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Works and Days (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

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Hesiod (HEE-see-uhd), an honest and hardworking Greek farmer. His father, a seafaring trader (and presumably a farmer as well), had emigrated from his homeland on the coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in a state of poverty and had sailed across the Aegean Sea to mainland Greece in search of a better livelihood. There, he settled in the district of Boeotia, in the meager village of Ascra on the lower slopes of Mount Helicon, which was sacred to the Muses of poetry. He acquired land, achieved middle-class status and a measure of prosperity, and was able to...

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