8 in-print translations and 7 audiobooks, compared by who made them, when, and what each one is actually trying to do — Hesiod.
The short answer. There is no single best translation of Works & Days · Theogony, because the editions are optimised for different things: for a first read, the editions described as the most readable are A. E. Stallings, M. L. West; on audio the choice is mostly which translation is being read and whether it is one narrator or a full cast.
Every claim below is the publisher’s or translator’s own description, shown next to it, so you can judge rather than take our word. And you can read the whole thing free on this site first.
Scriptorium Press publishes a complete new plain-English translation of Works & Days · Theogony, free, with a complete free audiobook. No account, no paywall — 2 works in this volume.
Start reading free → Free audiobook → Whole book on one page →Older translations, out of copyright, hosted free by Internet Archive, Perseus Digital Library, Project Gutenberg, Wikisource. Not our work and not affiliate links — they are here because they are genuinely useful.
| Translator | Year | What it is | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White | 1914 | the standard free complete prose/verse Loeb crib; still the most-used free English Hesiod | Project Gutenberg → |
| Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White | 1914 | scanned Loeb volume, same translation as the Gutenberg text | Internet Archive → |
| Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White | 1914 | searchable/parsed Greek-English edition | Perseus Digital Library → |
| Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White | 1920 | same public-domain translation, wiki-formatted with page-by-page navigation | Wikisource → |
| Charles Abraham Elton | 1815 | earliest widely-available free English verse rendering, with scholarly notes/dissertation | Wikisource → |
Sorted as the research file records them. The note on each row is that edition’s own published description.
| Translator | Year | Publisher | What it is | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. E. Stallings | 2017 | Penguin Classics | verse (rhyming couplets); poet-translator, TLS Book of the Year 2018, most-recommended readable edition | Find it |
| Glenn W. Most | 2006 (rev. 2018) | Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press | facing-page Greek/prose, scholarly standard reference edition | Find it |
| M. L. West | 1988 | Oxford World's Classics | prose, notes by leading Hesiod scholar, scholarly but accessible | Find it |
| Stanley Lombardo | 1993 | Hackett Publishing | verse, energetic modern idiom, widely used in classrooms | Find it |
| Apostolos N. Athanassakis | 1983 (2nd ed. 2004) | Johns Hopkins University Press | verse, extensive scholarly commentary | Find it |
| Dorothea Wender | 1973 | Penguin Classics | prose/verse mix, long-standing classroom staple | Find it |
| Barry B. Powell | 2017 | Oxford University Press | verse, illustrated with the translator's own line drawings | Find it |
| Richmond Lattimore | 1959 | University of Michigan Press | verse, classic mid-century literary translation | Find it |
Those are affiliate links. They cost you nothing extra and pay a small commission to the people who publish these editions, and to us.
The thing that most changes an audiobook of Works & Days · Theogony is which translation is being read — a scholarly text and a colloquial one are different listening experiences before the narrator says a word.
| Narrator | Translation read | Publisher | Year | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrea Giordani | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted) | MuseumAudiobooks.com (Audible/Amazon) | 2019 | combined-edition small-press narration | Listen |
| Andrea Giordani | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted) | MuseumAudiobooks.com (Audible/Amazon) | 2019 | standalone companion to the combined edition | Listen |
| Andrea Giordani | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted) | MuseumAudiobooks.com (Audible/Amazon) | 2019 | standalone Theogony by same narrator/publisher | Listen |
| Victor Craig | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain) | Yashiki Audio (Audible/Amazon) | 2020 | budget public-domain-text narration | Listen |
| Victor Craig | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain) | Yashiki Audio (Audible/Amazon) | 2020 | companion volume to Craig's Works and Days | Listen |
| Darren Grimes | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted) | Adultbrain Publishing (Audible/Amazon) | 2023 | combined-edition budget audiobook | Listen |
| Peter Coates | Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted) | Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing (Audible/Amazon) | 2023 | standalone budget audiobook, Eastern-European self-publisher | Listen |
Affiliate links, including the Audible ones. They cost you nothing extra. Our own audiobook of Works & Days · Theogony stays free either way.
The editions described as the most readable are A. E. Stallings (2017), M. L. West (1988). Their published descriptions emphasise pace and plain modern idiom rather than strict line-by-line fidelity, which is what makes them easier on a first pass.
The most frequently recommended are Glenn W. Most (2006 (rev. 2018)). "Most recommended" is not the same as "best for you": a scholarly standard and an easy first read are different books, and the table on this page shows which is which.
There are 7 commercial recordings. They differ mainly in which translation is being read and whether it is a single narrator or a full cast: Andrea Giordani reads Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted); Andrea Giordani reads Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted); Andrea Giordani reads Hugh G. Evelyn-White (public domain, adapted). A complete free audiobook of our own translation is also on this site.
Yes. Scriptorium Press publishes a complete new plain-English translation of Works & Days · Theogony free to read, with a complete free audiobook, no account and no paywall - 2 works in this volume.