Was können die Musen Hesiod Lehren? Die Wahrheit und ihre Feinde in der Theogonie

The enigmatic declaration of the Muses in the investiture scene that opens Hesiod’s Theogony has long been a well-trodden terrain for scholars’ intent on tracing the outlines of early Greek poetics. Hesiod, however – through deliberate allusion – polemically distances himself from Homer and rejects Homer’s narrative practice. The crux of the debate is whether that practice rests on falsehood, fiction, or amplification. The third option, amplification, is often neglected by commentators, yet it finds clear support in Pindar and Thucydides. This paper seeks to set out the current state of the question along these three lines and to stimulate further discussion by foregrounding the doubts that Hesiod quite deliberately leaves unresolved.