Hesiod's Theogony: from Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost

by Stephen Scully

Stephen Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod's Theogony and traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton's own creation myth, which sought to "soar above th' Aonian Mount [i.e., the Theogony]...and justify the ways of God to men." Scully also considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories, including the Enûma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking of modern "scientific myths," Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod's poem as a hymn to Zeus and a city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an idealized polity and--with but one exception--a place of communal harmony. This reading informs his study of the Theogony's reception in later writings about polity, discord, and justice. The rich and various story of reception pays particular attention to the long Homeric Hymns, Solon, the Presocratics, Pindar, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Plato in the Archaic and Classical periods; to the Alexandrian scholars, Callimachus, Euhemerus, and the Stoics in the Hellenistic period; to Ovid, Apollodorus, Lucian, a few Church fathers, and the Neoplatonists in the Roman period. Tracing the poem's reception in the Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance, including Petrarch and Erasmus, the book ends with a lengthy exploration of Milton's imitations of the poem in Paradise Lost. Scully also compares what he considers Hesiod's artful interplay of narrative, genealogical lists, and keen use of personified abstractions in the Theogony to Homeric narrative techniques and treatment of epic verse.

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2013

About the author

Ever since my undergraduate days, my interests have radiated out from Homer and Hesiod. My first publications were on Homeric themes and I always return to Homer, the Iliad, in particular. My book, Hesiod’s Theogony, from Near Eastern creation stories to Paradise Lost, has just been published (2015). It compares Hesiod’s vision of creation to that in Genesis and the Near Eastern creation myths, and considers his vision of Zeus’ Olympus to writers from the Archaic period to Lucian of Samosata, the Christian apologists and the neoplatonists. It also traces the Theogony’s reception in the Byzantine and medieval periods up to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and compares it to Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. I have also published on Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Virgil, George Chapman (the first English translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey), and Freud, and I have translated Plato’s Phaedrus and (with Rosanna Warren) Euripides’ Suppliant Women. In addition to my delight in studying poetry, rhetoric, and prose style, I have an abiding passion for Greek and Roman understandings of polity as rendered especially in poetry and philosophy. This stems from my college days in New York City when I wanted to become a city planner. These days I also manage a tree farm, linked to my cabin off the grid on a mountain in Vermont.

Reviews

[I-kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite parts: The political interpretation of the poem is quite convincing, and the comparisons with Enuma Elish and Paradise Lost are thought-provoking and entertaining.

[Renato D'Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed this book to my thesis on the hesiodic Chaos. Important for the hesiodic studies