3. Hesiod And Homer: The Storekeepers Of Knowledge

This chapter shifts from the Hesiods' and Homers' authority in the field of ethics to a different area of competence: that of natural philosophy, science, and (factual) knowledge. The first section examines if and to what extent Hesiod and Homer together are associated with particular scientific and natural-philosophical notions. Contrary to what one may expect, the section finds that the unity of the poets is extremely weak in this respect. Section two concentrates on the poets' role as storekeepers of knowledge. The chapter shows that the combination of Hesiod and Homer could somehow be regarded as a class of its own, a special category of just two poets that could escape the accusations of fiction and fantasy. It makes clear that the combination of Hesiod and Homer has a different conceptual value than that of the poets treated separately, since it is used in a decidedly different way.Keywords: Hesiod; Homer; storekeepers of knowledge