- The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- The Hesiodic Question
- Seventh-Century Material Culture in Boiotia
- In Hesiod’s World
- The Prehistory and Analogues of Hesiod’s Poetry
- Hesiodic Poetics
- Hesiod’s <i>Theogony</i> and the Structures of Poetry
- Hesiod’s Temporalities
- Hesiodic Theology
- Hesiod in Performance
- Hesiod’s Rhetoric of Exhortation
- Gender in Hesiod: A Poetics of the Powerless
- Solon’s Reception of Hesiod’s <i>Works and Days</i>
- The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics
- Deviant Origins: Hesiod’s <i>Theogony</i> and the Orphica
- Hesiod and the Visual Arts
- Hesiod and Pindar
- Hesiod and Tragedy
- Hesiod and Comedy
- Plato’s Hesiods
- Hellenistic Hesiod
- Hesiod from Aristotle to Posidonius
- Hesiod, Virgil, and the Georgic Tradition
- Ovid’s Hesiodic Voices
- Hesiod Transformed, Parodied, and Assaulted: Hesiod in the Second Sophistic and Early Christian Thought
- Hesiod in the Byzantine and Early Renaissance Periods
- Hesiod and Christian Humanism, 1471–1667
- Hesiod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Theorizing with Hesiod: Freudian Constructs and Structuralism
- The Reception of Hesiod in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
- Index
- Index Locorum Antiquorum
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter surveys Hesiodic reception in fourth-century bce prose, with emphasis on Plato and especially the Laws. Passages of the Laws are read in context and used to illuminate the status of Hesiodic poetry in the fourth century. Topics discussed include rhapsodic performance, Hesiod’s relationship to Homer, study of Hesiodic poetry in schools, the fourth-century manuscript tradition, citation of Hesiod’s poems in conversation and Athenian courtrooms, and the politics of Hesiodic quotation. Whether understood as part of the rhapsode’s canon, a gnomic poet, a proto-sophist or proto-philosopher, or an allegorist, Hesiod remained a dynamic site for the production of the philosophical, literary, and political debates that animated fourth-century prose.
Keywords: Plato, Plato’s Laws, reception, fourth century bce, rhapsodic performance, Hesiod and Homer, orators, sophists, philosophers, schools
Marcus Folch is associate professor of classics at Columbia University. His work focuses on ancient Greek literature and philosophy, performance in antiquity, and incarceration in the ancient world. He is the author of The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato’s Laws (Oxford University Press, 2015), as well as articles and chapters on ancient literary criticism, the dialogue between ancient Greek philosophy and the poetic tradition, and classical reception in the twentieth century. He is currently at work on a book entitled Bondage, Incarceration, and the Prison in Ancient Greece and Rome: A Cultural and Literary History.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- The Hesiodic Question
- Seventh-Century Material Culture in Boiotia
- In Hesiod’s World
- The Prehistory and Analogues of Hesiod’s Poetry
- Hesiodic Poetics
- Hesiod’s <i>Theogony</i> and the Structures of Poetry
- Hesiod’s Temporalities
- Hesiodic Theology
- Hesiod in Performance
- Hesiod’s Rhetoric of Exhortation
- Gender in Hesiod: A Poetics of the Powerless
- Solon’s Reception of Hesiod’s <i>Works and Days</i>
- The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics
- Deviant Origins: Hesiod’s <i>Theogony</i> and the Orphica
- Hesiod and the Visual Arts
- Hesiod and Pindar
- Hesiod and Tragedy
- Hesiod and Comedy
- Plato’s Hesiods
- Hellenistic Hesiod
- Hesiod from Aristotle to Posidonius
- Hesiod, Virgil, and the Georgic Tradition
- Ovid’s Hesiodic Voices
- Hesiod Transformed, Parodied, and Assaulted: Hesiod in the Second Sophistic and Early Christian Thought
- Hesiod in the Byzantine and Early Renaissance Periods
- Hesiod and Christian Humanism, 1471–1667
- Hesiod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Theorizing with Hesiod: Freudian Constructs and Structuralism
- The Reception of Hesiod in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
- Index
- Index Locorum Antiquorum
