How The Frogs drew on Theogony/Works and Days
A documented line of influence: Aristophanes demonstrably engaged Hesiod’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Theogony/Works and Days
Hesiod · c. 700 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Frogs
Aristophanes · 405 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
5/10
On The Frogs’s page
- When The Frogs draws up its roll-call of poets who actually did the world good, Aeschylus names Hesiod and praises Works and Days for teaching the farmer's calendar
- The play's central agon — two poets weighed against each other — is built on the old Contest of Homer and Hesiod tradition
- Knowing Hesiod first lets you hear the reverence under the comedy: this is what Aristophanes thinks a useful poet looks like
On Theogony/Works and Days’s page
- Aristophanes honors Hesiod by name — in The Frogs (1032–36) Aeschylus lists him among the genuinely useful poets, the one who taught "the working of the land, harvest seasons, plowing": that's Works and Days
- The play's whole poetic showdown borrows the old Contest of Homer and Hesiod as its skeleton
- So Hesiod sits at the root of The Frogs twice over — as the model citizen-poet and as the template for its great literary duel