Hesiod and Aeschylus

This book, first published in 1949, has long been recognized as the standard work on Hesiod's influence on other Athenian poets, particularly Aeschylus.

Friedrich Solmsen (1904–1989) was Chair of the Department of Classics at Cornell University and Moses Slaughter Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and he taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His many books include Plato's Theology, Hesiod and Aeschylus, and Aristotle's System of the Physical World: A Comparison with His Predecessors, all published by Cornell in the series Cornell Studies in Classical Philology.

The debt of Aeschylus to Hesiod, as well as to Homer and Solon and other poets, has always been realized, though never thoroughly explored; yet only a just appreciation of the debt can enable us to measure the originality of Aeschylus. Solmsen's study is therefore most welcome.

The book is rich in ideas and its suggestions give a valuable contribution towards a real understanding of the Greek archaic period.

Solmsen has attempted... to answer two questions: what was original in Hesiod's poems (as distinct from the mass of traditional myth and religious beliefs incorporated in them) and what Solon and Aeschylus derived from him. The author examines the Prometheia and the Eumenides at length, and he devotes a chapter to Solon. It is an important book.

A wealth of acute observation and insight.... There is much of value here for the philologist as well as for the student of religious development.... Hesiod emerges from these pages as a religious thinker of impressive stature.