Hesiod’s ‘Theogony’ 27-28: an Attempt at a New Interpretation

A new interpretation of verses 27-28 of the proem to Hesiod's poem Theogony is proposed. The mysterious ‘many lies that look like the truths’, along with the actual ‘truths’ that Hesiod's Muses are able to tell, have brought to life a considerable number of interpretations, which in itself indicates the lack of a proper understanding. This passage receives a satisfactory explanation if we assume that in the famous remark of the goddesses about ‘many lies’ the author meant ambiguous answers given by the Delphic Oracle, which could be interpreted by mortals in various ways, including erroneously. The hypothesis is confirmed, inter alia, by Plutarch's testimony to the direct relationship of the Muses to the Oracle's activities as they were his ‘assistants in future-telling’. Remarkably, the famous phrase of the Muses coincides almost verbatim with the text of the Homeric hymn to Hermes, where three bee maidens, who taught the god the art of divination, could also ‘tell the truth’ or ‘lie’ when predicting the future, with ‘tell the truth’ meaning making true predictions, while ‘lie’ referring to making false predictions, depending on whether they taste the divine honey or not. The proposed understanding is supported by a significant number of unambiguous correspondences between various passages in Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod and the poetic responses of the Delphic Oracle. The author of the article comes to a conclusion about a common field of epic poetry, which included, on the one hand, the works of epic poets and, on the other hand, the activities of the Oracle, whose hexametric answers are directly related to the oral epic poetic tradition. This also gives some reason to deem it highly likely that the Boeotian poet familiarized himself with the corpus of poetic responses of the Oracle, which existed in one form or another.