Ancient Scholarship on Hesiod

Abstract

During the period of time extending from the archaic rhapsodes to Aristotle and his first group of pupils, a wide variety of problems concerning the texts of the poets were raised, discussed and handed down over the generations, and the same issues would later be taken up again at least in part and addressed in different perspectives in the Homeric and Hesiodic scholarship of the Hellenistic age, using different methods, different tools, and with different sensibilities. This chapter builds up more solid evidence of critical activity focusing specifically on the personality and works of Hesiod. It concludes with a brief remark on the scholia vetera . The roots of the corpus very probably can be traced back to a commentary of the early imperial age, given that no citations of grammarians beyond the time of Tryphon and Habron are found. Keywords: Aristotle; hellenistic age; Hesiod; Hesiodic scholarship; Homeric scholarship; scholia vetera