God and Nature in Hesiod

A History of Western Philosophy - The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

Just like Homer, Hesiod was a man of his times. In Hesiod's age, Greece was suffering from some socioeconomic pressures. Small farmers were being pressured to choose between serfdom and emigration. Hesiod, in his writings, appears to have been such a small farmer, as he railed against the nobles who oppressed the poor.

This conception changed the theology surrounding Zeus. If Zeus was like the capricious kings of the Homeric age that punished human insolence rather than human wrongdoing in Homer, Zeus was a ruler who would eventually punish all human wrongdoing in Hesiod. Homer lived in a warrior class society and thus, hübris (insubordination) was the chief sin. Hesiod lived in a society where oppression was rife and thus, oppression became the chief sin.

Zeus was transformed from a capricious and impulsive god in Homer to a justice-minded ruler in Hesiod. In that way, the cosmos lost its impulsive nature and became much more well ordered in Hesiod's writings.

Hesiod also transformed fate from something indifferent to the plights of men into a force which Zeus used to form the moral law and the enforcement of that moral law.

A typical Greek view is expressed in Hesiod's Works and Days: "Man is different from the rest of nature; he has an obligation to live in a characteristically human way, to do certain acts and to abstain from doing others... Man must live up to his responsibilities as a man" (Jones, 7).

Moderation is a key concept of being a man. Animals are not expected to temper their impulses. But, man is capable of discipline and must live by this principle. For, if they don't live by this unique human aspect, they will pay for their sins.

In spite of the advancements of theology surrounding Zeus and the morality of human beings and gods, Homer and Hesiod both exist in pre-philosophy and the mythic. Hesiod's Theogony reads like a genealogy of anthropomorphizing the natural world.