Editing Hesiod (section)

=== Dating<!--linked from the 'Life' section above--> ===
[[File:Helikonmountainascent.JPG|thumb|right|Modern Mount Helicon. Hesiod once described his nearby hometown, [[Ascra]], as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."]]

Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be [[Orpheus]], [[Musaeus of Athens|Musaeus]], Hesiod and [[Homer]]—in that order.<ref>Rosen, Ralph M.(1997) Homer and Hesiod University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/7</ref> But thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe the [[Homeridae]] were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense.

The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were [[Xenophanes]] and [[Heraclides Ponticus]], though [[Aristarchus of Samothrace]] was the first actually to argue the case. [[Ephorus]] made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian [[Herodotus]] (''Histories'' II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and the 4th century BC [[sophist]] [[Alcidamas]] in his work ''Mouseion'' even brought them together for an imagined poetic ''[[Agon|ágōn]]'' ({{lang|grc|ἄγών}}), which survives today as the ''[[Contest of Homer and Hesiod]]''. Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side.<ref>West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', pp. 40, 47.</ref>

Hesiod certainly predates the [[Greek lyric|lyric]] and [[elegiac]] poets whose work has come down to the modern era.{{citation needed|date=June 2013}} Imitations of his work have been observed in [[Alcaeus of Mytilene|Alcaeus]], [[Epimenides]], [[Mimnermus]], [[Semonides]], [[Tyrtaeus]] and [[Archilochus]], from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him is about 650 BC.

An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at [[Delphi]] that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC (''Theogony'' 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the [[Euxine]], a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (''Theogony'' 337–45).<ref>West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', p. 40 ff.</ref>

Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at [[Chalcis]] in [[Euboea]] where the sons of one [[Amphidamas]] awarded him a tripod (''Works and Days'' 654–662). [[Plutarch]] identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the [[Lelantine War]] between Chalcis and [[Eretria]] and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of ''Theogony'', a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis.<ref>West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', p. 43 ff.</ref>