"Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod - Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual 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. Works and Days is a didactic poem written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. It is in dactylic hexameter and contains 828 lines. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts. Scholars have seen this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of colonial expeditions in search of new land. In the poem, Hesiod also offers his brother extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life. Works and Days is perhaps best known for its two mythological aetiologies for the toil and pain that define the human condition: the story of Prometheus and Pandora, and the so-called Myth of Five Ages. The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed c. 730–700 BC. It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1022 lines. The Shield of Heracles is an archaic Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The subject of the poem is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against Cycnus, the son of Ares, who challenged Heracles to combat as Heracles was passing through Thessaly. The Homeric Hymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanized: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three anonymous ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are ""Homeric"" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter—dactylic hexameter—as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect. While the modern scholarly consensus is that they were not written during the lifetime of Homer himself, they were uncritically attributed to him in antiquity—from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)—and the label has stuck. ""The whole collection, as a collection, is Homeric in the only useful sense that can be put upon the word,"" A. W. Verrall noted in 1894, ""that is to say, it has come down labeled as 'Homer' from the earliest times of Greek book-literature."