Hesiod’s Ages of Man Myth as Psychological Allegory

Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807)

MY HYPOTHESIS is that Hesiod’s Works and Days is not a “glorified farmer’s almanac,” but an example of ancient wisdom literature meant to convey the perennial philosophy. Its purpose is to advise readers on how to operate the human mind and soul and to find happiness in life via the same philosophical principles expressed by the Delphic religion (and, for that matter, also the Old Testament, the wisdom tradition of ancient Egypt, etc.). For this it uses, as befits poetry, figures and metaphors drawn from history and daily life; but the meanings are parabolic, and it is the reader’s task To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. (Prov.1:6)

I leave this experiment of interpretation to individual readers.  But for this experiment it will help to have an artistic translation which potentially highlights the interior, psychological meanings — and at least one that does not obscure poetic meanings, which can easily (if not inevitably) happen in translations that are extremely literal and technical, which is the modern trend.

Therefore for your enjoyment and edification I have placed online a copy of Thomas Cooke’s inspired 1743 verse translation, and also for ease of reading an 1822 reprint with modern spelling.

Part of my hypothesis is that the Ages of Man is myth of moral fall (Uebersax, 2014), and symbolizes stages in our periodic descent from a state of grace (understood in either a religious sense, or alternatively in a psychological sense as a condition of greater unity and mental ability) into its opposite mundane and debased condition, through successive cognitive stages, with parallels to Plato’s Tyrant’s Progress in the Republic (Uebersax, 2015). Here is Cooke’s translation of Hesiod’s Ages of Man myth, illustrated with engravings designed by John Flaxman and executed by William Blake.

Bibliography

• Chapman, George, Hesiod’s Works and Days. London: Smith, 1888; originally published as The Georgicks of Hesiod (1618). A poetic translation.
• Cooke, Thomas. The Works of Hesiod. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1743.
• Cooke, Thomas. The Works of Hesiod. In: The British Poets in 100 Volumes. Vol. 88. London: Whittingham, 1822. Has  modern spelling; source used here.
• Elton, Charles Abraham. The Remains of Hesiod. 2nd ed. London: Baldwin, 1815. Another translation in verse.
• Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Loeb Classical Library L057. Cambridge, MA: Heinemann, 1914. Online, with Greek text.
• Flaxman, John; Blake, William. Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod. London: Longman, 1817.
• Most, Glenn W. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Loeb Classical Library L057N. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2006.  A highly technical, literal translation that complements Cooke’s poetic version.
• Smiley, Charles N. Hesiod as an Ethical and Religious Teacher. The Classical Journal, vol. 17, no. 9, 1922, pp. 514–522.
• Uebersax, John. The Monomyth of Fall and Salvation. Christian Platonism. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.
• Uebersax, John. On the Psychological Meaning of Plato’s Nuptial Number. Satyagraha: Cultural Psychology. Web. 10 Jan. 2016.

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