Recent years have seen a blossoming of interest in the reception of Greek epic. Several monographs in particular have increased our understanding of important aspects of the fortune of the Hesiodic corpus. H. Koning's Hesiod: the Other Poet (2010) studies how Hesiod's image in antiquity changed depending on his perceived relation to Homer; the volume Plato and Hesiod (2010), edited by G. Boys-Stones and J. Haubold, collects essays on Hesiod's presence and reception in Plato's works; most recently, R. Hunter's Hesiodic Voices (2014) provides an analysis of various aspects of the ancient reception of Hesiod's Works and Days. S. has written the first monograph devoted to the reception of the Theogony across the ages and its relation to other creation stories. As such, his book is a welcome addition to current Hesiodic scholarship.
The importance of studying the reception of the Theogony is explained in the introduction: ‘The power and urgency of creation stories are as much with us today as they were two millennia ago’; such stories matter because ‘they inform how we think of ourselves and our place in the universe’ (p. 1). Modern science, S. goes on to claim, is also interested in origins theory, but has little to say about humankind. Hesiod, on the other hand, is interested in the link between cosmic generation and the creation of society. The introduction also sets out the challenging scope and aim of the book: the study will deal with a range of periods, authors and works spanning from the ancient Near East to Milton's Paradise Lost, and will investigate how the Theogony was received and reworked both in those civilisations who believed in the Greek and Roman pluralistic pantheon of gods and in those, ancient and modern, who disdained pagan beliefs.
Chapter 1, ‘Points of Comparisons: Hesiod and Homer; the Theogony and Genesis’, is divided into two parts. The first compares Hesiod's and Homer's conception of the gods, and outlines how in the Theogony Zeus rules according to the principle of shared governance; it then moves on to discuss Hesiod's style, and provides an interesting discussion of the names of the primordial divinities. The second part compares the Theogony with Genesis; here S. highlights important differences between the two creation stories, and explores, among other issues, the relationships between divine and mortal beings and the role of sexual reproduction.
Chapter 2, ‘The Theogony’, focuses on the Theogony alone and presents it as a political poem and hymn to Zeus – a view that will inform the following chapters, including the study of the reception of the poem among those Archaic and Classical authors concerned with issues of communal living. Building on existing scholarship and through new readings of a number of passages from the Theogony, S. is able to interpret Olympus as an idealised polis and the Theogony itself as a polis-creation myth.
Chapter 3, ‘The Theogony and Eastern Parallels: City-State Succession Myths?’, contributes to the currently flourishing debate regarding the connections between Greek and Near-Eastern literature. The vast range of material analysed in this chapter includes divine succession myths transmitted in the Hurrio-Hittite tradition, the Babylonian fragmentary work known as Harab Myth (or Theogony of Dunnu) and, naturally, gives prominent space to the most famous Babylonian creation myth, the Enûma Elish. It also discusses a poem that is later than Hesiod's Theogony, namely Philo of Byblos’ Phoenician History (100 c.e.).
Chapter 4 deals with ‘The Theogony in the Archaic and Classical Periods’. By the nature of the topic, this is the most diverse, rich and lengthy section of the book (the Archaic and Classical periods are presented as the time of the Theogony's ‘greatest significance’, p. 69). S. takes into account all major authors and works of the periods under discussion, and investigates their connection with Hesiod's theogonic tradition. Despite the challenging scope of the material considered, most authors are discussed in depth and insightfully (see, in particular, S.'s enlightening discussion of Aeschylus and Plato). However, some receive more cursory treatment (see, for instance, the short section devoted to Hesiodic scholarship of the fourth century, including major figures such as Isocrates, Aristotle and Alcidamas).
Chapter 5, with its identification of the ‘Echoes of the Theogony in the Hellenistic and Roman Period’, ascertains the ways in which the Theogony influenced and interacted with the scholarship, poetry, philosophy and religion of the time. Alexandrian poets regarded Hesiod as a model, thanks to his slender style, learned contents, and interest in origins and genealogies; Stoic philosophers proposed a different cosmology from Hesiod's, although they did read the Theogony. The chapter also touches on Hesiod's presence in the education and the arts of the period, and describes how Hesiod's fame fostered tourism.
Chapter 6, ‘Theogonic Shadow: Byzantine, Medieval, and Renaissance, Milton's Paradise Lost’, is the most ambitious in terms of its chronological and geographical coverage. The chapter is divided into two main sections. The first starts in the fourteenth century with Petrarch, who brought Hesiod ‘back into the literary imagination of the West’ (p. 161), before going on to discuss (although sometimes too briefly) intellectuals, writers and editors who dealt with the Theogony up to the Renaissance and beyond, including the editor princeps Aldo Manuzio (1495) and the first English translator Thomas Cooke (1728). The focus of the second part is John Milton. Quoting and discussing a number of passages from Paradise Lost, S. is able to describe the ‘perpetual interplay between a hellish pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism’ (p. 176) in Milton's work.
The volume closes with a comprehensive bibliography, with a separate section on ‘Bibliography for Modern Texts’, and a useful and detailed general index; there is no index of passages. This book will prove to be an important resource for future Hesiodic studies; the breadth of the material taken into account makes it a valuable guide to the reception of an important text across time, and will surely benefit a wide range of scholars and indeed anyone interested in creation stories.
