Hesiod (lived 8th century BC)

Greek poet. The earliest of the Greek didactic poets, he is often contrasted with Homer as the other main representative of the early epic. He is the author of Works and Days, a moralizing and didactic poem of rural life, and Theogony, an account of the origin of the world and of the gods. Both poems include the myth of Pandora.

Hesiod was born in Ascra, Boeotia, worked as herder of his father's flocks, and seems never to have risen above the status of a peasant farmer. After his father's death, he became involved in a dispute with his brother Perses over their inheritance. Judgement went in favour of Perses; Hesiod retired to Naupactus, and is said to have been murdered by the sons of his host in the sacred precinct of Nemean Zeus at Oeneon in Locris. Subsequently Ascra was destroyed by the Thespians, its inhabitants settled at Orchomenus, and the Delphic oracle ordered Hesiod's remains to be transferred there.