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Stephen Scully. Hesiod's Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 268. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-19-025396-7.
Following a short introduction in which the recent reception of Hesiod's creation account is contextualized, chiefly within the frame of Freud's view of myth, Scully begins his analysis of the Theogony with a comparison of (1) Hesiod and Homer with regard to their treatment of the gods and their individual epic styles, and, perhaps more interestingly, (2) Hesiod's Theogony and the creation account of the biblical book of Genesis; it is in the latter portion of this initial chapter that Scully first makes reference to an idea to which he will keep returning-that of the idealized polis in the Theogony.
In chapter 2 Scully wastes no time in foregrounding this concept of "the Theogony as a [pi]o[lamda][iota]sfgr;-creation myth," contending that in his liberal use of "personified abstractions," Hesiod moves "toward philosophy," "turning a mythic story into something approaching political science and political allegory" (30). One is immediately left wondering what sense Scully attributes to...