The Works and Days / Theogony / The Shield of Herakles

Three epic poems by Hesiod, the 'other' great epic poet of ancient Greece (along with Homer, his near-contemporary).

Constituting some of the earliest known works of literature in European history, the poems of Hesiod describe the creation of the cosmos, the history of the gods, the life & concerns of a simple shepherd in rural Greece, and agricultural knowledge and techniques, and all, as scholar Robert Lamberton wrote, in a voice that is "idiosyncratic, ironic, self-conscious…appropriating proverbial wisdom…and transforming it into a discourse that is as much an account of poetry as it is an account of the world." [Robert Lamberton, Hesiod, Yale Univ. Press]