Hesiod Theogony
Rocky Wu
The blog will be simple, and the blog will consist of some basic concepts in the Theogony and the Olympic Gods
The blog will be simple, and the blog will consist of some basic concepts in the Theogony and the Olympic Gods
If we would discuss Hesiod's Theogony, we would start with the initial four. The first beings after Chaos were the Gaia, Tartarus and Eros. Chaos provides the beginning for creation. So we can say that Chaos created the universe. Thus, the start of the genesis will be Chaos. Chaos, also represented the mass of the four basic elements - earth, air, fire, and water - from which the university is created. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Now turn our focus to Gaia. She was the representation of Earth, and fertility mother from Chaos. In the later stage, we would discuss regarding the birth of Gaia with the topic of asexual reproduction in Hesiod Theogony. Most importantly, Gaia was the first deity who was recognized as female. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Next, we would discuss Eros, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents the concept of Love, which will be essential in later stages. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Alas, we would look at Tartarus, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents an inner part of Earth, which placed very deep inside the Earth. The place was designed to become the underworld of Earth, and served as a place of punishment, which jails the individuals who commited severe crimes or mistakes in the mythology. (Theogony, 116 - 125)Next, we would discuss Eros, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents the concept of Love, which will be essential in later stages. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Talking about Uranus, he was the deity that represents the sky, lightning and thunder of the Earth. He was the descendant of mother Earth, thus produced by Gaia. Gaia had produced Uranus by her own, which was an example of asexual reproduction. Later, Uranus and Gaia had married and gave birth to the twelve titans and the three Cyclopes and three Hecatoncheires. The twelve Titans in the future would mate with each other, which is another evidence of incest among the deities, had gave birth to some of the most important deities in the Greco-Roman mythology. Among all the titans, two of the most important ones were Rhea and Cronus/Kronos. Beside the eighteen deities listed above, Uranus had also gave birth to another deity, Aphrodite, born from the Uranus' genital. The castration of Uranus was done by their children, Kronos, who was intructed by his mother, Gaia. (Theogony, 156 - 211). Next, we would discuss Eros, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents the concept of Love, which will be essential in later stages. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Two of the Uranus and Gaia's children, had decided to mate themselves together, but forgot to take measures to prevent conception. Thus, when Rhea was about to gave birth to their children, Kronos decided to eat their Children up. Why Kronos decided to eat up their children was because his behavior back in the castration of his father. Kronos was afraid that their children will do something similar that he had done before. Thus, to prevent something like this happen in the future, Kronos decided to fundamentally solve the problem, by devouring their children.
Nonetheless, Zeus and his sibling were still born in this world as their mother, Rhea, ambushed the children on the Crete island and lied to his husband by giving Kronos clothes to eat. Thus, the children, the six major deity in Greco-Roman mythology named as Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, were born without harm from their father. Eventually, Kronos did face the same fate as his father that Kronos was overthrown by Zeus and his siblings. (Theogony, 454 - 505)Alas, we would look at Tartarus, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents an inner part of Earth, which placed very deep inside the Earth. The place was designed to become the underworld of Earth, and served as a place of punishment, which jails the individuals who commited severe crimes or mistakes in the mythology. (Theogony, 116 - 125)Next, we would discuss Eros, who also was the descendant of the initial deity, Chaos. The deity represents the concept of Love, which will be essential in later stages. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
Zeus, god of storm and guardian of state and justice, after many incidents, was elected as the leader between The Twelve Olympians. The most import attributes of the god were thunderbolts, scepter and throne. The animal that represents Zeus was Eagle.
Hera, god of childbirth and marriage, also as the first wife, were another important deity in the mythology. The attributes of the goddess were polos, veil and next to Zeus. The animal that represents Hera was Cow and Peacock. Two of the Rhea and Kronos's children, had decided to mate themselves together, where most of the stories in the Hesiod Theogony revolved around these two. Zeus had fought with his father, and the Giants and Typhoeus, and punished Prometheus for stealing fire for human kind. He had also sent Pandora as the punishment to the mortals, by giving Pandora a box that contains all the evil and hope. The human kind had opened the box as Zeus planned, and thus the punishment is done.Now turn our focus to Gaia. She was the representation of Earth, and fertility mother from Chaos. In the later stage, we would discuss regarding the birth of Gaia with the topic of asexual reproduction in Hesiod Theogony. Most importantly, Gaia was the first deity who was recognized as female. (Theogony, 116 - 125)
The ability of reproducing in Hesiod's Theogony was fairly different between two genders. Even though we have examples such as Aphrodite, and some other deities that were born asexually, the birth of these deities would need an external help. In other words, we could conclude that the fathers could give birth to deities without sexual intercourse, but they would need some extra help from others. Referring back to the examples given above, the birth of Aphrodite would need the intervention of Kronos and Gaia. Without Kronos castrating his father, we would not know if Aphrodite would born or not if this incident had not happened in the myth. Besides, according to the myth, we would need Uranus's genital to mix with the sea to give birth to Aphrodite.Now, there were some exceptions and edge cases in the myth, the birth of Athena from Zeus's head count as one. As in this story, we have Athena, born from one of the organs from Zeus, brain. However, we know that from the story, Athena, who we would characterize as a 2D character before birth (HAHA ANIME WEEB), was created by Metis before Zeus had produced her by himself. Arguably, in modern concept, we would say that the holder of the intellectual property was Metis, which now altered her birth from asexual to sexual as we have a mother role and a father role. But from a physical aspect, she did come out of Zeus's head, so we could also say it was asexually produced without external help.Thus, we can conclude that the male deities in the mythology would not enact single parent reproduction without any form of external help, whether from another deity or another natural source.
