1.
Greek mythology
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It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
2.
Ancient Thessaly
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Thessaly or Thessalia was one of the traditional regions of Ancient Greece. During the Mycenaean period, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, a name that continued to be used for one of the tribes of Greece, the Aeolians. At its greatest extent, ancient Thessaly was an area stretching from Mount Olympos to the north to the Spercheios Valley to the south. Thessaly is a diverse region consisting of broad central plains surrounded by mountains. The plains are bounded by the Pindos Mountains to the west, Mount Othrys to the south, the Pelion and Ossa ranges to the east, and Mount Olympos to the North. The central plains consist of two basins, the Larisa basin and the Karditsa basin, drained by the Pineios River into the Vale of Tempe, the Pagasetic Gulf in southeastern Thessaly was and is the only body of water suitable for harbours in region. Strictly speaking, Thessaly refers primarily to the central plains inhabited by the Thessalians in antiquity, the plains were divided in antiquity into four administrative regions called tetrads, Pelasgiotis, Phthiotis, Thessaliotis, and Histiaeotis. The perioikoi were composed of Perrhaibia, Magnesia, Achaea Phthiotis, Dolopia, Ainis, Malis, the three largest cities in Thessaly were Larisa, Pherai, and Pharsalos. The Thessalian plains were ideally suited for cultivating grains and cereals, Alexander the Greats horse, Bucephalus, was originally from Pharsalos. The surrounding mountainous regions, however, were suitable for agriculture. Thessaly was home to extensive Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures around 6000 BC–2500 BC, Mycenaean settlements have also been discovered in Thessaly unearthing, at the Kastron of Palaia Hill, in Volos, tablets bearing Mycenaean Greek inscriptions, written in Linear B. In mythology, Thessaly was homeland of the heroes Achilles and Jason, as well of mythological creatures and peoples, Centaurs, Lapiths, Ancient tribes in Thessaly mentioned by Homer or other poets were, Aeolians, Magnetes, Perrhaebi and Pelasgians. The Thessalians were a Thesprotian tribe, and originally came from the Thesprotian Ephyra, like Laconica, the population of Thessaly therefore consisted of three distinct classes, The Penestae, whose condition was nearly the same as that of the Helots. The subject people, who inhabited the districts not occupied by the Thessalian invaders and they paid tribute, as stated above, but were personally free, though they had no share in the government. They corresponded to the Perioeci of Laconica, by which name they are called by Xenophon, the Thessalian conquerors, who alone had any share in the public administration, and whose lands were cultivated by the Penestae. Each district may have regulated its affairs by some kind of provincial council, when occasion required, a chief magistrate was elected under the name of tagus, whose commands were obeyed by all four districts. He is sometimes called king, and sometimes archon He levied soldiers from the states in each district, when Thessaly was not united under the government of a tagus, the subject towns possessed more independence. In later times, some states called their ordinary magistrates tagoi, however, Thessaly was hardly ever united under one government
3.
Achilles
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In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and the central character and greatest warrior of Homers Iliad. His mother was the immortal nymph Thetis, and his father, Achilles’ most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, later legends state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. Alluding to these legends, the term Achilles heel has come to mean a point of weakness, Achilles name can be analyzed as a combination of ἄχος grief and λαός a people, tribe, nation. In other words, Achilles is an embodiment of the grief of the people, Achilles role as the hero of grief forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of Achilles as the hero of κλέος kleos. Laos has been construed by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean a corps of soldiers, a muster. With this derivation, the name would have a meaning in the poem, when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring grief to the enemy. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The name Achilleus was a common and attested name among the Greeks soon after the 7th century BC. It was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία attested in Attica in the 4th century BC and, in the form Achillia, Achilles was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, for this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was brought up by Hera. According to the Achilleid, written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to no surviving previous sources, however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him, his heel. It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier, in another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire, to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage, however, none of the sources before Statius makes any reference to this general invulnerability. To the contrary, in the Iliad Homer mentions Achilles being wounded, in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon and he cast two spears at once, one grazed Achilles elbow, drawing a spurt of blood. Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron the Centaur, on Mt. Pelion, Achilles consuming rage is at times wavering, but at other times he cannot be cooled. Thetis foretold that her sons fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long, Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan war
4.
Homer
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Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia. The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. C. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer. Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material
5.
