How the World and Mankind Were Created / The Gods

1. How the World and Mankind Were Created / The Gods Feraco English 9 18 November 2010

2. Getting Started • In Greek mythology, gods didn’t create the universe; gods were created by the universe, or at any rate by forces larger than themselves. • “First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss,/Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.” • Chaos and darkness leads to something else – no one bothers explaining why, which I know will drive some of you crazy, but you just have to roll with it! • From Chaos spring forth two children, Night and Erebus (the “unfathomable depth at which death dwells”)…and that’s it • Lots of darkness, silence, loneliness, etc…about what you’d expect from a universe defined by night and death

3. The Egg of Love • Then things get a little weird: Night lays an egg inside Erebus, and it hatches next to Death; out springs Love! • Love quickly gives birth to Light and Day, and brightness and hope arrive in the universe for the first time • What does this “origin story” for love indicate about the Greeks? What about their conception of love?

4. …and It Just Happened • Afterwards, the earth is created, but there’s no explanation here either: as Hamilton wonderfully puts it, “it just happened.” • Earth then gives birth to Heaven, and thus everything’s filled up – the sky above, the ground below • So, to recap: Chaos  Night and Erebus  Love  Light and Day  ?!?!? #$@%!!!  Earth  Heaven

5. No Delineations • Hesiod (whose Theogeny was required reading for me at Occidental) tries explaining how everything comes into being, but again, you have to remember that this was a storytelling culture that didn’t draw clean lines between what “made sense” and what didn’t • There’s nothing clearly distinguishing places and people, either; Hamilton notes that Earth has the qualities of both the ground and a character, and similar things pop up with Heaven

6. Hamilton on the Greeks • “To the people who told these stories, all the universe was alive with the same kind of life they knew in themselves. They were individual persons, so they personified everything which has the obvious marks of life, everything which moved and changed; earth in winter and summer; the sky with its shifting stars; the restless sea, and so on.”

7. Creature Creations • From then on, Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaea) start creating creatures • The creatures aren’t alive in the same way Gaea and Ouranos are; they’re closer to being alive like we are, but they’re nothing like us otherwise • There were a few different kinds for you to keep track of • Three of them had 100 hands and 50 heads apiece (we’ll call them the 100/50s) • Three of them had only one eye in the center of their foreheads, and were huge; these were the Cyclops, or Wheel-Eyed • The last batch you’ll need to track are the Titans, the forefathers of the Gods

8. Titan Roll Call • Out of the Titans, a few stand out as more important than the rest • Cronus/Saturn is a big one; he’s the leader of the Titans, the father of Zeus, and one of the major players in the God/Titan war • Since this is still a culture that believed in a flat Earth, Ocean was thought of as a river that encircled the entire world • Hyperion was the father of the sun, moon, and dawn • Atlas held the world on his shoulders and back; without him, we’d fall away from the heavens • Finally, there’s Prometheus – perhaps the second-most important Titan in all of mythology

9. The Fatal Miscalculation • These “children” of Ouranos and Gaea – Titans, Cyclops, and monsters – walked the Earth long before we did; if nothing changed, we may never have been created • However, something definitely changed: Ouranos hated the 100/50s so deeply that he imprisoned them underground • Gaea was so enraged by his mistreatment of her children – their children – that she begged everyone else for help; only Cronus agreed to do so, and “wounded his father terribly” • From Cronus’s blood, two more “creatures” arose: the Giants and the Erinyes (henceforth known as the Furies), who eventually became the punishers of sinners • The Furies were terrifying: they wept blood, had snakes for hair, and slashed at themselves as they shrieked

10. Swallowing Babies • Once Cronus essentially dethroned Ouranos, he and his sister-queen Rhea took over as rulers • Between them, they had six children, the first Gods the Greeks ever knew • However, Cronus was an even worse father than Ouranos; after hearing a prophecy stating that one of his children would dethrone him, he decided to swallow each one immediately after its birth • Rhea, anguished over the consumption of her children, secretly hid her sixth child (the almighty Zeus) in Crete (once again, we see the blending of the unreal and real) • When Zeus came to swallow the newborn, she handed him a huge stone wrapped in infant’s blankets…and because he never had any occasion to suspect his wife of deceit, he simply consumed what she handed him

11. Shooting Dad • Zeus comes of age and confronts his father – ironically, with the help of his grandmother, Gaea, whom Cronus helped in her conflict with Ouranos • Together, they force Cronus to vomit up the stone – and with it, Rhea’s other five God-children • Now freed, the six Gods banded together to fight their father • A terrible war ensues, with Cronus and the other Titans on one side and Zeus and his fellow Gods on the other

12. Crushing All Foes • Ultimately, Zeus emerges victorious when he releases the 100/50s from their prison • Apparently, we forgot to let them out after wounding Ouranos! • Their terrible powers help sway the balance of power, as does Prometheus’s alliance with the Gods; he’s the only Titan to switch sides • Once Zeus wins the war, he imprisons the Titans deep in Tartarus, the ancient equivalent of a god’s underworld; Atlas is the exception, as I mentioned earlier, as well as Prometheus • However, the war’s not over; Gaea gives birth to Typhon, a terrible creature with a hundred heads who fights all of the gods himself • Zeus defeats him with lightning bolts and thunder, which he obtains in his partnership with the 100/50s, and (with Hercules’s help) crushes the Giants who rise up against him afterward

13. Now That That’s Settled… • With the Titans and Giants in Tartarus, the 100/50s fade from the myths, the Cyclops head off to parts elsewhere (we’ll see them in The Odyssey), and the Age of the Gods begins with Zeus at the head of everything • It’s also the Age of Mankind, as the world’s been pretty much cleared of the monsters that would have killed us all • The rest is yet to come…