Hesiod’s poems were composed during the Greek Archaic Period, which scholars generally date between the years of 825 and 480 BCE. Immediately following the chaotic Iron Age (1150-825 BCE), in which warfare and natural disasters caused a marked decrease in population, government, and economy in Greece, the Archaic Period saw the rise of many important Greek cultural institutions. Colonization revitalized the languishing sea trade network. The economy was bolstered by the introduction of coinage in the sixth century BCE, providing a fixed, state-guaranteed material for trade. The Archaic Period also introduced Greece’s distinctive military technology, hoplite warfare, and its earliest forms of philosophy (the Pre-Socratics). Monumental architecture and naturalism in art also emerged during this period.

The most transformative of these Archaic innovations, though, was the development of the polis, or Greek city-state (Athens and Sparta were both poleis). A polis consisted of an independent urban settlement and its surrounding territories. In Hesiod’s time, they were ruled by kings. Each polis was politically autonomous (or self-ruled) and socially homogenous; they were populated, by and large, by locals from the area.

The formation of these city centers gave rise to systems of law and concepts of civil rights. Most importantly, the Greek notion of justice becomes directly tied to the polis.