Now we should talk about the Parthenogenesis inside Theogony. We had already introduced some of the most important deities that performed this behavior in epic poetry. Thus, we can look at the incidents and elaborate this incident towards the gender role in ancient Greece. The practice reflected the conflict and difference between genders and other factors that we could still discuss at this date. The one example I will be discussing is Hera. Initially, Hera used this behavior to resist his husband, Zeus. In the later stage, this behavior backfired as this action enforced Zeus's reign at the Olympics. The nature of this act in this circumstance illustrated the gender difference and conflict, illustrating the harmonic and stable relationship between deities. The following content would contain many quotes from the second source I use. The source is linked below at the end of the webpage. Now I will be discussing Hesiod's Theogony and Hera.Throughout the myths that we knew described ancient Greece, we would have noticed that much of which does not have women in the literature. Nonetheless, if the role of women existed, the role was neglected to a large degree. They would play non-major characters inside the epic. We can also tell this trend or custom by looking at the role assignment of opera in ancient Greece. None of the female characters were cast by females; instead, a male would cast the characters inside the plays.However, according to the author, one of the significances of Hesiod's Theogony was the increased female participation in the myth and the behavior they did to give birth to their descendants. As we know, for reproduction, we would need males and females to accomplish the task. In Hesiod's Theogony, we would observe many examples of female individuals' reproducing by themselves. These differences from the norm showed an unparalleled relationship between the Theogony and real-life back in Greece. Hesiod had used this method to distinguish between ordinary human kinds and the deities. Note that the content inside the Theogony does not equal support towards feminists in today's content. Hesiod had assigned the female deities various roles in the story. Hera was the example of resistance against his husband but, in the end, actually helped him to enforce his reign. Hera's asexual reproduction is where various expressions converge. The main reason behind her anger was the child Athena, who was born from Zeus's head. (Theogony, 881 - 900) The situation was interesting as we know Athena was also asexually reproduced by Zeus. Zeus's wife believed her husband cheated on her and decided to use the same method, parthenogenetic, to express her rage. Before Hera had asexually reproduced Hephaestus, she had already reproduced several children for Zeus, namely Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia. (Theogony, 920 - 925)Further, the weight given to the children inside the literature was noticeable. The first generation, or the normal descendants born with sexual intercourse between the couple, had got nearly no descriptions inside the Theogony. In contrast, we have Hephaestus, who was widely praised belong the deities for his power of crafting and smithing.One nuance of the identity of Hephaestus in the Iliad and Theogony is that Homer had acknowledged Hephaestus as the child of Zeus and Hera. In comparison, Hesiod would counter that argument and state that Hephaestus was the child of Hera herself. Another difference would be the characteristics of the deity in the two different sources. Homer had depicted Hephaestus as the one who hated Hera regarding his disability and low status among the deities. On the other hand, Hesiod had covered the negative characteristics of Hephaestus, further changing his body from a monster to a disabled man. The difference concluded that Hephaestus was not a monster, and neither he nor his mother, Hera, suffered the same fate as Tiamat and her descendants. (Theogony, 926 - 960)The resistance from Hera helped Zeus to enforce his reign as Hera's child, Hephaestus's ability. As we mentioned before, the gods praised the ability of crafts and smithing. Thus, Zeus had employed Hephaestus's ability for his purpose. Thus, Hephaestus had become an ally with Zeus, and he had created the Pandora and the crown she wore.
