polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 3� (�0�4) �33-�60 brill.com/polis Hesiod: Man, Law and Cosmos Alex Priou Department of Philosophy, Sarah Lawrence College, 1 Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708, USA
[email protected] Abstract In his two chief works, the Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod treats the possibil- ity of providence. In the former poem, he considers what sort of god could claim to gives human beings guidance. After arriving at Zeus as the only consistent possibil- ity, Hesiod presents Zeus’ rule as both cosmic and legalistic. In the latter poem, how- ever, Hesiod shows that so long as Zeus is legalistic, his rule is limited cosmically to the human being. Ultimately, Zeus’ rule emerges as more human than cosmic, and thus unable to fulfil the cosmic demands of piety. Hesiod’s presentation thus begs, without thematically posing, the question of how human beings ought to live. Accordingly, Hesiod’s theological analysis, and not his theogony (or, implicit cosmogony or cosmol- ogy), sets the stage for the inquiries of the early Greek philosophers, and so political philosophy as a whole. Keywords Hesiod – providence – law 1 Introduction (Theogony 1-115) Hesiod begins the Theogony with a justification of his ability to speak on matters from long ago, from a time without men, indeed from that time when the gods first came to be. More precisely, he begins from the Muses and lists the gods of whom they sing, and, with the end of that list, remarks that the Muses taught him, Hesiod, a lowly shepherd, to sing of such exalted events.