Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (27 page)

Who kept the “family tree” of the gods in ancient Greece?

Homer gets most of the glory, but Hesiod did the heavy lifting. When it comes to understanding the origin and genealogies of the gods, and some of the most familiar stories in Greek myth, we have a Greek shepherd to thank. Hesiod’s books haven’t been optioned by Hollywood like Homer’s, but they are among the best sources for many of the ancient tales of the Greek gods.

Much of what is known about the Greek myths is derived from two principal sources: Homer’s two epic poems,
Iliad
and
Odyssey
, and two far less famous books of poetry called
Theogony
(from
theo
, the Greek word for “god”) and
Works and Days
. These last two were supposedly inspired by the mythical Muses, who appeared to a shepherd named Hesiod, a farmer from a region northwest of Athens called Boeotia. The Muses “breathed a sacred voice” into Hesiod’s mouth, and he began to describe the creation of the world, and the succession of heavenly rulers who made up the complex genealogy of the Greek gods.

Though he probably lived around 700 BCE, shortly after or around the same time as Homer, Hesiod is far less famous and accomplished a poet than Homer is. But we do know a bit more about him, because his writings actually include some autobiographical clues. His father had been a merchant sailor, and after living in Cyme, on the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey), had moved back to mainland Greece and started a farm in a time of growing prosperity in Greece. The family’s estates were small, and when Hesiod and his brother, Perses, inherited them, the brothers apparently quarreled over their shares. It also seems apparent that Hesiod was a somewhat cranky country gentleman, and no fan of women—as best represented in his telling of the familiar story of Pandora, the first woman (see below,
What was in Pandora’s “box”?
). The ills of the world, in Hesiod’s words, are all due to a female, created by the gods to torment men—“a calamity for men who live by bread.”

By this time in history, the Greeks had borrowed and adapted the Phoenician writing system. As the scholar and translator M. L. West writes, “The existence of writing now made it possible for poems to be recorded and preserved in a more or less fixed form. Hesiod and Homer were among the first to take advantage of this possibility, and that is why…they stand at the beginning of Greek literature.”

After the Muses appeared to Hesiod on the sacred Mount Helicon and presented him with a staff, he was told to sing of the gods and became a poet, or a man who entertained at private gatherings and feasts, an ancient “wedding singer,” reciting the familiar old stories and songs as well as composing them.
Theogony
was the first result of this “divine” inspiration. Relatively brief, compared to Homer’s two major epics, the poem contains the names of more than three hundred gods, some of them obscure and insignificant in the Greek pantheon.
Theogony
also tells of the birth of the first gods, their stormy family relationships, the story of Prometheus, and ends with the marriage of Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the Greek gods.

Works and Days
, Hesiod’s even more popular work, was a poem addressed to his brother, Perses, in which he examined human life and set forth his moral values. Also fairly brief, it is nonetheless a rambling compendium of myths, moral philosophy, proverbial wisdom, and practical advice that makes Hesiod sound like an ancient Greek Ben Franklin, offering
Farmer’s Almanac
–style advice on cultivating crops, what should be sown, and when the harvest should take place. But
Works and Days
also expresses Hesiod’s philosophy that life is difficult and people must work hard in spite of the just rule of Zeus, the king of the gods.

It may be that this advice was aimed directly at his brother, Perses, who got the larger share of the family farm, apparently after bribing some local officials Hesiod called “bribe swallowers.” But Perses was not, apparently, sufficiently industrious and Hesiod constantly upbraided him for his laziness. Perhaps more curious, some of his advice went so far as to explain the proper way to relieve oneself:

Not exactly what we have in mind when we think about the glories of Greece.

But Hesiod’s two collections offer a treasure trove nonetheless, both in understanding the early stories of the gods and as a valuable source of insight into common life in the Greek world of the Archaic Age.

How do you get Creation from castration?

The Egyptians managed Creation out of masturbation. The Mesopotamians envisioned freshwater and salt water having sex. The Greeks go that one better and base their chief Creation account on a rather painful story of the violent castration of a god.

The most important Greek Creation myth, an elaborate account of the violent birth of the gods, is found in Hesiod’s
Theogony
. It is a story filled with crude and bizarre twists, acts of outright brutality, and—as in the other Near Eastern myths—feuding families that span generations. Translator and scholar M. L. West even argues that this “succession myth” was not the “product of Hesiod’s savage fancy,” but a Greek version of earlier texts, including the Babylonian
Enuma Elish
.

Whatever its mythic origins, this Greek Creation story centered on primordial forces awakening out of Nothingness and bringing alive a succession of gods, giants, monsters, and finally, the seemingly divine figures who all possess suspiciously human failings.

The Creation begins in a state of emptiness called Chaos—literally, “a yawning (or gaping) void”—out of which the five original “elements” simply appear and are then personified as the first gods:

Gaia (also Ge or Gaea), the primordial earth goddess


 


Tartarus, both a god and the bleak, deepest region of the underworld located within the earth


 


Eros, the force of love, later transformed into a god of love, who, in Hesiod’s words, “overcomes the reason and purpose in the breasts of all gods and all men”


 


Erebus, the realm of darkness associated with bleak Tartarus


 


Nyx, the female personification of night


 

Bursting with powerful life-force, the primal goddess Gaia, or Earth, is “broad-breasted, the secure foundation of all forever” as she gives birth to Uranus, the “star-studded heaven” and the divine personification of the sky. Free from the taboo of incest, as were other ancient gods, Uranus becomes his mother’s consort and “beds” her. The notion that sky and earth were once beings united in a sexual embrace is a common ancient idea, as in the Egyptian tale of earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut, or the Sumerian deities An and Ki.

