Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod: An Oxford World's Classics Edition

RuthinNS: Purchased for a course and it was worth it.

Canada on Aug 03, 2023

Amazing bolton: Thank you for your fast service. It was greatly appreciated

United States on May 30, 2023

ovi: Usually I love Oxford classics, but West translation of Hesiod, I don't like. For what purpose would one translate the names of the gods? Like Uranus being Heaven and Gaia Earth? If you don't know what you read (I mean if you are not familiar with the myth), you might get confused. For me it is the first time when I encounter something like this. Luckily, I have other translations as well.

Germany on Jan 08, 2022

Juliana Pinheiro Sergio: Worth the read at any moment of your life. This specific edition is incredibly frail, though. Mine already came with a small torn on the cover.

Brazil on Mar 21, 2021

Sourav Dutta: Martin L. West's translation of these two works by Hesiod is worth having in one's collection. In his brief introduction, he also discusses possible Middle-Eastern influences on Greek mythology (which is covered in greater detail in his The East Face of Helicon).

India on Oct 04, 2020

Sophia Richards: Love is the answer we are all one with the universe aka the body of God or Bhraman we are all one Lord Krishna is supreme personality of the godhead

United States on Sep 15, 2020

Benjamin Gibbs: Received in great condition. It's a wonderfully fun book and a perfect introduction to Greek mythology for anyone interested in learning about the earliest concepts of the ancient gods and heroes. Paired with "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton and perhaps Homer's works as well, it will put you on the right path.

United States on May 09, 2020

Aran Joseph Canes: The Theogony and Works and Days contain the Greek understandings of divinity and human history at about the time they first learned to write. Unsurprisingly, the stories appear strange and even bizarre to the modern reader. The writing itself is difficult to follow with frequent tangents, etymologies, stories and practical advice all somehow in the same text.

Given that there are modern retellings of the same myths that are much easier to read, and probably more pleasurable, is there any reason to read these tales in an archaic form?

I would argue yes, if one is truly interested in understanding human origins. When Plato or Xenophanes criticize the poets for slandering the gods, they are referring to Hesiod and Homer. If one chooses to read modern retellings of the myths, they typically come across as so many entertaining stories.

In Hesiod, however, one can see the myths as first efforts at understanding the human predicament. One can then see the foil for the Athenian movement away from archaic mythologies and toward democracy and reason. The Socratic/Platonic effort to reform education and society becomes then so much more vivid....

United States on Dec 15, 2017

Tom Lee: Less, yet also greatly recognized for a succinctness near to the thankfully greater surviving work by Roman writer Cicero, as a contrast to how tenuous one can feel about what we have in writing from the ancient world, and for an even better focus on ancient plethoras of the divine, we have Hesiod. Here, too, let me make a suggestion for a quick close, one that has an inherant contrast in itself since we get a lot of classic world divinity in what philologists unearth, Amazon should be able to get you both the pastoral and erotic works of Ovid and the many-faceted works of Aurelius, Maurius, Claudius, Julius Caesar, Aquinnas, Constantine, Augustine, and for more Greek writers, aside from the little we've had of say Aeschylus and Euripides -- and I mentioned Sophocles and Plato in other reviews -- more works only mentioned in related records about them is carefully and painstakingly being found, I have been appraised of. Why tenuous in how I feel, thus satisfied by these surviving artifacts? I was also recently told that from narratives to buildings, and anything else, we have only a shaky ten to maybe fifteen percent of the Greco-Roman world that the ravages of...

United States on Aug 06, 2013

AJ: M.L West is one of the great classicists. His book on Indo-European traditions, and another on the influence of southwest Asia on Greek ideas, make him truly valuable, and the breadth and density of his work is aided by the fluency and clarity of his translations (whether in Greek or Avestan!). In this short volume, West translates Hesiod's famous works very neatly without trying to claim that they are anything other than what they are: curious, relatively simple poems (here in prose) about topics of importance to early Greeks. The poems are quaint rather than sublime, but it is important to note that they were very influential, and are still worth reading.

'Theogony' is about the gods and how they came to be; West notes in his introduction that the account appears to derive from southwest Asian influence rather than an Indo-European precedent, and was actually somewhat abhorrent to later Greeks of the classical period for its presentation of warfare between the gods. 'Works and Days' is advice given, ostensibly, to Hesiod's brother, Perses, about such matters as putting to sea, growing grain, and finding a wife. This is by far the more readable and...

United Kingdom on Sep 21, 2011