week two: hesiod's theogony

author, title. date, location, language

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Author: Hesiod​

Title: Theogony​

Date: some time between 750 and 650 BCE​

Location: Ascra in Boeotia, a region in Greece​

Language: Greek

notes about dates: BC, AD, BCE, CE

BC=Before Christ​

​AD=Anno Domini (In the Year of the Lord)​

​BCE=Before the Common Era​

​CE=Common Era​

• Years BCE count down (650 BCE is the year before 649 BCE).​

• There is no year zero, so 1 CE comes right after 1 BCE.​

• 650 BCE is in the seventh century BCE.​

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BCE, CE, and BC all go after the year, but AD traditionally goes before the year (e.g., 1066 CE or AD 1066).​

hesiod’s theogony origin

classicists usually refer to “Hesiod’s Theogony” or “the Theogony” but not “Hesiod’s the Theogony”

• one of the earliest poems to survive

• later Greeks treated it as an authoritative account of the gods and the creation of the world. The title translated literally means “god birth.” ​

Iconography​

details of a visual representation that tell you who the figures are

1. Proem (1–115):

hymn to the Muses, telling of their birth (zeus + Mnemosyne) and power, recounting their initiation of Hesiod into poetry , and indicating the contents of the following poem.​

• gave hesiod a staff (laurel)

• breathed a divine voice into him

• Mnemosyne birthed them on pieria

• zeus slept with her for nine nights —> nine muses

• whoever the muses sings to forgets their anguish , becomes a poet

2. The origin of the world (116–22):

the coming into being of the three primordial entities, Chasm (void), Earth (gaia, foundation of life), and Eros (desire).​

• eros the most beautiful of the immortal gods, overpowers the mind and thoughtful counsel of all the gods + human

3. The descendants of Chasm 1 (123–25):

Erebos (darkness) and Night (nyx) come to be from Chasm, and Aether and Day from Night.

• aether + day come from night who conceived them with erebos

4. The descendants of Earth 1 (126–210):

Earth bears Sky (equal to herself), and together they give birth to the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hundred-Handers; the last of the Titans, Cronus, castrates his father, Sky, thereby producing among others Aphrodite.

• sky cover her on every side, so that she would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed

• she bore the high mountains (ourea) , the graceful haunts of the goddesses, Nymphs who dwell on the wooded mountains

• also bore the barren sea seething with its swell, Pontus—all of them by herself

5. The descendants of Chasm 2 (211–32):

Night’s numerous and baneful progeny.

6. The descendants of Earth 2 (233–69):

Earth’s son Pontus (sea) begets Nereus (old man of the sea), who in turn begets the Nereids (sea nymphs).​

7. The descendants of Earth 3 (270–336):

Pontus’ son (sea) Phorcys and daughter Ceto produce, directly and indirectly, a series of monsters.

• graiae (sisters with one eye + tooth between them)

• gorgons (gaze turns ppl to stone)

8. The descendants of Earth 4 (337–452):

children of the Titans, especially the rivers, including Styx (all of them children of Tethys and Ocean), and Hecate (daughter of Phoebe and Coeus).​

9. The descendants of Earth 5 (453–506):

further children of the Titans: Olympian gods, born to Rhea from Cronus, who swallows them all at birth until Rhea saves Zeus, who frees the Cyclopes and is destined to dethrone Cronus.

10. The descendants of Earth 6 (507–616)

further children of the Titans: Iapetus’ four sons, Atlas, Menoetius, Epimetheus, and Prometheus (including the stories of the origin of the division of sacrificial meat, of fire, and of the race of women).​

• prometheus: two meats (giving fat wrapped in bones to zeus, saving best for humans), steals fire for humans, creates first women (pandora) who is giving a jar releasing evil into world

11. The conflict between the Titans and the Olympians (617–720)

after ten years of inconclusive warfare between the Titans and the Olympians, Zeus frees the Hundred-Handers, who help the Olympians achieve final victory and send the defeated Titans down into Tartarus.

12. Tartarus (721–819)

the geography of Tartarus and its population, including the Titans, the Hundred-Handers, Night and Day, Sleep and Death, Hades, and Styx.

13. The descendants of Earth 7 (820–80):

Earth’s last child, Typhoeus, is defeated by Zeus and sent down to Tartarus.

• having a hundred snake-like heads

14. The descendants of Earth 8 (881–962)

a list of the descendants of the Olympian gods, including Athena, the Muses, Apollo and Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, Dionysus, and Heracles.

15. The descendants of Earth 9 (963–1022)

after a concluding farewell to the Olympian gods and the islands, continents, and sea, there is a transition to a list of the children born of goddesses, followed by a farewell to these and a transition to a catalogue of women (this last is not included in the text of the poem).