Fertile Gaia next bears the mountains, the seas, and the nymphs, who were associated with the trees, springs, rivers, and forests. Gaia and Uranus then produce a terrible trio of sons called Hecatonchires (“the hundred-handed”), monsters who each have three heads. In the next of their curious litters are three more children known as the one-eyed Cyclopes.
*

Gaia and Uranus also gave birth to a dozen children known as the Titans, the first generation of gods who preceded the later gods of Olympus. Of monstrous size and strength, they provide the source of the word “titanic.” They were:

Oceanus, a sea god whose waters encircled the earth, and his sister/mate Tethys


 


Hyperion, sometimes called the sun, and his mate Theia (who together produce the sun, moon, and dawn)


 


Themis (called Law) and Rhea, two more earth goddesses


 


Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory


 


Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, and Phoebe, four Titans with no specific roles


 


Cronus, the youngest and craftiest, described as the “crooked schemer”


 

Siring so many extraordinary children was quite an achievement, but Uranus wasn’t happy with his brood. He feared that these children might rise up and overthrow him—a common theme in Greek and other Near Eastern myths. So, Uranus made an interesting decision—perhaps the result of some deep, dark male-fantasy impulse—to lock himself in perpetual intercourse with Gaia so that nothing could emerge from their union. Pressed down upon Gaia, Uranus kept all of these children trapped in a cave within the earth’s huge body.

Resentful and in pain, Gaia wants the children to “do in” dear old dad. But only Cronus, the youngest Titan, has the right stuff. Gaia gives Cronus a sickle with which to attack Uranus in a moment of treacherous surprise that may have left the men in Hesiod’s audience feeling a bit uncomfortable: “From ambush Cronus’ left hand seized the genital parts of his father; he reached out his right with the sickle, saw-toothed, deadly and sharp. Like a reaper, he sliced away the genitals of his own father.”

As Hesiod tells it, these severed genitals were then carried out to the ocean, where sea foam magically mixed with Uranus’s blood and semen, to create Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love, who emerged from the sea. (There is another, later and different, version of Aphrodite’s birth.)

Having emasculated his father, Cronus frees his Titan siblings from their cave inside Gaia and becomes king of the gods. (Again, this parallels the Mesopotamian Creation myth, in which the primordial sea god Apsu had been overthrown by one of his offspring, Enki.) During Cronus’s reign, the work of creating the world continued and hundreds more divinities were born, including more Titans, such as Atlas and Prometheus, the gods or goddesses of death, the rainbow, the rivers, and sleep—their names meticulously catalogued by Hesiod. And as we read them, we can only imagine the singer—perhaps accompanying himself on a lyre—crooning these names at a wedding feast, in celebration of the glorious divinities.

The eager crowd is now primed. The stage is set for the entrance of some of the most pivotal and familiar figures in Greek myth—the Olympians—some of whom will descend from Cronus. Knowing how he had deposed his own father, Cronus fears that the offspring of his marriage to this sister Rhea may do the same, so he swallows his first five children as soon as their mother delivers them. To save her sixth child, Rhea tricks Cronus into swallowing a stone wrapped in baby clothes, and then hides the infant in a cave on the island of Crete, where he is raised by nymphs on goat’s milk and honey.
*
Fearful that Cronus might hear the infant’s crying, Rhea orders a group of semidivine men to dance around noisily at the entrance to the cave in which he is hidden. That child, saved by Rhea, is Zeus.

The most powerful of all the Greek deities, Zeus will rise to lord over the pantheon of Greek gods. But first he must prove himself worthy. His trials begin when he returns to challenge his father’s supremacy and rescue his siblings—an instant replay of Cronus’s battle with his own father, Uranus. With Rhea’s aid, he first tricks Cronus into drinking a liquid that makes him vomit up all five children, plus Rhea’s stone. Zeus then frees the fearsome Cyclopes, still trapped within the earth, and they make magical weapons for Zeus and his two brothers, including the great three-pronged spear, or trident, for Poseidon; a helmet of invisibility for Hades; and the thunderbolts that becomes Zeus’s awesome weapon and symbol of power. Zeus also frees the fearsome Hecatonchires from the depths of Tartarus, where they have been imprisoned. Though Gaia, the Mother Earth, urges the Titans to accept Zeus as the supreme god, most of them refuse, and an epic ten-year war—the Titanomachy—follows. Ultimately, Zeus and his siblings, along with their allies, prevail over the Titans, who are exiled to the depths of Tartarus.

Of the defeated Titans, only the one named Atlas receives a different fate. He is condemned by Zeus to live at the edge of the world, where he must hold up the heavens and continue the separation of sky and earth for all eternity. (The Atlas Mountains in Morocco near the Atlantic Ocean are supposedly where Atlas is forced to stand. And when a map-maker created a collection of the maps of the known world in 1570 CE, he called it an “atlas,” in his honor.)