OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Theogony and Works and Days

Purchased for a course and it was worth it.

Worth the read at any moment of your life. This specific edition is incredibly frail, though. Mine already came with a small torn on the cover.

Well translated and presented, this book is essential for those interested in the broad canon of classical literature which went on to inform the thoughts and cultural habits of western civilization as a whole... We may be descending into the abyss as a society, much like the fate of ancient Greece and Rome before us, but the echoes of a heroic past still glimmer faintly in the works of the ancients, and perhaps somewhere within the soul of those with ears to hear and a mind to comprehend there may ignite a spark of hope... A spark which will then become a burning flame to light the beacon of a world yet to come!

Usually I love Oxford classics, but West translation of Hesiod, I don't like. For what purpose would one translate the names of the gods? Like Uranus being Heaven and Gaia Earth? If you don't know what you read (I mean if you are not familiar with the myth), you might get confused. For me it is the first time when I encounter something like this. Luckily, I have other translations as well.

Martin L. West's translation of these two works by Hesiod is worth having in one's collection. In his brief introduction, he also discusses possible Middle-Eastern influences on Greek mythology (which is covered in greater detail in his The East Face of Helicon).