From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet. Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis-holder and queenly Hera of Argos who walks on golden sandals and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-holder bright-eyed Athene, and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth-holder who shakes the earth, and reverend Themis and quick-glancing Aphrodite, and Hebe with the crown of gold, and fair Dione, Leto, Iapetus, and Cronos the crafty counsellor, Eos and great Helius and bright Selene, Earth too, and great Oceanus, and dark Night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon, and this word first the goddesses said to me...

So starts Theogony

Among the many mythic tales told by the poets of ancient Greece, Theogony is one of the most often quoted with regard to the Gods and their relationships to each other in the Mythos of the Hellenic world. The reasons for this are simple. It is an early work, roughly contemporary with Homer, and at the same time does something even homer never did, he gives an account, one of many of course, of the origins of the cosmos.

With Theogonia, Hesiod gives the Greeks a myth a kin to the Genesis of the Hebrews and with his Works and Days he gives us a look at aspects of human life in the ancient world that we so seldom see, the moral aspects, as Hesiod does not shy away from a little moralizing with regard to the place of man in the scheme of things divine.

No Hellenistos can say he has read the ancient works if he has not read Hesiod.