ABSTRACT
The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that Homer and Hesiod were the poets who taught the Greeks about their gods: ‘it is they who created for the Greeks their theogony, giving to the gods their special names, distributing their honors and their skills, and revealing their forms’ (2.53.2). Although Homer makes no mention of Prometheus, Hesiod includes his story in two of the poems that are attributed to him, the Theogony, a poem about the origins of the gods and the world, and the Works and Days, a didactic poem in the tradition of wisdom literature. Taken together, Hesiod’s poems offer the obvious point of departure for studies of Prometheus in the ancient world as well as his modern reception. They present Prometheus as a trickster figure and offer powerful testimony to the ways in which his myth helped the Greeks of the archaic period think about the nature of the human condition in all its complexity and ambiguity. Hesiod draws upon Prometheus’ gift of fire to humans to mark the separation of mankind from the world of the gods and to explain the suffering and work that characterize the human experience at this time. Sandwiched between the rich palace world of the Homeric poems and the budding prosperity and innovation of the classical age, the world of Hesiod is one of scarce resources and limited opportunities. Hesiod uses Prometheus’ battle of wits with Zeus – his theft of fire, the origins of sacrifice, Zeus’ counter-gift of Pandora – to help Greeks of his time think about why their life is so difficult. Hesiod’s Prometheus describes human existence as a decline from days of former wealth and ease. The introduction of Pandora, with her jar of evils and sickness, highlights
the problematic role of women within the broader human experience as well. Before looking more closely at Hesiod’s Prometheus, we need to get a better understanding of Hesiod – his works and his times.
