Theogony and Works and Days

By: Hesiod

Narrated by: Andrea Giordani

The Greek poet, Hesiod, stands out as the first personality in European literature. The Theogony contains a genealogy of the gods from the beginning of time and an account of their violent struggles before the present order was established. The Works and Days, a compendium of advice for a life of honest husbandry, shines a unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society, ethics, and superstition. Hesiod's poetry is the oldest source of the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Golden Age.

Public Domain (P)2018 Museum Audiobooks

An excellent translation

An excellent translation of Hesiod’s two major works. The narration was both engaging and timely.

Middling performance

The recording frequently skips and the narrator often has awkward pronunciation of common words. There are other better recordings.

Bad performance

Ancient Greek poetry is difficult to perform in translation but this fails to respect the beauty of the material. Common words mispronounced and read poorly

Audio Editing Needs to be Redone

The Theogony and Works and Days are interesting, if dry, source material for ancient Greek mythology. They do not tell an exciting story, but just recount the ancestry of the gods and give a handbook for the ancient farmer. The narrator in this edition speaks in a rather dry tone that does not enliven the already dry material. However, this alone does warrant anything below a four-star rating. Readers of Hesiod already know not to expect high drama.

Unfortunately, the audio editing is quite poor. Most of the book is fine, but there are frequent places where the narrator seemingly repeats herself once or twice. This can be jarring. There is one section in the recounting of the story of Pandora in Works and Days where the narrator sounds like a broken record, repeating the same word over and over for a good thirty seconds. I can recommend nothing less than a thorough re-editing of the whole audiobook.

That said, the book is otherwise quite passable. The narrator only seems to repeat herself, there are no skips that I noticed (not that I know the source material well enough to tell).

Readers looking just to hear these two poems by Hesiod, and who don't mind a few bumps along the way, will find this recording suitable.