This collection of essays offers an exploration of the meaning and significance of the Catalogue of Women, attributed to Hesiod.

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women Its Nature, Structure and Origins.

The influence on Ovid of Hesiod, the most important archaic Greek poet after Homer, has been underestimated. Yet, as this book shows, a profound engagement with Hesiod's themes is central to Ovid's poetic world. As a poet who praised women instead of men and opted for stylistic delicacy instead of epic grandeur, Hesiod is always contrasted with Homer. Ovid revives this epic rivalry by setting the Hesiodic character of his Metamorphoses against the Homeric character of Virgil's Aeneid. Dr Ziogas explores not only Ovid's intertextual engagement with Hesiod's works but also his dialogue with the rich scholarly, philosophical and literary tradition of Hesiodic reception. An important contribution to the study of Ovid and the wider poetry of the Augustan age, the book also forms an excellent case study in how the reception of previous traditions can become the driving force of poetic creation.

Next to the Theogony and the Works and Days stands an entire corpus of fragmentary works attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod that has during the last thirty years attracted growing scholarly interest. Whereas other studies have concentrated either on the interpretation of the best preserved work of this corpus, the Catalogue of Women, or have offered detailed commentaries, this volume aims at bringing together studies focusing on generic and contextual factors pertaining to the various works of the Hesiodic corpus, the Catalogue of Women included, and the corpus' afterlife in Rome and Byzantium.

The first unified interpretation of the Catalogue of Women in English in more than twenty-five years, in the context of related poetry from the time.