ROSS S MARSHALL…………….

ESSAY-6………………………………HIST-111, WEEK-6

What can we learn from Hesiod about the social and political organization of the late Dark Age

or Early Iron Age (800 BCE) Greece? We learn from Hesiod, in his “On Works and Days” section,

in his reproaching his foolish brother Perses for squandering his wealth of the Golden Age principles

of the society in which they lived.

Hesiod exposes these norms with reprimands to the vulgarities of Perses. He says, crookedness

is contrary to them as work is best, rather than ill-gain, for “Badness can be got easily.” Hesiod gives

more advice that reveals the social climate of the day when he says “A man is best “who “listens to a

good adviser.” As the Good Adviser, Hesiod further prompts Perses to listen by explaining that

sluggards are those who are “eating without working,” and that the envious lust and seize property

and wealth. Hesiod further councils that such vices roust the anger of Zeus himself. He describes

such sinful deeds as those that offend fatherless children, slander aging fathers, and (hypocritically)

sacrificing to the deathless gods, and that cheat the wages of friends, and coaxed by deceiving

women, and those that go “up to his brother’s bed and commit unnatural sin in lying with his wife.”

Hoping Perses changes his dystopic mindset and concedes to the moral values of Greek society,

Hesiod describes to him how the Olympian gods became angry over this issue. He tells a tale where

Zeus is angry, thinks up dismal sorrows for mankind and demands the creation of a plaster idol. He

has Hephaistos, Athene, and Aphrodite manufacture an idol with the face of a goddess, fill it with

desire and cruelty and has Hermes add the mentality of a hussy full of lies and words of falsehood.

Hesiod warns his brother that the consequences of Zeus giving him the same gift ‘idol’ would be

irrevocable, for he says, “there is no way to avoid what Zeus has intended.” He tells Perses that if all

society were as he is society would be “free from all evil, laborious work, and sickness…”.

From Hesiod’s wise council to Perses we learn that his brothers’ values do not depict those of

the social norms of Greek society. By understanding the wrongs mentioned by Hesiod, we have

learned that the social and political condition of Greek society in the early Archaic Period was a time

when society “was [NOT] full of evil things”, but was one of hard work, virtue, honesty, receiving

gifts and blessings from the gods (1).

(1) Brophy, James M. Perspectives from the Past. Volume-1, (Edition 4), 2009. Pg. 117-119.