The more times I read this opening to the Theogony, the more I like it, from the mock humility to the assurance of authenticity. And I think this might be my favourite part of it. We just won’t know, according to Hesiod’s Muses, if they’re telling us the truth or not. It’ll sound the same to us, and they’ve just confessed that they sometimes lie. They have removed certainty from this account while appearing to bestow it, and they have admitted it right at the start. I find myself wondering whether if all ancient texts on the origins of gods had come with the same disclaimer, we might have had
...more
