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Quotation from Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod
“For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all”
Theogony and Works and Days, Theogony, ll. 98-103, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White
The close of the hymn to the Muses praises song as a consolation for the grieving.
Citation: "For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all" — Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, Theogony, ll. 98-103, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (id hesiod-theogony-and-works-and-days-q7)
Portrait: Bust of an unknown Greek poet, long identified as Hesiod (the 'Pseudo-Seneca'), Roman copy, British Museum, Unknown Roman sculptor, Public domain.
