Like Homer, plenty of legends surround the life of Hesiod. He was certainly a Greek poet who is known to have lived around 700 BCE. He lived in Boeotia, the area north of Corinth although he was probably born in Anatolia, which is in modern day Turkey.
It seems entirely possible that Hesiod and Homer were contemporaries. Traditionally, The Muses gave Hesiod the gift of poetry day while he tended sheep. Hesiod mentions he won his first poetry contest at the great competition at Chalcis in Euboea. The account of this contest inspired a later, and almost certainly fictitious, tale of a poetry competition between Hesiod and Homer.
Hesiod’s most famous poem, was the 800 verse Works and Days, which posits the idea  that labour is the lot of mankind. Those who are willing to accept this will not only survive but prosper.
Hesiod’s second major work is The Theogony, a 1,000 verse poem that concerns the origins of the world and of the lives of the gods. It is an important source of information on the gods of ancient Greece and forms the basis from which many latter myths and stories would be born. It also brings together many of the separate myths that had grown separately across the Greek cities and forms them into a single coherent narrative.
Copies of the poem survive in the form of Egyptian papyrus dated from 100BCE and the first printed version appeared in Venice in 1493.
While the poem is about the gods, its intent is to reaffirm the obligations and traditions of earthly kingship. The poem details the rise of Zeus and his ultimate kingship over the other gods and in doing so emphasizes royal historical lines to establish the divinely inspired legitimacy of kings.
Theogony begins with the creation of the world and the immortals. The Immortal Chaos first came into existence followed by the order of Gaia (Earth), Tartaros (Underworld) and Eros (Desire). From Chaos also came Erebos (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). Erebos and Nyx reproduced to make Aither (Brightness) and Hemera (Day). From Gaia came Uranos (Sky), Ourea (Mountains), and Pontos (Sea).
Uranos mated with Gaia to create 12 Titans, (Okeanos, Koios, Kreios, Hyperion, Iapetos, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Tethys, and Kronos); three Cyclopses, (Brontes, Steropes, and Arges); and three Hundred-Handeds (Kottos, Briareos, and Gyges).
Uranos has a premonition that one of his children will overthrow him, so he imprisons each his children. Gaia asks her children to punish Uranos. Only Kronos was willing to do so and cuts off his father's genitals, castrating him. The blood from Uranos falls to the earth producing the furies, giants, and nymphs. Kronos takes the severed testicles and throw them into the ocean, where are they transformed into the goddess of Love, Aphrodite. Theogony goes on to detail the births of the other children born of Nyx and Erobos, including the fates, gorgons, and the gods who represent the states of nature.
The second part of the poem details the fall of the Titans and the rise to power of Zeus. Kronos, having taken control of the cosmos, wanted to ensure that he maintained power. When he married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of their children at birth: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, and Hades. However, Rhea saves their final child, Zeus, deceiving Kronos by giving him a huge stone to swallow in place of the child.
Zeus grows up and returns to depose Kronos. He forced the Titan to disgorge his siblings and thereafter waged a great war for control of the cosmos. The war lasted ten years, with the Olympian gods, the Hundred-Handeds and the Titan Prometheus on one side, and the Titans and the Giants on the other. Eventually Zeus is victorious.
The final part of the poem tells the stories of the Olympian gods and the marriages and children of Zeus including Poseidon, Hermes, Athena, Apollo, Artemis and Dionysus.
It also tells the story of Prometheus who steals fire from the Olympian gods to give to mortals, along with other knowledge. Zeus punishes Prometheus by tying him to a mountain and having an eagle eat out his liver. Each night the organ gorws back the following day the eagle returns again. Zeus also punishes the men on earth for acquiring immortal knowledge by creating a woman, Pandora, who would release miseries, diseases and deaths into the world by opening a box from Zeus. Luckily, she closed the box before Hope was released. Prometheus finally released would later open the box to free Hope.