Iliad
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The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly. The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. Recent statistical modelling based on language evolution gives a date of 760–710 BC, in the modern vulgate, the Iliad contains 15,693 lines, it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. Note, Book numbers are in parentheses and come before the synopsis of the book, after an invocation to the Muses, the story launches in medias res towards the end of the Trojan War between the Trojans and the besieging Greeks. Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, offers the Greeks wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseis, held captive of Agamemnon, although most of the Greek army is in favour of the offer, Agamemnon refuses. Chryses prays for Apollos help, and Apollo causes a plague to afflict the Greek army, after nine days of plague, Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidon contingent, calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, angered, Achilles declares that he and his men will no longer fight for Agamemnon but will go home. Odysseus takes a ship and returns Chryseis to her father, whereupon Apollo ends the plague, in the meantime, Agamemnons messengers take Briseis away. Achilles becomes very upset, sits by the seashore, and prays to his mother, Achilles asks his mother to ask Zeus to bring the Greeks to the breaking point by the Trojans, so Agamemnon will realize how much the Greeks need Achilles. Thetis does so, and Zeus agrees, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon, urging him to attack Troy. Agamemnon heeds the dream but decides to first test the Greek armys morale, the plan backfires, and only the intervention of Odysseus, inspired by Athena, stops a rout. Odysseus confronts and beats Thersites, a soldier who voices discontent about fighting Agamemnons war. After a meal, the Greeks deploy in companies upon the Trojan plain, the poet takes the opportunity to describe the provenance of each Greek contingent. When news of the Greek deployment reaches King Priam, the Trojans too sortie upon the plain, in a list similar to that for the Greeks, the poet describes the Trojans and their allies. The armies approach each other, but before they meet, Paris offers to end the war by fighting a duel with Menelaus, urged by his brother and head of the Trojan army, Hector. While Helen tells Priam about the Greek commanders from the walls of Troy, Paris is beaten, but Aphrodite rescues him and leads him to bed with Helen before Menelaus can kill him
6.
Zeus
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Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
7.
Ant
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Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from ancestors in the Cretaceous period, about 99 million years ago. More than 12,500 of an total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists. Larger colonies consist mostly of sterile, wingless females forming castes of workers, soldiers, nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called drones and one or more fertile females called queens. The colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. The only places lacking indigenous ants are Antarctica and a few remote or inhospitable islands, Ants thrive in most ecosystems and may form 15–25% of the terrestrial animal biomass. Their success in so many environments has been attributed to their organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources. Their long co-evolution with other species has led to mimetic, commensal, parasitic, Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study, many human cultures make use of ants in cuisine, medication, and rituals. Some species are valued in their role as biological pest control agents and their ability to exploit resources may bring ants into conflict with humans, however, as they can damage crops and invade buildings. Some species, such as the red imported fire ant, are regarded as invasive species, all of these words come from West Germanic *ēmaitijǭ, and the original meaning of the word was the biter. The family Formicidae belongs to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees, Ants evolved from a lineage within the aculeate wasps, and a 2013 study suggests that they are a sister group of the Apoidea. In 1966, E. O. Wilson and his colleagues identified the remains of an ant that lived in the Cretaceous period. The specimen, trapped in amber dating back to around 92 million years ago, has found in some wasps. Sphecomyrma possibly was a ground forager, while Haidomyrmex and Haidomyrmodes, older ants in the genus Sphecomyrmodes have been found in 99 million year-old amber from Myanmar. After the rise of flowering plants about 100 million years ago they diversified and assumed ecological dominance around 60 million years ago. Some groups, such as the Leptanillinae and Martialinae, are suggested to have diversified from early primitive ants that were likely to have been predators underneath the surface of the soil, during the Cretaceous period, a few species of primitive ants ranged widely on the Laurasian supercontinent
8.
Ovid
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Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists and he enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, a poem and a mistake and his poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology, Ovid talks more about his own life than most other Roman poets. Information about his biography is drawn primarily from his poetry, especially Tristia 4.10, other sources include Seneca the Elder and Quintilian. Ovid was born in Sulmo, in an Apennine valley east of Rome, to an important equestrian family and that was a significant year in Roman politics. He was educated in rhetoric in Rome under the teachers Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro with his brother who excelled at oratory and his father wanted him to study rhetoric toward the practice of law. According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid tended to the emotional, after the death of his brother at 20 years of age, Ovid renounced law and began travelling to Athens, Asia Minor, and Sicily. Ovids first recitation has been dated to around 25 BC, when he was eighteen and he was part of the circle centered on the patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and seems to have been a friend of poets in the circle of Maecenas. 4.10. 41–54, Ovid mentions friendships with Macer, Propertius, Horace, Ovid was very popular at the time of his early works, but was later exiled by Augustus in AD8. He married three times and divorced twice by the time he was thirty years old and he had one daughter, who eventually bore him grandchildren. His last wife was connected in some way to the influential gens Fabia, the first 25 years of Ovids literary career were spent primarily writing poetry in elegiac meter with erotic themes. The chronology of early works is not secure, tentative dates. 2.18. 19–26 that seems to describe the collection as a published work. The authenticity of some of these poems has been challenged, between the publications of the two editions of the Amores can be dated the premiere of his tragedy Medea, which was admired in antiquity but is no longer extant. Ovid may identify this work in his poetry as the carmen, or song. The Ars Amatoria was followed by the Remedia Amoris in the same year and this corpus of elegiac, erotic poetry earned Ovid a place among the chief Roman elegists Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, of whom he saw himself as the fourth member
9.