Greek Names​ transliteration

When we write the names of Greek gods, we first have to transliterate them, which means we have to change the letters from those of the Greek alphabet to the modern version of the Roman alphabet that we use.​

• some may use the romanized version of names while others use more direct system for transliterating (many different spellings for names)

• e.g. Helios is a common spelling and that preserves the Greek omicron as an o, but when the name is written in Latin that omicron becomes a u, and so Helius is also a common and correct spelling of the name.​

twelve titans

Ocean and Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus and Theia and Rhea and Themis and Mnemosyne and golden-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After these, Cronus was born, the youngest of all, crooked-counseled, the most terrible of her children; and he hated his vigorous father.​

earth and sky names

Γαῖα, Gaia, or Earth, and Οὐρανός, Ouranos, Uranus, or Sky.​

​If you were to look up these words in a Greek dictionary, you would most likely find two entries for each, one with a capital first letter for the god, and one with a lowercase first letter for the natural phenomenon.​

planets names + gods

While the brightest planets from Earth were named after and identified with gods in Ancient Greece and Rome, Uranus was not identified as a planet in antiquity and was only named Uranus in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

• In 1782 Johann Elert Bode proposed the name Uranus for the newly identified planet on the reasoning that Saturn (Cronus) was the father of Jupiter (Zeus), and Uranus (Ouranos) was the father of Saturn (Cronus).​

The Names of Greek Gods​

primordial gods Hesiod names are often the names of natural phenomena, and this is not uncommon in polytheistic religions. ​

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unusual that the most important Greek gods have names that are largely unintelligible, not just to us, but to the Ancient Greeks too.

• tried to find etymology for names like Zeus, Hera, and Apollo, but they’re never clearly correct.

• This is all the more puzzling given the fact that many Greek personal names, like Thrasyboulos (bold in counsel) have clear meanings. ​

• It is not the case the Zeus is the storm. He brings storms. And Aphrodite is not sexuality—she bestows sexuality. The most important Greek gods are not personifications of natural phenomena

Types of greek gods

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There are at least, then, three types of gods: natural phenomena like Eos (Dawn), personifications of abstract concepts like Themis (Justice), and characters whose names and origins are mysterious like Zeus. ​

explanation of greek gods

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Hesiod makes no attempt to explain the concept of gods, although later Greeks did and we do.​

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We associate with Euhemerus (who lived in the 4th century BCE) the idea of “euhemerism,” which argues that gods like Zeus were once real people and that stories about them grew exaggerated over time to the point that they became gods in later times.

hesiod’s organization

organize a system in which primordial, natural gods like Earth and Sky coexist with abstract concepts like Justice and Youth and with more complicated, personal gods like Zeus and Hera.​

• Ancient Greek names often included a patronymic, which means the name of the father. Pericles, for example, was Pericles, son of Xanthippus.

• the principle that would organize the proliferation of many gods into a system is a genealogical one.​

Succession of the rulership leading to Zeus leadership: part one

1. sky hates his children —> hides them within Gaia, refusing to let them emerge into the light

2. gaia is constricted and groans

3. devises a plan, creates a sickle from gray adamant (mythical unbreakable material)

4. shows sickle to children, calling them to rise again sky, cronus accepts the task

Succession of the rulership leading to Zeus leadership: part two

1. gaia hides cronus and gives him the sickle —> when uranus stretches himself over gaia in an intimate act, cronus castrates him

2. blood of sky falls over gaia —> fertilizing her —> gives birth to erinyes (furies), giants, melian nymphs (tree/ash)

Succession of the rulership leading to Zeus leadership: part three

1. cronus overthrown his father becoming a tyrannical ruler himself

2. rhea (his sister) and him have six children: hestia, demeter, hera, hades, poseidon, zeus

3. prophecy that one of his children will overthrow him, he swallows each one —> revealed by gaia and sky

4. rhea is consumed with grief

Succession of the rulership leading to Zeus leadership: part three

1. rhea turns to her parents for help —> they advise her to secretely give birth in crete and to trick him by giving him a stone

2. gives birth to zeus in lyctus, crete, during night and hides in a cave in the Aegean mountains, where gaia nurtures + protects him

3. rhea gives cronus the stone

Succession of the rulership leading to Zeus leadership: part four

1. zeus first marrige to metis (wisdom) —> her intelligences makes her a good ally but also threat due to prophecy abt her children

2. gaia + sky reveal she is destined to have two children: athena, a son who would surpass zeus + potentially usurp his throne

3. to prevent this, he tricks metis swallowing her while pregnant w athena —> by swallowing he ensures her intelligence will serve him rather than threaten

4. By swallowing Metis, Zeus not only averts the threat of her future son but also symbolically absorbs her attributes, consolidation of power —> unlike cronus zeus uses cunning and preemptive action rather than brute force