Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception by Athanassios Vergados

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception by Athanassios Vergados George Boys-Stones VERGADOS, Athanassios. Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xii + 370 pp. Cloth, $105.00 Starting from Hesiod’s “etymologies,” this work explores Hesiod’s relationship with language in general, and the language of the Greek mythological tradition in particular. In part 1 three chapters present worked examples of “etymology” in Hesiod: two mythological groups with contested histories and genealogies (the Muses, chapter 2; the Cyclopes, chapter 3), and others including Pandora in chapter 4. A significant result is that Hesiod shows himself to be more optimistic about finding stable meaning and objective truth in the study of names in the Theogony than in Works and Days where, as the slippery name “Pandora” shows, meaning can be more up for grabs. A corresponding division between these two works is discovered in the five chapters of part 2. Beginning with Hesiod’s famous “correction” of his Theogony account of Eris (in Works and Days 11–12 he says that there are two Erides, not one), Vergados asks us to see that, for Hesiod, discourse about the divine realm (in the Theogony) can achieve a greater stability than discourse aimed at the “complexities and ambiguities of the human condition in the Iron Age” (in Works and Days). “Eris” divides (in chapter 5 Vergados calls this a Begriffsspaltung), and with its division is no longer “absolute.” Further Hesiodic divisions and revisions are explored in chapter 6 and 7 (where the focus is on Dike). Chapter 8 looks at “kennings and riddles,” that is, the naming of things by riddling allusion, as when the ant is called idris, “the wise one” (Works 778). Chapter 9 looks at a case, the day called “Triseinas,” where Hesiod makes an explicit claim for the “truth” of this name (used, he says, by few; Works 818). In part 3 Vergados moves to consider Hesiod’s ancient reception as an intellectual, showing that he was spoken of in the same breath as mythographers such as Acusilaus and shares many of the characteristics of a historian like Hecataeus. His role as a voice of authority for the etymological inquiries of Plato’s Cratylus occupies chapter 11 (Vergados finds “a certain intellectual affinity” between Hesiod and the dialogue’s [End Page 644] eponym); and in chapter 12 his role in the Homeric scholia as a sort of authority—albeit not an incontestable one—is explored. The details and broad conclusions of this study are illuminating about Hesiod’s art—for example, in unpacking the “micro-narratives” embedded in the focus on names and in unwinding the tacit engagements with Homer. They also lend strong support to the trend for rehabilitating Hesiod as a serious player, even a pioneer, in the Greek intellectual tradition. Whether Vergados delivers on his promise of a Hesiodic “philosophy of language” is another question, though the aspiration clearly guides the work. The very word “etymology,” which Vergados uses for Hesiod’s interest in names, is applied in a way that leads him regularly to compare Hesiod to modern linguistic science (but Hesiod always gets “wrong” what it gets right), and also to attribute to him the view that name-origins ideally have their own philosophical authority, that is, reveal truths about the world. The more straightforward possibility that Hesiod thought that he was merely exploring the views of whoever gave his subjects their names is not considered here—although it might have given the basis for a more organic integration of the chapter on “kennings,” and it might have helped Vergados avoid some obvious missteps. Epōnumos is overtranslated as “true name”; Eris is not “relativized” because there are two “Erides” differing in moral valence (any more than “egg” is a relative term because there are good and bad eggs); Heraclitus is not “attacking” the epic poets when they use a word for “bow” that has the same written form as a word for “life.” Vergados argues that Hesiod’s ultimate aim is to establish his “authority” through what amounts to...