The preceding pages have offered a rough sketch of the Theogony's contents, highlighting those points where Hesiod makes significant organizational choices in the arrangement of his genealogies and in the placement of his digressions, choices that underline certain fundamental conceptions concerning the articulation of the cosmos. But the Theogony's armature remains essentially and necessarily tied to a genealogical framework as it traces the development and evolution of the divine cosmos from its origins to its present state. The organization of the Works and Days, however, possesses no such intrinsic necessity or obvious structure. As West remarks:

In the opinion of others, Hesiod's mode of composition involves a fairly fluid association of ideas whereby each section leads to the next, but the poem inevitably lacks an overall coherence or argument.

Any study of the poem must first confront a fundamental problem: the unity and coherence of the Works and Days as it has come down to us.