Hesiod, living around 700 BC in the poor region of Boeotia ("Land of Cattle"), is only slightly younger than Homer. Although he is heavily influenced by the hexametric epic of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," he offers something completely new in his two works "Theogony" and "Works and Days": for the first time in the history of European literature, an author confronts us as a person. He himself recounts how the Muses appeared to him while he was tending sheep and called him to be a poet. Furthermore, Hesiod becomes the father of a new literary genre: the didactic poem. He establishes familial relationships among the divine powers, creating an interpretation of the universe that anticipates the philosophical concepts of the pre-Socratic thinkers. By summarizing and organizing the narratives about the gods, Hesiod becomes the most important source of Greek mythology.