Hamilton Mythology: How the World and Mankind were Created

First there was...

Chaos

Chaos had 2 children...

Night and Erebus, unfathomable depth where death dwells

From Night and Erebus...

Love/Eros was born

Love/Eros created

Light and its companion Day. Then out of the blue Earth comes and its equal, Heaven!

Mother Earth/Gaea and Father Heaven/Ouranos had many children...

who had the strength of earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes. 3 children had 100 hands and 50 heads. 3 had 1 huge eye, they were called Cyclops. The rest were Titans.

Heaven was a horrible father and he imprisoned...

the 100 handed ones. Mother Earth didn't like this and called on Cronus to kill his father.

From Father Heaven's blood...

came the Giants and the Erinyes (Furies)

Cronus became the ruler of universe with his sister-queen....

Rhea/Ops. They are the parents of the gods.

As his children were born, Cronus ate them because he had a prophecy that one of his children would kill him...

when Zeus was born his mother protected him and made Cronus eat a rock, the stone of Delphi. Then he came back and with help from Earth, Prometheus, his siblings and the 100 handed ones overthrew his father.

When Zeus/Jupiter overthrew Cronus he punished all who were against him...

and put them in Tartarus. Atlas had to hold the world on his shoulders.

Now for mankind...

the gods made first a Golden race that lived like gods, then a silver race that were stupid and died off, then a brass race that was way too violent and killed each other in wars, then a splendid race of heroes that were happy and ended up in the isles of the blessed in perfect bliss, then the race of today

Prometheus is...

a Titan who took care of mankind and gave them fire and made it that the best part of the animal was kept and the worst part was given to the gods, for this he was punished.

Crete

2800 BC; earliest civilization; Bronze Age; NOT Greek; Minos legendary king, Minoans lived there

Stone in swaddling clothes

Prior to the age of The Age of The Gods, in Greek mythology, the universe was ruled by the Titan Cronus, who had come to be ruler by killing his father Ouranos. However, Cronus became aware of a prophecy which foretold that he himself would be slain by his own child, as proper retribution for the murder he committed on his father. To prevent this from coming to fruition, anytime Cronus' wife Rhea, would give birth, Cronus would immediately swallow the child to prevent it from fulfilling the prophecy. Rhea's sixth child, Zeus, survived this fate when Rhea wrapped a rock in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus, who immediately swallowed it, believing it to be his newborn child. Zeus would be raised in secret and ultimately killed his father in a war which would see him become the new ruler of the universe.

Atlas

a Titan who was forced by Zeus to bear the sky on his shoulders

Typhon

An offspring of Earth, a "flaming monster with a hundred heads" defeated by Zeus

Epimethus

Titan and the brother of Prometheus. While Prometheus is characterized as ingenious and clever, Epimetheus is depicted as foolish. Is given Pandora by Zeus to have as a wife, to be a great curse upon himself and upon humanity.

Prometheus

A champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day

Pandora

..., first woman created by Zeus; opens a box full of evil things that are now on the earth; given to Epimetheus

the Deluge

Greek mythology describes three floods, the flood of Ogyges, the flood of Deucalion, and the flood of Dardanus. Two of the Greek Ages of Man concluded with a flood: The Ogygian Deluge ended the Silver Age, and the flood of Deucalion ended the First Bronze Age.

Parnassus

Mountain was sacred to arts and literature; any center of poetic or artistic activity; poetry or poets collectively, a common title for selection of poetry; named after the hero of Mt. Parnassus, the son of Poseidon and a Nymph. He founded the oracle of Python, which was later occupied by Apollo.

Deucalion

Purest of men. He went to Mount Parnassus and prayed. So Jove spared him. He says that the mentioned mother is the Earth and the bones mean the stones left behind by the flood. The stones he threw turned into men. son of Prometheus; husband and cousin of Pyrrha; One of two people (including Pyrrha) who survived flood; embodies imagination and figurative thought; repopulates the Earth by throwing stones behind him

Pyrrha

Pyrrha is the daughter of Epimetheus and the wife of Deucalion. They were the sole survivors of the flood sent by Zeus to drown the world and its degenerate race of mankind. When the waters sank back into the earth, Pyrrha and Deucalion created a new race of humans by throwing stones.

Stone people

Deucalion (Prometheus' son) & Pyrrha (daughter of Epimetheus & Pandora) survived Deluge--> found temple & told to cast bones (stones) of mother Earth behind them--> as fell became human (Stone People=hard enduring race)

Myth

Edith Hamilton defined mythology as the study of any heroic or religious legends that are foreign to the person studying them.Greek mythology is largely made up of stories about gods and goddesses, but it must not be read as a kind of Greek Bible, an account of the Greek religion. According to the most modern idea, a real myth has nothing to do with religion. It is an explanation of something in nature: how, for instance, anything and everything came into existence; men animals, this or that tree or flower . . . Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them. But there are many so-called myths that explain nothing at all. These tales are pure entertainment, the sort of thing people would tell one another on a long winter's evening. . . . But religion is here, too.

Greek Miracle

the breakthrough out of mythological explanations of natural phenomena into natural explanations of natural phenomena.