OF CELEBRATED AUTHORS

Some believe that work to be one and the same with the Works original: "Ἔργοις". They are greatly mistaken. Hofmann in his Lexicon.

He was a man of very elegant character, and remarkable for the most gentle sweetness of his songs, being most desirous of leisure and quiet. Velleius Paterculus, book 1, page 29.

A most pure writer, who contains the best precepts of virtue. Daniel Heinsius.

It is certain that Homer and Hesiod are rightly called the parents and masters of Greek poetry. Johann Andreas Quenstedt.

A greater simplicity and a ruder antiquity appear in Hesiod than in Homer. Lipsius in his commentary on Velleius Paterculus.

Hesiod rarely rises to great heights, and a large part of his work is occupied with names; nevertheless, his sentences regarding precepts are useful, his words are mild, and his composition is respectable. The palm is given to him in that middle style of speaking. Quintilian, book 10, chapter 1.

The Works and Days original: "Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι" of Hesiod have a wit and salt that is not coarse. Juan Luis Vives, On the Transmission of Knowledge.

The genealogy of the gods by Hesiod is useful for understanding the poets, but the rest is most futile. Ibid.

Pausanias writes that his poem was still preserved in his own time on leaden tablets in the Temple of the Muses, of which Hesiod was a priest.

Tanneguy Le Fèvre says that Hesiod, in his book titled Works and Days, imitated our authors of calendars, who sometimes note lucky and unlucky days; but that work, if considered more closely, is not of great importance. Summary of the Lives of the Greek Poets, in French.

Other writers who handed down moral precepts and laws were unable to set the strength of virtue and its true form before our eyes because of their infancy and lack of speech. But Hesiod exhibits a certain expressed image, illustrated with living colors, not spoiled by artificial dye, and clearly such as the color of Apelles shows in his paintings. Philipp Melanchthon, Preface to Hesiod.

He loves a middle and even style of speaking, neither lying low with too much humility, nor proudly swollen, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus rightly observed. His Works and Days are written so prudently and learnedly that even today not only Pagans and gardeners, but also stewards, shipmasters, and farmers are able to profit from reading them. As for the Theogony, it does indeed introduce a multitude of gods in appearance, but those studious of the nature of things observe that philosophical collections are often hidden under these wrappings of fables, a thing which was also noticed long ago by Plutarch. Christian youth must look out for one thing, that they do not attach too much faith to those things which he mixes in concerning the superstitious distinction and observation of certain days. Borrichius, On the Poets, page 10.

Hesiod took many things from Musaeus. Clement of Alexandria, book 6 of the Stromata.

Whoever reads the Theogony of Hesiod should remember those things which Epiphanius wrote against the Valentinians or Gnostics. Because they imitated the Theogony of Hesiod and those thirty ages, they fell into the most absurd heresies. "O the silliness and such great vanity of these men," exclaims Epiphanius, "who have joined their own silliness to poetic and pagan fables." And a little later the same Epiphanius shows that from Hesiod, Orpheus, and Stesichorus flowed those innumerable beings who are called gods among them, a thing which Irenaeus had also predicted from the Apostle, re...