Hesiod (Author) Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, probably lived in the eighth century BC in the backwater of Askra, a hamlet in Boeotia, on the Greek mainland. As the probable author of both the Theogony and Works and Days, he is the first self-styled poet in Western literature, the first to tell us his own name and the first to advertise himself as a prize-winning poet.A. E. Stallings (Translator) A. E. Stallings is an American poet and translator. She has published three books of original verse, Archaic Smile (1999), Hapax (2006), and Olives (2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her verse translation of Lucretius' The Nature of Things (2007) is published in Penguin Classics.

Stallings's new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days - witty, gritty, and unsettlingly relevant - is not to be missed. Toil; corruption in high places; injustice; the prevailing sense that things are getting worse - none of these prevents the Muses' chosen poets from doing their indispensable and soul-refreshing work