Metamorphoses
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The Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising fifteen books and over 250 myths, the chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple classification by its use of varying themes and tones. One of the most influential works in Western culture, the Metamorphoses has inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in acclaimed works of sculpture, painting, and music. The work has been the subject of numerous translations into English, Ovids decision to make myth the dominant subject of the Metamorphoses was influenced by the predisposition of Alexandrian poetry. However, whereas it served in that tradition as the cause for reflection or insight, he made it instead the object of play. There are three examples of the Metamorphoses by later Hellenistic writers, but little is known of their contents, the Heteroioumena by Nicander of Colophon is better known, and clearly an influence on the poem —21 of the stories from this work were treated in the Metamorphoses. However, in a way that was typical for writers of the period, the Metamorphoses was longer than any previous collection of metamorphosis myths and positioned itself within a historical framework. Some of the Metamorphoses derives from literary and poetic treatment of the same myths. This material was of varying quality and comprehensiveness — while some of it was finely worked, scholars have found it difficult to place the Metamorphoses in a genre. However, the handles the themes and employs the tone of virtually every species of literature, ranging from epic and elegy to tragedy. Commenting on the debate, G. Karl Galinsky has opined that. It would be misguided to pin the label of any genre on the Metamorphoses and it begins with the ritual invocation of the muse, and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, the recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovids work, is love—be it personal love or love personified in the figure of Amor. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how love can confound the god out of reason. The work as a whole inverts the order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires. The Metamorphoses ends with an epilogue, one of two surviving Latin epics to do so. Book I – The Creation, the Ages of Mankind, the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Apollo and Daphne, Io, Book II – Phaëton, Callisto, the raven and the crow, Ocyrhoe, Mercury and Battus, the envy of Aglauros, Jupiter and Europa
10.
Hera
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Hera is the goddess of women and marriage in Greek mythology and religion. She is the daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, Hera is married to her brother Zeus and is titled as the Queen of Heaven. One of her characteristics is her jealous and vengeful nature against Zeuss other lovers and offspring, Hera is commonly seen with the animals she considers sacred including the cow, lion and the peacock. Scholar of Greek mythology Walter Burkert writes in Greek Religion, Nevertheless, there are memories of an aniconic representation, as a pillar in Argos. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno, According to Plutarch, Hera was an allegorical name and an anagram of aēr. So begins the section on Hera in Walter Burkerts Greek Religion, in a note, he records other scholars arguments for the meaning Mistress as a feminine to Heros, Master. John Chadwick, a decipherer of Linear B, remarks her name may be connected with hērōs, ἥρως, hero, a. J. van Windekens, offers young cow, heifer, which is consonant with Heras common epithet βοῶπις. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin and her name is attested in Mycenaean Greek written in the Linear B syllabic script as
11.
Aegina
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Aegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf,27 kilometres from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina the mother of the hero Aeacus, during ancient times Aegina was a rival of Athens, the great sea power of the era. The municipality of Aegina consists of the island of Aegina and a few offshore islets and it is part of the Islands regional unit, Attica region. The municipality is subdivided into the five communities, Aegina Kypseli Mesagros Perdika Vathy The capital is the town of Aegina. Due to its proximity to Athens, it is a vacation place during the summer months. The province of Aegina was one of the provinces of the Piraeus Prefecture and its territory corresponded with that of the current municipalities Aegina and Agkistri. Aegina is roughly triangular in shape, approximately 15 km from east to west and 10 km from north to south, with an area of 87.41 km2, an extinct volcano constitutes two thirds of Aegina. Economically, the fisheries are of notable importance. The southern volcanic part of the island is rugged and mountainous and its highest rise is the conical Mount Oros in the south, and the Panhellenian ridge stretches northward with narrow fertile valleys on either side. The beaches are also a popular tourist attraction, hydrofoil ferries from Piraeus take only forty minutes to reach Aegina, the regular ferry takes about an hour, with ticket prices for adults within the 4–15 euro range. There are regular bus services from Aegina town to destinations throughout the island such as Agia Marina, portes is a fishing village on the east coast. Aegina, according to Herodotus, was a colony of Epidaurus and its placement between Attica and the Peloponnesus made it a site of trade even earlier, and its earliest inhabitants allegedly came from Asia Minor. Minoan ceramics have been found in contexts of ca.2000 BC, the famous Aegina Treasure, now in the British Museum is estimated to date between 1700 and 1500 BC. It is probable that the island was not doricised before the 9th century BC. e. not later than the half of the 7th century BC. Its early history reveals that the importance of the island dates back to pre-Dorian times. It is usually stated on the authority of Ephorus, that Pheidon of Argos established a mint in Aegina, the first city-state to issue coins in Europe, one stamped stater can be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. It is an electrum stater of a turtle, a sacred to Aphrodite. The fact that the Aeginetic standard of weights and measures was one of the two standards in use in the Greek world is sufficient evidence of the early commercial importance of the island
12.
Hesiod
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Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
