Theogony

Ancient bronze bust, known as Pseudo-Seneca. This is now believed to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod.

The Theogony (Greek: Θεογονία, Theogonía, the birth of the gods) is a poem by Hesiod. It was written in the 8th or 7th century BC, and uses the same dialect of Ancient Greek as Homer. This dialect is known as Epic dialect today. With the exception of the Illiad and the Odyssey, the Theogony is the oldest known source of Greek mythology.

The poem is a synthesis of different Greek stories and traditions. It is a story that tells how the gods came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. In the beginning, the state of the universe is chaos - a dark indefinite void. Everything else appeared from divine chaos.

Theogony Media

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  Fourteenth-century Greek manuscript of Hesiod's Theogony with scholia written in the margins

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  The nine muses on a Roman sarcophagus (second century AD)—Louvre, Paris

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  William Blake Richmond - Venus and Anchises - Google Art Project

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  Laconic bowl depicting Prometheus and Atlas enduring their respective punishments, circa 550 B.C.

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  Ancient cylinder seal impression possibly showing a scene from the Enûma Eliš in which the Babylonian god Marduk slays Tiamat, the personification of watery chaos

Selected translations

• Athanassakis, Apostolos N., Theogony ; Works and days ; Shield / Hesiod ; introduction, translation, and notes, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. ISBN 0801829984
• Frazer, R.M. (Richard McIlwaine), The Poems of Hesiod, Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. ISBN 0806118377
• Most, Glenn, translator, Hesiod, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006-07.
• Schlegel, Catherine M., and Henry Weinfield, translators, Theogony and Works and Days, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2006

Other websites

• Hesiod, Theogony e-text (in English)
• Hesiod, Theogony e-text in Ancient Greek (from Perseus)
• Hesiod, Theogony e-text in English (from Perseus)