Aeolic speaking poet was a Boeotian of Ascra seems even more
certain, since the tradition is never once disputed,
insignificant though the place was, even before its destruction
by the Thespians.

Again, Hesiod's story of his relations with his brother Perses
have been treated with scepticism (see Murray, "Anc. Gk.
Literature", pp. 53-54): Perses, it is urged, is clearly a mere
dummy, set up to be the target for the poet's exhortations. On
such a matter precise evidence is naturally not forthcoming; but
all probability is against the sceptical view. For 1) if the
quarrel between the brothers were a fiction, we should expect it
to be detailed at length and not noticed allusively and rather
obscurely -- as we find it; 2) as MM. Croiset remark, if the poet
needed a lay-figure the ordinary practice was to introduce some
mythological person -- as, in fact, is done in the "Precepts of
Chiron". In a word, there is no more solid ground for treating
Perses and his quarrel with Hesiod as fictitious than there would
be for treating Cyrnus, the friend of Theognis, as mythical.

Thirdly, there is the passage in the "Theogony" relating to
Hesiod and the Muses. It is surely an error to suppose that
lines 22-35 all refer to Hesiod: rather, the author of the
"Theogony" tells the story of his own inspiration by the same
Muses who once taught Hesiod glorious song. The lines 22-3 are
therefore a very early piece of tradition about Hesiod, and
though the appearance of Muses must be treated as a graceful
fiction, we find that a writer, later than the "Works and Days"
by perhaps no more than three-quarters of a century, believed in
the actuality of Hesiod and in his life as a farmer or shepherd.