acquainted with the Ionian epos, would naturally see that the
only outlet for his gifts lay in applying epic poetry to new
themes acceptable to his hearers.

Though the poems of the Boeotian school (2) were unanimously
assigned to Hesiod down to the age of Alexandrian criticism, they
were clearly neither the work of one man nor even of one period:
some, doubtless, were fraudulently fathered on him in order to
gain currency; but it is probable that most came to be regarded
as his partly because of their general character, and partly
because the names of their real authors were lost. One fact in
this attribution is remarkable -- the veneration paid to Hesiod.


Life of Hesiod

Our information respecting Hesiod is derived in the main from
notices and allusions in the works attributed to him, and to
these must be added traditions concerning his death and burial
gathered from later writers.

Hesiod's father (whose name, by a perversion of "Works and Days",
299 PERSE DION GENOS to PERSE, DION GENOS, was thought to have
been Dius) was a native of Cyme in Aeolis, where he was a
seafaring trader and, perhaps, also a farmer. He was forced by
poverty to leave his native place, and returned to continental
Greece, where he settled at Ascra near Thespiae in Boeotia
("Works and Days", 636 ff.). Either in Cyme or Ascra, two sons,
Hesiod and Perses, were born to the settler, and these, after his
death, divided the farm between them. Perses, however, who is