Father Wesley Walker and Dr. Junius Johnson dive into Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, two deeply foundational texts of ancient Greek literature. While Homer offers sweeping literary narratives of heroes, Hesiod gives us something that feels distinctly older and simpler: a mythic origin story crossed with a didactic farming manual. The hosts discuss how Hesiod’s works functioned as literal theology for archaic Greece, helping to disseminate the Olympian cult and establishing the gods through profound allegories.
The conversation wades into the ultimate theological debate of the ancient world: are the gods bound by an older, preordained fate, as Homer suggests, or does Zeus dictate fate himself, as Hesiod argues? The discussion also unpacks Hesiod’s famous succession of the Ages of Man—from the Golden Age under Kronos down to the unrelenting sorrow of our current Iron Age. Yet, despite this grim outlook, Hesiod’s Works and Days reveals a surprising cure for sacralized nostalgia: finding nobility in everyday work, farming the land well, and honoring the divine.
Do you think Hesiod successfully balances a nostalgia for the past with the realities of the present?
Endnotes
Wesley: Heroes of the City of Man by Peter Leithart
Junius: The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes
