Stephen Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod's Theogony and
traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek
creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton's own creation
myth, which sought to "soar above th' Aonian Mount [i.e., the
Theogony] ... and justify the ways of God to men." Scully also
considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories,
including the Enuma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking
of modern "scientific myths," Freud's Civilization and its
Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod's poem as a hymn to Zeus and a
city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an
idealized polity and - with but one exception - a place of communal
harmony. This reading informs his study of the Theogony's reception
in later writings about polity, discord, and justice. The rich and
various story of reception pays particular attention to the long
Homeric Hymns, Solon, the Presocratics, Pindar, Aeschylus,
Aristophanes, and Plato in the Archaic and Classical periods; to
the Alexandrian scholars, Callimachus, Euhemerus, and the Stoics in
the Hellenistic period; to Ovid, Apollodorus, Lucan, a few Church
fathers, and the Neoplatonists in the Roman period. Tracing the
poem's reception in the Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance,
including Petrarch and Erasmus, the book ends with a lengthy
exploration of Milton's imitations of the poem in Paradise Lost.
Scully also compares what he considers Hesiod's artful interplay of
narrative, genealogical lists, and keen use of personified
abstractions in the Theogony to Homeric narrative techniques and
treatment of epic verse.
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