during antiquity the "catalogue" was almost universally considered the work of hesiod. pausanias reports, however, that the boeotians living around mount helicon during his day believed that the only genuine hesiodic poem was the "works and days" and that even the first 10 lines of that poem (the so-called "hymn to zeus") were spurious. the only other surviving expression of doubt is found in aelian, who cites "hesiod" for the number of niobe's children, but qualifies his citation with "unless these verses are not by hesiod, but have been passed off falsely as his, like many other passages." but aelian's skepticism could have stemmed from the belief, still common today, that hesiodic poetry was especially susceptible to interpolation, and it is impossible to tell whether he regarded the entire "catalogue" as spurious or not. these two passages are, in any event, isolated, and more discerning critics like apollonius of rhodes, aristophanes of byzantium and crates of mallus apparently found no reason to doubt the attribution to hesiod, going so far as to cite the "catalogue" in arguments concerning the content and authenticity of other hesiodic poems.