Hesiod's Poems

In this episode, we discuss the transitional governments in the early stages of the centrally unified polis (oligarchia and aristokratia), as the waning power of the basileis becomes supplanted by a small landowning group of nobles; the economic and social divisions between the nobles and commoners brought on by a spike in population in Greece; and the second great author of ancient Greece, a man named Hesiod, who speaks to us about life and society in the emerging polis from the point of view of the ordinary citizen, in his Works and Days

Show Notes: http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2016/06/012-oligarchs-and-hesiod.html