Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-14T22:08:58.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE DISEASE OF MORTALITY IN HESIOD'S THEOGONY: PROMETHEUS, HERAKLES, AND THE INVENTION OF KLEOS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Melissa Mueller
Melissa Mueller*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherstmmueller@classics.umass.edu
Get access

Extract

Hesiod's Theogony is not overtly concerned with the world of mortals. The place of humans in the Theogony nevertheless holds a certain fascination, perhaps more for what is not revealed—our origins, for example—than for what is. Focusing on a relatively neglected passage of the poem (Theogony 521-32), I want to trace here the way Hesiod lays out the cosmic coordinates of kleos (‘fame’ or ‘glory’) with a view to better situating the condition of mortality within the poem as a whole. Kleos, as we will see, is part of the fallout for humans of the battle of wits between Zeus and Prometheus: it is the compensation for their new, temporally inflected existence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , June 2016 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arthur, M.B. (1982), ‘Cultural Strategies in Hesiod's Theogony: Law, Family, Society’, Arethusa 15, 63-82.Google Scholar
Bakker, E.J. (2002), ‘Khronos, Kléos, and Ideology from Herodotus to Homer’, in Reichel, M. and Rengakos, A. (eds.), Epea Pteroenta: Beiträge zur Homerforschung (Stuttgart), 11-30.Google Scholar
Bakker, E.J. (2013), The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Beall, E.F. (1989) ‘The Contents of Hesiod's Pandora Jar: Erga 94-98’, Hermes 117, 227-30.Google Scholar
Beall, E.F. (1991), ‘Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth’, JHI 52, 355-71.Google Scholar
Broccia, G. (1954), ‘Kryptein bion: lavoro e vita nel mito esiodeo di Pandora’, PP 9, 118-36.Google Scholar
Burgess, J.S. (2006), ‘Neoanalysis, Orality, and Intertextuality: An Examination of Homeric Motif Transference’, Oral Tradition 21, 148-89.Google Scholar
Canevaro, L.G. (2013), ‘The Clash of the Sexes in Hesiod's Works and Days’, G&R 60, 185-202.Google Scholar
Canevaro, L.G. (2015), Hesiod's Works & Days: How to Teach Self-Sufficiency (Oxford).Google Scholar
Clay, D. (1992), ‘The World of Hesiod’, Ramus 21, 131-55.Google Scholar
Clay, J.S. (1993), ‘The Generation of Monsters in Hesiod’, CP 88, 105-16.Google Scholar
Clay, J.S. (2003), Hesiod's Cosmos (Cambridge).Google Scholar
de Jong, I.J.F. (1989), Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam).Google Scholar
Dougherty, C. (2001), The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer's Odyssey (Oxford).Google Scholar
Fraser, L.G. (2011), ‘A Woman of Consequence: Pandora in Hesiod's Works and Days’, CCJ 57, 9-28.Google Scholar
Garcia, L.F. Jr. (2013), Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad (Cambridge MA/London).Google Scholar
Haubold, J. (2005), ‘Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women’, in Hunter, R. (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions (Cambridge), 85-98.Google Scholar
Judet de La Combe, P., and Lernould, A. (1996), ‘Sur la Pandore des Travaux: Esquisses’, in Blaise, F., Judet de La Combe, P. and Rousseau, P. (eds.), Le métier du mythe: Lectures d'Hésiode (Villeneuve d’ Ascq), 301-13.Google Scholar
Leclerc, M-C. (1994), ‘Facettes du temps dans Les Travaux et les Jours d'Hésiode’, RPh 68, 147-63.Google Scholar
Loney, A.C. (2014), ‘Hesiod's Incorporative Poetics in the Theogony and the Contradictions of Prometheus’, AJP 135, 503-31.Google Scholar
Martin, R.P. (1992), ‘Hesiod's Metanastic Poetics’, Ramus 21, 11-33.Google Scholar
Mordine, M.J. (2006), ‘Speaking to Kings: Hesiod's αἰνός and the Rhetoric of Allusion in the Works and Days’, CQ 56, 363-73.Google Scholar
Most, G.W. (1993), ‘Hesiod and the Textualization of Personal Temporality’, in Arrighetti, G. and Montanari, F. (eds.), La componente autobiografica nella poesia greca e latina fra realtà e artificio letterario (Pisa), 73-92.Google Scholar
Muellner, L. (1996), The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek Epic (Ithaca NY).Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1979), The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore).Google Scholar
Nünlist, R. (2004), ‘Hesiod’, in de Jong, I., Nünlist, R. and Bowie, A. (eds.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden), 25-42.Google Scholar
Pease, A.S. (1925), ‘Prometheus and Tityos’, CP 20, 277f.Google Scholar
Pucci, P. (1977), Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore).Google Scholar
Purves, A. (2004), ‘Topographies of Time in Hesiod’, in Rosen, R. (ed.), Time and Temporality in the Ancient World (Philadelphia), 147-67.Google Scholar
Rengakos, A. (2009), ‘Hesiod's Narrative’, in Montanari, F., Rengakos, A. and Tsagalis, C. (eds.), Brill's Companion to Hesiod (Leiden), 203-18.Google Scholar
Rosen, R.M. (1990), ‘Poetry and Sailing in Hesiod's Works and Days’, ClAnt 9, 99-113.Google Scholar
Rotondaro, S. (1997), ‘Il tempo, Zeus, la memoria e l'uomo nella Teogonia di Esiodo’, Atti dell’ accademia di scienze morali e politiche 108, 55-63.Google Scholar
Sinos, D.S. (1980), Achilles, Patroklos, and the Meaning of Philos (Innsbruck).Google Scholar
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1986), ‘Crime and Punishment: Tityos, Tantalos and Sisyphos in Odyssey 11’, BICS 33, 37-58.Google Scholar
Stafford, E. (2012), Herakles (New York).Google Scholar
Stocking, C.H. (2013), ‘Sacrifice, Succession, and Paternity in Hesiod's Theogony’, Mètis 11, 183-210.Google Scholar
Stoddard, K.B. (2004), The Narrative Voice in the Theogony of Hesiod (Leiden).Google Scholar
Stoddard, K.B. (2005), ‘The Muses and the Mortal Narrator: How Gods Relate to Humankind in the Theogony’, Helios 32, 1-28.Google Scholar
Tsagalis, C. (2008), The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics (Cambridge MA/London).Google Scholar
Verdenius, W.J. (1971), ‘Hesiod, Theogony 507-616: Some Comments on a Commentary’, Mnemosyne 24, 1-10.Google Scholar
Vernant, J-P. (1981a), ‘The Myth of Prometheus in Hesiod’, in Gordon, R.L. (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge), 43-56.Google Scholar
Vernant, J-P. (1981b), ‘Sacrificial and Alimentary Codes in Hesiod's Myth of Prometheus’, in Gordon, R.L. (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge), 57-79.Google Scholar
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1986), ‘Divine Time and Human Time’, in Vidal-Naquet, P. (ed.), The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World, tr. Szegedy-Maszak, A. (Baltimore), 39-60.Google Scholar
Weçowski, M. (2012), ‘Can Zeus be Deceived? The Mekone Episode (Hes. Theog. 535-561) between Theodicy and Power-Politics’, Klio 94, 45-54.Google Scholar
West, M.L. (ed. and comm.) (1966), Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford).Google Scholar
Zeitlin, F.I. (1995), ‘The Economics of Hesiod's Pandora’, in Reeder, E. (ed.), Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Princeton), 49-56.Google Scholar