Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I: Points of Comparison: Hesiod and Homer; the Theogony and
Genesis
Chapter II: The Theogony
Chapter III: The Theogony and Eastern Parallels: City-State
Succession Myths?
Chapter IV: The Theogony in the Archaic and Classical periods
Chapter V: Echoes of the Theogony in the Hellenistic and Roman
periods
Chapter VI: Theogonic shadows: Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance,
Milton's Paradise Lost
Bibliography
Stephen Scully is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University. He has published on Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Plato, Vergil, George Chapman, and Freud. His books include Homer and the Sacred City, Euripides' Suppliant Women, with Rosanna Warren, translation, essay, and notes, and Plato's Phaedrus, translation, essay, and notes.
"He revitalizes the theogony for us in every way, making both the
theogony and his discussion of it essential reading for every
classicist and every lover of literature." -- Helaine L. Smith ,
Semicerchio, Rivista di poesia comparata
"The heart of Stephen Scully's book is a masterful inquiry into the
place of the Theogony in literary history, in the course of which
he makes important observations about the evolution of ancient
Greek ideas of the cosmos, divinity, sexuality and gender, justice,
and the polis. He prefaces his historical investigations with a
careful reading of the poem on its own terms, before looking
backward toward its sources and then forward toward the influence
it
exerted on later texts. Literary analysis and literary history are
carefully interwoven, as Scully's initial reading of the poem
provides a road map for the historical sections of the book."
--Deborah Lyons,
American Journal of Philology
"Stephen Scully offers a terrific overview of Hesiod's Theogony,
the work that was the ancient Greek counterpart to Genesis 1 and 2,
the two biblical creation myths...Scully's is not a survey of
theories of myth and need not be. As a rich presentation of
Hesiod's Theogony from almost all angles in its history, it is
excellent." --Robert A. Segal, Reading Religion
"Scully has long been interested in the polis, as his excellent
1990 study, Homer and the Sacred City, demonstrated, and this new
volume about Hesiod's Theogony is, in a sense, an extension of that
interest. An equally exciting aspect of this comprehensive study is
its clear and full discussion of Hesiod's until-now overlooked
literary methods, in which personification reflects psychological
reality, or flows from action, and in which
common nouns, in their shifting meanings, follow the narrative arc
of the poem." -- Rivista di poesia comparata
"Scully's book is both readable and accessible. I tried it out on a
graduate seminar on Hesiod this semester, and it generated
considerable discussion and undoubtedly contributed to a broadening
of the perspective of all participants (myself included). I can
certainly recommend it not only for this use but for anyone
concerned with the Hesiodic corpus and its history." --Bryn Mawr
Classical Review
"With its diachronic structure, this book tells a story. It is a
story which has a distinct way of carrying the reader along with
it, and by the final pages one cannot help but join with the author
in lamenting the passing of ancient Greek polytheism, and the loss
of the memory of a 'pagan vision of Olympian paradise'." --The
Classical Journal
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