012 - Oligarchs and Hesiod

In this episode, we discuss the transitional governments in the early stages of the centrally unified polis (oligarchia and aristokratia), as the waning power of the basileis becomes supplanted by a small landowning group of nobles; the economic and social divisions between the nobles and commoners brought on by a spike in population in Greece; and the second great author of ancient Greece, a man named Hesiod, who speaks to us about life and society in the emerging polis from the point of view of the ordinary citizen, in his Works and Days

Primary Sources:
Text/Hesiod's Theogony
Text/Hesiod's Works and Days

Text/Hesiod's Catalogues of Women
Text/Hesiod's Shield of Heracles
Text/Miscellaneous Fragments Attributed to Hesiod

Supplementary Resources (Videos, Photos, Other Podcasts)

 Video/Ancient Greece during the Archaic Period (History with Cy)

Photo/Bronze Bust of Hesiod

Recommended Podcast Episodes:

***Ad Navseam - Workin’ for a Livin’ - The Archaic Greek Poet Hesiod, Part 1

***Ad Navseam - Theogony and the Ecstasy - The Archaic Greek Poet Hesiod, Part 2

***Ancient Greece Declassified - How to Succeed in the Iron Age

***Ithaca Bound - Commerce in Archaic Greece

***Literature and History - Hesiod's Works and Days

***Literature and History - Hesiod's Theogony
***Maritime History - Sailing Advice from Hesiod, the Farmer-Poet