“Rustic shepherds, worthless reproaches, mere stomachs,
we know how to say many lies like the truth,
and, whenever we wish, we know how to tell the truth."
Hesiod appears as a character in his own narrative writing about himself as if in the third person. He begins his account by relating how the Muses—as if their job—inspired and instructed his text. The nine of them came to him while he was tending his sheep and taught him to sing. In this quote they admit to their ability to transform lies into the seeming which appears to be other words for the art of fictional storytelling. Nevertheless, however, they claim that all they are about to relate of the history of the gods is the truth, the full truth and so on and so forth. So, in the modern vernacular, what the poet is essentially doing here is prefacing his outrageous story with the claim that it is “based on a true story.”
He bound
the changeful-planning Prometheus with unbreakable fetters,
painful bonds, and drove them through the middle of a pillar.
And he sent a long-winged eagle upon him. Further, it ate
his deathless liver, but there grew back all over during the night
as much as the bird of long wings had eaten during the whole
whole day.
This is Hesiod speaking, relating the stories which the Muses had informed unto him. This quote exemplifies the way that Theogony is a work which does cover some very familiar ground even for readers with only a little familiarity with mythology. In addition, of course, it must be stated that much of the details painted by Hesiod go into what would be considered more obscure corners of the mythological cosmos inhabited by such stars of the story as Prometheus and Zeus. But those with a passing knowledge of the myth will not be completely lost thanks to the occasional revisiting of these stories which are more often told and adapted into other works that have more become bigger sellers than the Theogony.
Wonder held immortal gods and mortal men,
when they saw a sheer cunning, unmanageable for men.
For from her is the descent of female women[for the race and tribes of women are destructive,]
a great pain for mortals, living with men,
companions not of destructive Poverty but of Plenty.
This particular passage is interesting in light of the fact that Muses who passed along the true story which Hesiod writes were comprised of the daughters of Zeus. Was is those females who infused the blatant misogyny directed toward mortal feminine versions of humanity? One is hard pressed to deny the misogyny, that is for certain. What is taking place here is the creation of the very first woman whose job, it appears, will be to create misery for men. She is not named in this work, but scholars have connected her anonymous presence here to the description of another one of the famous stars of mythology as she appears in another work by the same author. The parallels between this proto-woman constructed by the gods for the express purpose of bringing woe to men and that of the infamous Pandora and her opening that box which unleashed all the evils into the world while trapping hope inside are convincing enough to buy the argument that this femme fatale and Pandora are one and the same.
