One of the earliest Greek poets, Hesiod (Greek Hesiodos, Latin Hesiodus, fl. c. 700 BCE), lived around the same time as Homer. He was known as the "father of Greek didactic poetry." Two of his epics have survived, the Theogony, relating the myths of the gods, and the Works and Days, describing peasant life.
Modern scholars refer to him as a primary source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
While the finer details of his life are unknown, Hesiod was a native of Ascra, near Mount Helicon in Boeotia. His father seems to have been a sea captain who migrated there from Asia Minor. He may have started as a professional reciter (rhapsode), performing epics and heroic songs, but then farmed a smallholding. He claimed the Muses appeared to him while he was tending his flock.
However, Hesiod's account of the encounter with the Muses on the slopes of Mount Helicon casts doubt on an earlier career as a rhapsode. As he tells it, the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, signifying poetic authority. If he had been a professional performer, the gift would have been a lyre.
His Theogony is the earlier of his two extant epics. It recounts the history of the gods, from the emergence of Chaos, Gaea (Earth), and Eros through the bloody power struggle between Cronus and his supporters and the Olympian gods, led by Zeus. It provides the earliest known source for the myths of Pandora and Prometheus.
While Hesiod's primary authorship of the Theogony was questioned, it is no longer doubted. However, the work does include insertions by later poets and rhapsodists.
Works and Days, on the other hand, is addressed to Hesiod's brother Perses. He managed to secure a disproportionate share of their inheritance by questionable means and sought to acquire more the same way. Hesiod urges Persus to abandon his schemes and gain his livelihood through strenuous and persistent work, which Hesiod sees as the only path to prosperity and distinction.
Hesiod then proceeds to describe the kinds of work appropriate to each part of the calendar and how to go about it. A final section dealing with taboos and superstitions and guidance for sowing, threshing, shearing, and begetting children seems to have been the work of someone else.
It seems that attributing someone else's work to Hesiod was not an uncommon practice.
Numerous other poems ascribed to Hesiod are generally included in the "Hesiodic Corpus". Pieces bundled into editions of Hesiod that seem to be the work of other poets include The Precepts of Chiron, Catalogues of Women, and the Contest Between Homer and Hesiod. The latter dates to the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian (2nd century CE).