Abstract

Hesiod begins his Theogony by telling his audience of rural shepherds and farmers about his encounter with the Muses on Mount Helikon. To assure them he's telling the truth, he claims the humble shepherd's staff of olive wood that he holds before them is in fact a gift from these same goddesses. An apparently mundane artifact is somehow supposed to attest to the divine source of the tales he is about to tell of events not even the Muses themselves could have witnessed, to say nothing of mortal men. Hesiod's overture to his audience has echoes elsewhere in his poetry, as when he claims that a massive stone, visible to all, is the very one Kronos is said to have emitted long ago, after having unwittingly swallowed it... Read More.