Hesiod and Aeschylus (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, 30) - Softcover

Solmsen, Friedrich

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801482747 ISBN 13: 9780801482748

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Friedrich Solmsen provides a new approach to Hesiod's personality in this book by distinguishing Hesiod's own contributions to Greek mythology and theology from the traditional aspects of his poetry. Hesiod's vision of a better world, expressed in religious language and imagery, pictures the savagery and brutality of the earlier days of Greece giving way to an order of justice. In this new order, however, the good aspects of the past would be preserved, giving an inner continuity and strength to the changing world.

Solmsen traces the influence of Hesiod’s ideas on other Athenian poets, Aeschylus in particular. From personal political experience Aeschylus could give a deeper meaning to Hesiod's dream of an organic historical evolution and of a synthesis of old and new powers. For Aeschylus, justice became the crucial problem of the political community as well as of the divine order. Through close readings of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days and of Aeschylus' Prometheia and Eumenides, Solmsen reinterprets the political ideas of the Greek city state and the relation between divine and human justice as seen by early Greek poets.

First published in 1949, this book has long been recognized as the standard work on Hesiod's influence. For the 1995 paperback edition, G. M. Kirkwood has written a new foreword that addresses the book's reception and discusses more recent scholarship on the works Solmsen examines, including the disputed authorship of Prometheia.

About this title

About the Author:

Friedrich Solmsen (1904–1989) was Chair of the Department of Classics at Cornell University and Moses Slaughter Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and he taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His many books include Plato's Theology, Hesiod and Aeschylus, and Aristotle's System of the Physical World: A Comparison with His Predecessors, all published by Cornell in the series Cornell Studies in Classical Philology.

Review:

"The book is rich in ideas and its suggestions give a valuable contribution towards a real understanding of the Greek archaic period."

(Classical Philology)

"The debt of Aeschylus to Hesiod, as well as to Homer and Solon and other poets, has always been realized, though never thoroughly explored; yet only a just appreciation of the debt can enable us to measure the originality of Aeschylus. Solmsen's study is therefore most welcome."

(American Journal of Philology)

"A wealth of acute observation and insight.... There is much of value here for the philologist as well as for the student of religious development.... Hesiod emerges from these pages as a religious thinker of impressive stature."

(Journal of Religion)

"Solmsen has attempted... to answer two questions: what was original in Hesiod's poems (as distinct from the mass of traditional myth and religious beliefs incorporated in them) and what Solon and Aeschylus derived from him. The author examines the Prometheia and the Eumenides at length, and he devotes a chapter to Solon. It is an important book."

(Greece and Rome)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0801482747
• ISBN 13: 9780801482748
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248