Precepts of Chiron

[2] As such, the poem shows affinities not only with the Hesiodic Works and Days,[3] with which it shared its hexameter verse form, but also with the gnomic elegies of Theognis.

[4] A didactic poem, "Precepts of Chiron", part of the traditional education of Achilles, was considered to be among Hesiod's works by some of the later Greeks.

The Romanized Greek traveller of the 2nd century CE, Pausanias,[5] noted a list of Hesiod's works that were shown to him, engraved on an ancient and worn leaden tablet, by the tenders of the shrine at Helicon in Boeotia.

[6] The common thread in the fragments, which may reflect in some degree the Acharnian image of Chiron and his teaching, is that it is expository rather than narrative, and suggests that, rather than recounting the inspiring events of archaic times as men like Nestor[7] or Glaucus[8] might do, Chiron taught the primeval ways of mankind, the gods and nature, beginning with the caution "First, whenever you come to your house, offer good sacrifices to the eternal gods".

The Alexandrian critic Aristophanes of Byzantium (late 3rd-early 2nd century BCE) was the first to deny that the "Precepts of Chiron" was the work of Hesiod.