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Reading schedule · Grades 9–12

Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days in 3 Weeks: A Reading Schedule

A three-week plan for reading Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod, one section a week. Each week gives the reading, a short summary of what happens, three discussion questions and the escape room that goes with it. For grades 9–12, in class or at home.

Pacing

Rhetoric-stage students (grades 9–12) can read a section a week independently, with time to annotate and to write. The questions suit seminar discussion or short written responses, and the escape room makes a quick check on the reading before the conversation or the essay. Some sections are much longer than others, so look ahead and give the heaviest weeks extra time.

Each week ends with an escape room on that week's reading: seven self-checking locks that run in any browser, with no logins, and progress is saved, so a room can be finished another day. Every room has free taster locks to try, and members can open them all.

Print this schedule Escape rooms on Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days

Week 1: The Birth of the Gods

Read: The Birth of the Gods

Hesiod tells how the Muses met him on Mount Helicon. From Chaos come the first beings, Earth and Heaven have children, Cronus takes up the sickle, Aphrodite is born, the children of Night appear, and Rhea tricks Cronus to save her youngest son.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Hesiod begin with the Muses?
2. What pattern repeats from Heaven to Cronus to Zeus?
3. Why might the Greeks tell the beginning of the world as a family story?

Escape room: Out of Chaos (lockedlessons.com/rooms/theogony-the-birth-of-the-gods/)

Week 2: The War with the Titans

Read: The War with the Titans

The Cyclopes give Zeus thunder and lightning, and he frees the Hundred-Handers, who help him win the great battle with the Titans. The Titans are shut in Tartarus, Zeus defeats Typhoeus, and he rules as king of the gods and makes his marriages.

Discussion questions

1. Why do the Hundred-Handers help Zeus?
2. How is Zeus's rule different from his father's?
3. What does the description of Tartarus suggest?

Escape room: Thunder Over Othrys (lockedlessons.com/rooms/theogony-the-war-with-the-titans/)

Week 3: Works and Days

Read: Works and Days

Hesiod warns his brother Perses after their quarrel and describes two kinds of Strife. He tells of Prometheus and Pandora, the five races of men and the hawk and the nightingale, praises justice, and sets out the farmer's year by the stars and the birds, with the lucky and unlucky days.

Discussion questions

1. What is the good kind of Strife?
2. What does the fable of the hawk and the nightingale say about power?
3. What does Works and Days suggest a good life looks like?

Escape room: The Farmer's Year (lockedlessons.com/rooms/theogony-works-and-days/)

Nothing in this schedule is quoted from any translation, so it can sit beside whichever one your class reads.