When was the Theogony by Hesiod written?
The Theogony was composed around 730 to 700 BC. The written form was established in the 6th century BC, and the earliest surviving manuscripts date from the end of the 13th century AD.
Questions about Theogony
Short answers, pulled from the story.
How long is the Theogony and what language is it written in?
The Theogony contains 1,022 lines and is written in the epic dialect of Ancient Greek.
What is the succession myth in the Theogony?
The succession myth describes how Cronus overthrew Uranus by castrating him with an adamantine sickle, and how Zeus in turn overthrew Cronus and the Titans after a ten-year war called the Titanomachy. Zeus ended the cycle by swallowing his first wife Metis before she could bear a son fated to overthrow him.
What is the story of Prometheus in the Theogony?
Prometheus tricked Zeus at Mekone by hiding good meat inside an ox stomach and covering bones with fat, causing Zeus to choose the lesser portion for the gods. As punishment Zeus withheld fire from humanity; Prometheus stole it back inside a fennel stalk. Zeus then had Prometheus chained to a cliff where an eagle ate his regenerating liver daily, until Heracles freed him.
How did the Theogony influence early Greek philosophy?
The Theogony's concept of Chaos as the arche, the first origin of all things, shaped the earliest Greek philosophers. Thales proposed water as the first principle, Anaximander introduced the term arche formally and described an endless mass called Apeiron, and Pherecydes of Syros called water by the name Chaos. A fragment from Xenophanes connects Chaos directly to the Apeiron concept.
What Near Eastern myths parallel the Theogony?
The Babylonian Dynasty of Dunnum shares structural features with the Theogony. The Hittite Kingship in Heaven text, first presented in 1946, contains a castration mytheme closely paralleling the Uranus-Cronus episode through the figure of Kumarbi. Scholars generally trace these similarities to the Mycenaean tradition rather than direct contacts in Hesiod's own time.