hasn’t been in prolonging the lives of the elderly, but in all but eradicating paediatric mortality. Remember maths class: “average” figures for ancient life span account all the millions of people dying before the age of eighteen, which skews averages making it look like hardly anybody would see the age of thirty-five, when this is clearly bull.
2: Seriously, octogenarians don’t seem like that big a deal now, do they?
[Also, apologies for dragging this "week" out so long — it's mainly been allergies, which have been bad enough this last couple weeks that I've been feeling muscle weakness and will wake up practically choking on my own snot. Wasn't nearly so bad this morning. ☺]

The Story of Hesiod

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Once upon a time, in ancient Boeotia, there was a man named Hesiod. He lived with his father in the town of Askra, which Hesiod hated. Originally, Hesiod’s father was from Cyme, a city in Aeolis once claimed to be Aeolis’ largest and most important city — so I can see why Hesiod hated it in Askra, which was small, rural, and largely insignificant. In fact, there was very little that Hesiod didn’t hate. He hated Askra. He hated his brother. He hated women — and just wasn’t too fond of people, as a general rule, as well.

Hesiod did, though, seem to get enjoyment in some form from the things most people disliked, if only because it gave him a smug sense of superiority. He liked work, especially hard manual labour. Actually, I think that was about it. Then one day, he realised that, even more than work, he loved the Theoi. One day, Hesiod’s up on Mount Helikon, tending sheep and hating everything, and a Moisa visited him, as he was out being perfectly happy, with his own little cloud of hateful feelings hoovering above him (as one does, when one’s first, middle, last, or only name is Hesiod), and the Goddess whispered beautiful metres into his ear. “Could it be?” He thought. “Is there truly something more wonderful in life than misery?”

“Indeed,” said the Moisa with a nod, before commanding Hesiod to write it all down.

First Hesiod wrote the Theogony, a grand epic poem of no fewer than 1022 lines, detailing the geneology of the Theoi and the universe They brought together — from Everything’s humble origins as little more than a speck within the great vast tendrils of Khaos’ formless tresses (yes, She is like a Lovecraftian Old One) to the woman Pandora. Pandora was likely inspired by Hesiod’s now long-forgotten ex-wife, Synthykhe1 — she was one of those educated bitches from Thespiai and was the youngest of her family, with three other sisters, so her dowry was, like, two chickens and a used featherbed, and she didn’t dig Askra too well, so she took off one day when Hesiod and his brother were being weiners at each-other, leaving ol’ Hesiod even more broken and joyless than he was before — and that’s a mighty accomplishment. Now she’s a famous hetaera, and making fat cash. Basically, all those “educated Thespian bitches” stereotypes that Hesiod could think of, he put into Pandora so that he could use her as a literary device to support his notion that women can’t be trusted. Or something. Hesiod’s got issues.

Hesiod’s also got family problems. After his father died, he and his brother ended up in a dispute over the estate, and so Hesiod put a big chunk of that (also thinly-veiled) into one of the longest asides ever in his next major poem, Works & Days, and tried to make it some kind of morality lesson. On the good side, we all can rest easy now knowing that whatever family issues we’ve got, people won’t be reading our brother’s side of things for the next 2800 years. Serious, man: Hesiod’s got subscriptions.

He also wrote Ehoiai, or The Catalogue of Women, another geneology — but that only survives in fragments. Another complete work often ascribed to Hesiod is Shield of Herakles, but modern scholars dispute its authorship, some believing it’s about two centuries too new, and too imitative of Homer’s style. Still, some disagree with this modern notion and continue to attribute this one to Hesiod, even though it isn’t that good, when compared to the other two that survive intact.

Some people then claim that Hesiod and Homer competed in a poetry contest, but aside from the fact that Homeric Greek is an Aeolian dialect, there really isn’t much to support that, aside from local tradition, which had a bronze tripod at the shrine to the Moisai at Mt. Helikon that was claimed to have been won by Hesiod in the contest — local traditions also claimed dinosaur bones as those of griffons and demigods, so clearly oral traditions are no more reliable than journalism. Still, it’s possible.

In Hesiod’s later life, we don’t know much from him, but we have a few accounts claiming he was murdered for adultery. I think it was actually cos people finally got tired of listening to how much he hates everything. Hesiod’s got issues, and some people are just prone to snapping like that, put in such close proximity to that kinda pressure. Like, one day, Hesiod’s neighbour is out doing his thing, minding his own business, and then here comes Hesiod, with his moralising, and his prizes, and going on about the economy like he did — and his neighbour knows it’s never gonna end because why? Because Hesiod’s got issues. It was bound to happen.

Then legend has it that Hesiod’s body was cast into the sea and returned to the shores by dolphins (probably after the dolphins did unspeakable things to his corpse — a dolphin will totally perv on you, if you let him, sometimes even if you don’t). Then, his body was put upon a pyre and his ashes entombed with honour at Askra, even though he clearly hated the place, but I guess they figure no better-fitting sentence for being a total wenus than to give him a place of honour in the place he despised most of all. Either way, the hamlet loved him, and so they interred his ashes with honour. Then the Thespians showed up some time later, probably cos of a war or maybe just because Thespiai is wicked-awesome, and the Askrans moved to Orchomenus on the advice of an oracle, and took Hesiod’s ashes with them, and interred them in the town’s agora and was honoured as a heros of Orchomenus’ town hearth, as well. This is Hesiod’s last known resting spot, but clearly the spot isn’t there anymore —thanks, Christians2— and thus ends the story of Hesiod, The Heros Who Hated Everything (and Had to Tell the World About It).

1: I may have just made her up.
2: most likely.