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Hesiod's Theogony (Focus Classical Library) Paperback – January 1, 1987

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Hesiod (Author), Richard S. Caldwell (Translator)
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Product Details

  • Series: Focus Classical Library
  • Paperback: 129 pages
  • Publisher: Focus Information Group; 1 edition (January 1, 1987)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0941051005
  • ISBN-13: 978-0941051002
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.3 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #214,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsIan Myles Slater on An Excellent Package
By Ian M. Slater on October 1, 2003
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a review of the extensively annotated translation of "Hesiod's Theogony" by Richard S. Caldwell -- just in case, as sometimes happens, it appears with a different translation. For those who are not familiar with it already, this is an account, in Homeric verse, of how the organized universe arose, expressed through generations of gods, their struggles for supremacy, and the culminating triumph of Zeus, with the great Olympians and a multitude of nature-deities listed along the way. Told in noble hexameters, it is an extremely violent story, full of abusive parents, mutilations inflicted by rebellious offspring, divine cannibalism, and a whole succession of other behaviors the Greeks themselves considered repellent. The philosophers had real problems with this work -- one can understand why Plato wanted to ban poets from the ideal state.

As it happens, I own most (but not quite all) of the currently or recently available English translations: those by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, Norman O. Brown, Hugh G. Evelyn-White (bilingual edition, Loeb Classical Library), R.M. Frazer, Richmond Lattimore, Dorothea Wender (Penguin Classics), and M. L. West (Oxford World's Classics). Except for Brown, who also covers only the "Theogony," they all contain at least the other main Hesiodic poem, "Works and Days" as a companion piece. West is also the editor of a Greek text, with extensive commentary. In this crowded field, in which the renderings of Athanassakis and Lattimore are notable for the quality of their poetry, Caldwell stakes a claim to utility.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsDifficult to read!!
By Howard Schulman on June 11, 2008
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Despite the numerous 5-star reviews here I'm going to have to give this a 3--the translation was just plain hard to read, even though I do like the verse format as opposed to the "paragraph" format. Even the introduction was written in very formal language. I actually bought this edition based on all the perfect ratings here, even though I also wanted to read Works and Days (this edition only has Theogony) and bought another edition that had WD in addition to Theogony. The translation of Theogony in the other edition (West) was so much easier to read. Also, the overabundant footnotes in Caldwell break up the normal reading flow. Too much! I got through it, but it wasn't really fun. And I've recently read the Odyssey, the Iliad, Herodotus, and several other overview books on ancient Greece, so I'm not a total novice here. This edition may be good for the profession but not the enthusiast.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA great piece of work!
By A Customer on March 28, 2000
Format: Paperback
Hesiod's "Theogony" is excellently translated by Richard S. Caldwell. I have read other translations of Hesiod but preferred this one because it is done in verse as opposed to prose. The verse is not difficult to understand; the notes to the text are clear and good; the topic is made more interesting by way of the writing style. Overall, a very good piece of work.
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5.0 out of 5 starsTop-Quality Edition of Hesiod's classic: A Must-Have
By Jerry L. the Bibliophile on June 26, 2007
Format: Paperback
The Theogony is undoubtly a cornerstone in Classical Greek literature, and this work of Hesiod, unfortunately, does not have many great translations. However, Focus Classical Library has some of the best translations of classical works, most notably its editions of the Homeric Hymns, Metamorphoses, and Greek tragedians. Richard S. Caldwell, who also translated a prose version of the Aeneid for Focus Classical Library, has presented an unrivaled, strikingly original translation of the Theogony. The translation and explanatory notes are both top-notch quality materials.

Because of its accurate, highly original language, copious explanatory introductions and footnotes, and extremely helpful family trees, I highly recommend buying this edition of the Theogony. I prefer this edition a lot much more than Oxford World Classic's Theogony, which does not ave such an original or vivid translation, and does not also have as many explanatory notes, and Oxford does not have many explanatory notes which I feel are mandatory for modern Theogony Editions.

Inside this book, all the lines are numbered, and footnotes often take up more than half of the pages. Because of its highly original translation, original proper names and often literal translations of Greek expressions have to be explained through footnotes.

Also included is Appendix A, which contains Lines 1-201 of Hesiod's "Work and Days", describing Pandora and the five generations of giants before Modern Man. Appendix B consists of a portion of Apollodorus' Library of Greek Mythology, which is a late Hellenistic mini-Theogony. The index, though large and complete, is somwhat confusing to use.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA cornerstone in an education in Greek mythology
By Silas on February 29, 2008
Format: Paperback
This is a review of Richard S. Caldwell's translation of "Hesiod's Theogony". One of the other reviewers referred to this translation as being a verse translation as opposed to a prose translation. That does not imply the translation is made to rhyme! It means only the verse structure and numbering is maintained. I hope everyone knows that any poem that rhymes in the original language, very rarely rhymes when translated into English unless a lot of artistic license is used. (e.g. Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad has more to say of Pope's skills as a poet than Homer's.) But, Caldwell does not use any artistic license (although sometimes I wished he had - Hesiod can be a bit cryptic at times). Instead, he has made a very assiduous and close translation, which is extensively (and at times thankfully) annotated.

In my reading I consider Hesiod, alongside Homer, to be a fountainhead from which all later Greek writers flow. It's not a Greek Bible, but it is the earliest full exposition of Greek creation mythology we have today. There are competing versions of some myths, but more often than not, this is the antecedent of many later Greek elaborations.

It's certainly a great work to cut your teeth on because if you can master the full panoply of gods and the tangled network of their relationships as sketched out by Hesiod, then you can hold your own when reading almost any other ancient Greek text. To this end, Caldwell is a very generous guide for leading novices down all those tricky paths. His copious footnotes leave few stones unturned.

Moreover, what I found to be a very gratifying addition to Hesiod was Caldwell's interpretive essay, "The Psychology of the Succession Myth". One reviewer referred to it as "rather simplistically Freudian, but interesting".Read more ›
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Amazon cares little about its customers with its regular bait and switch tactics. customer reviewers wind up all over the place and can be practically useless when trying to... Read more

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5.0 out of 5 starsIt was very detailed and offered a lot of good explanatory information...

After reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, something I've wanted to do for many years, I was intrigued by the backstory of the Greek gods mythology. Read more

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