We had also discussed this in the class, and there were some examples we could examine. The first one would be the Babylonian Enuma Elis, the genesis in the Babylonian culture. In the myth, we have Apsu and Tiamat, "merged" together and stored their offspring inside the mother's body. Though the children later had caused many troubles and tagedies in the family, Tiamat still rejected to kill them to avoid the future fate. Ea, one of their grandchildren, had destined to kill his grandfather, Apsu, and eventually did kill him. Thus, the other children decided avenge for Aspu's death, and the mother Tiamat had asexually reproduce some monsters to help the children to finish their task. In the end, Marduk, one of her children, fighted with her for this avenge and won the battle. He then dissected her body into two parts, which were the heaven and Earth according to the myth. The second one would be the Kumarbi. The myth is a Hittite myth that also illustrated the castration of Ouranos. The piece was especially important in multiple aspects. The story in the myth was very valuable, as it was another literature from the Hittite culture. Also, the content was valuable as it depicted a literature that was lost. Though the literature was written in Hittite language, the names inside the literature has very little even none connections to the culture. Some of the deities inside the literature had connections with the Babylonian culture, and most of the others had connections with the Hurrian culture. With the deities that the myth included in mind, we would conclude that the myth was originally from the group of people who lived in the modern Turkey, around the north of Mesopotamia, and spoke a completely different language compared with the Hittites. Thus, the author concluded that the people spoke this language had merged with the Hittites, which resulted in a assimilation of their culture and the Hittite culture. The deities in the original group of people were included in the Hittite culture. Hence, the deities were recorded. Most of the original piece were lost as time passed. However, there were still three parts that the Hurrian deities were included in the piece. The saga appreas to be in three parts: The Struggle for the Kingship of Heaven, The Song of Ullikummi and Kumarbi and the Hero of the Flood. All of the three sections of the myth were important, but I would be mainly discussing the The Song of Ullikummi , as it was heavily related to the birth of Zeus. To understand the whole situation, we would need some background knowledges of the section. The previous section The Struggle for the Kingship of Heaven would served as the introduction to the myth for us. The start of the myth was already very much similar to the Hesiod's Theogony, as we have the first three generation of gods. Alalu, Anu his son, and Kumarbi the son of Anu. The replacement of thrones was similar to what happened in the Greek myth, where the father was overthrown by his son. Anu, when overthrown by his son Kumarbi, tried to escape to heaven, but was caught by his son and bite his father trying to castrate him. By the same token, the son from Hittite myth, Kumarbi did successfully castrate his father while Kronos also did. Later, Kumarbi with anger had pregnanted Earth with seeds he spit. Then, Kumarbi, worried about his children overthrown him like what he had did to his father, told Earth to bring the children to him so that he could eat them up. One of the child, a stone, (or Zeus in Greek), was blessed by the god of wisdom, Ea before birth. In the end, the child was born by Earth. Now we can take a look at the major part that we should dig into, The Song of Ullikummi.A little synopsis of the section in the myth was the birth of the Hittite version of Zeus birth. Kumarbi, in the story was the father of all deities, cursed the storm god. The child Stone, was taken away from the goddess of childbirth, and Kumarbi gave the Stone the name Ullikummi. Later, the child Stone grows with incredible speed, and alas even as high as heaven according to the myth. The speed of the child's growth was astonishing, and worrisome. The gods, namely the Storm-god and his sister Istar worried that the child may challenge them in the later stage (sounds familar isn't it?). However, both of them and the rest of the gods were all unable to stop the growth of the stone. Alas, the gods went to find Ea, the god of Wisdom, for help. In the end, Ea's method did not work, and the child Stone had fought with the Storm-god and defeated him, claimed himself as the king of the Gods. After reading the synopsis, exclude some nuances in the story, we would find that the "Hittite" myth was extremely similar to the Greek myth. Most of which, after you replace the name of the Gods, we would find the plot almost the same. Thus, the author concluded that we could address some scholarly comparison between the Hesiod's Theogony and the Hittite myth The Song of Ullikummi. Another myth that had been often brought up was Apollodorus' Bibliotheke and Nonnos' Dionysiaka."Thus the fight of Kumarbi with Anu and Anu's castration, as a result of which Earth is brought to be of the three fearful gods, resonated with the Hesiod's Theogony with the castration of Ouranos by his son Kronos, as a result of which the fertilised Earth (Gaia) produced Erinyes, Giants, and Melian Nymphs."
Content source: Link towards the website.
Barnett, R. D. “The Epic of Kumarbi and the Theogony of Hesiod.”
The Journal of Hellenic Studies 65 (1945): 100–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/626341.
Park, Arum. “Parthenogenesis in Hesiod's Theogony.”
Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 3, no. 2 (2014): 261-83. https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.3.2.0261.
Solomon, Jon. "Mythology of Greece and Rome Workbook Spring 2022 Twenty-fourth Edition"
Department of Classics, University of Illinois
Image source: link to the twitter account of the author