Stephen P. Kershaw wrote his Ph.D. under Richard Buxton, arguably the leading scholar on Greek myths in the world. He has taught Classics in numerous establishments, including Oxford University Department for Continuing Education and Warwick University. He runs the European Studies Classical Tour for Rhodes College and the University of the South.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE

GREEK MYTHS

STEPHEN P. KERSHAW

ROBINSON
London

Constable & Robinson Ltd

55–56 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2007

Copyright © Stephen P. Kershaw 2007

The right of Stephen P. Kershaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Excerpts throughout totalling about 2,175 words from The Odyssey of Homer, translated and with an introduction by Richmond Lattimore, copyright © 1965, 1967 by Richmond Lattimore. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84529-512-7

eISBN: 978-1-47210-754-1

Printed and bound in the EU

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To my three Graces: Lal of the beautiful tresses,
lovely-ankled Dorothy, and keen-scenting Hebe

LIST OF MAPS

1 The World of the Greek Myths

2 The Voyage of the Argo

3 Theseus on the Road to Athens

4 City Plan of Atlantis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people are deserving of my warmest gratitude: Phil and Dorothy Kershaw, Cyril Kershaw, Alan Guy, Philip Highley, Frank Haigh, John Betts, Richard Buxton, Andy Thompson, Rob Butler and Alyn Shipton. Thanks also to Swan Hellenic Cruises; my numerous colleagues at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, Warwick University, European Studies and TCU; and Sukie Christiansen. None of the people mentioned here are in any way responsible for the shortcomings of this volume. Any omissions are my responsibility.

Particular thanks are due to Becky Hardie, Leo Hollis, Claudia Dyer and Morag Lyall at Constable and Robinson, without whose help and expertise I would never have been able to bring this project to fruition. Libations are due to Tykhe, Kairos and Nemesis. Underpinning everything has been the loyal late-night companionship of my spaniel Hebe, and the invaluable support and understanding of my wife Lal.

INTRODUCTION

Greece: a land of mythical dimensions. Where the spirit of hospitality welcomes you as a modern god. And the siren song draws you into its deep, blue waters. Where a gentle breeze through ancient ruins seems to whisper your name. And a dance till dawn can take on Dionysian proportions. In Greece, the myths are still very much alive. And in amongst them sits your own . . . patiently waiting for you to live. Live your myth in Greece. Ask your travel agent.¹

Living in the twenty-first century we are constantly surrounded by the resonances of Greek mythology, and, though we seldom pause to reflect on it, we talk the language of myth all the time. We inhabit a chaotic world (Khaos was the primal void) where Trojan horses threaten our computers and Ajax is a cleaning product and a Dutch football team. Politicians dismiss their opponents’ opinions as ‘myths’ (i.e. lies), while at the same time television archaeologists try to unearth ‘the truth behind the myth’ of Atlantis. Centaurs grace the pages of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; football managers say their star strikers have the Midas touch; a man can be an Adonis, a woman a siren or a harpy; and we all have our Achilles heel. Others are nymphomaniacs, use aphrodisiacs and read erotic literature – all activities with Greek mythological semantic roots. Meanwhile we undertake Herculean tasks, wrestle with our Oedipus complexes, make personal odysseys, and should certainly beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

There is nothing new in our fascination with the myths: no self-respecting Renaissance palazzo was complete without an array of mythological paintings, perhaps with underlying meanings referring to the politics of the day; opera has constantly drawn on the corpus of Greek myths, from Monteverdi’s Orfeo through to Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and beyond; dance has done the same, be it classical ballet or more contemporary pieces such as Martha Graham’s Andromache’s Lament. Film thrives on a Greek background, drawing directly on such myths as Jason (Jason and the Argonauts, directed by Don Chaffey, 1963) and the Trojan War (Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, 2004, where the abduction of Helen becomes an excuse for an attack on an eastern state by a ‘Greek superpower’ and has been seen as analogous to the recent American-led invasion of Iraq, which some commentators think has opened a Pandora’s box in the Middle East), or operating more allusively as in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite (1995), which deals with the power of love and parodies Greek tragedy at the same time. Rock, jazz and other contemporary music styles draw on the myths too, from Led Zeppelin’s sublime ‘Achilles’ Last Stand’ to Virgin Steele’s ridiculous ‘symphonic metal’ The House of Atreus, from Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band’s Orpheus Ascending to the tumbling chords of the Anglo-Scandinavian jazz trio Stekpanna’s ‘Ikaros’. Ian Hamilton Finlay created a stunning garden at Little Sparta, Joe Tilson produced a series of Nine Muses at the most recent Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. There is no escape from Greek mythology.

This book provides an overview of a large amount of the raw material of Greek mythology, and makes constant reference to the original source material, as the myths speak most effectively when they speak directly. Very often there are several versions of the same basic story, told for different reasons by different authors at different times and places, and many of these variants will be highlighted. The book will also attempt to explore some of the resonance and relevance of the tales of Greece, from ancient Greek times to the twenty-first century.

A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths falls into three key areas:

1.  In the first section, an exploration of myth and mythology: is it possible to define what Greek myths are? Can they be distinguished from other types of traditional tales, and is there a useful working definition?

2.  In the second section we will make a journey through some of the main tales of Greek mythology. There is no pretence that this is a comprehensive survey of all the myths and their variants in all media. That would be a titanic task, but what the book tries to do is to lead the reader through many of these vibrant stories, on a loosely ‘chronological’ basis wherever this is possible or meaningful, from the origins of the gods through to the homecomings of the Trojan heroes. Familiar narratives such as those of Jason and the Argonauts, the Trojan War, and Odysseus will all be encountered, along with quite a few less familiar characters and motifs. In addition, the book often tries to explain interesting issues arising from the narratives, and discusses the myths and their wider relevance. Did the Trojan War really happen? What about Atlantis? How has mythical material been used or abused in more modern times? Are we just another part of the Greek tradition?

3.  In the third section, a brief analysis of various scholarly (and less scholarly) interpretations of Greek myth from antiquity to the present. Scholars have agonized about the origins and meanings of myths for millennia, so the book presents a survey of some of the main intellectual approaches to myth from Euhemeros to Freud and beyond.

A Note on Names, Spellings and Dates

The question of how Greek names are transliterated into English is always a difficult problem, and has to be a personal decision. Until quite recently the convention was to Latinize Greek names and to Anglicize them on that basis. The Greek language does not have the letter ‘c’ and Latin does not have the letter ‘k’, although the letter ‘c’ is pronounced hard like ‘k’. For instance, Kekrops is Latinized to Cecrops. The basic masculine form in Greek often ends in ‘–os’ (Latin ‘–us’), the feminine in ‘–e’ (Latin ‘–a’) and the neuter in ‘–on’ (Latin ‘–um’). For example, Menelaos becomes Menelaus. Below are some of the most important differences:

Sometimes there is greater divergence: Klytaimnestra becomes Clytemnestra and Euandros becomes Evander, but often names are changed into their Roman (not always exact) equivalents, so that Odysseus becomes Ulysses, Hera becomes Juno, and Zeus becomes Jupiter. As this is a guide to Greek mythology, the approach favoured is to make straightforward transliterations in almost all cases, but to indicate where the Greek differs appreciably from what might be more familiar. So we will meet Akhilleus, Oidipous and Priamos rather than Achilles, Oedipus and Priam, but the ‘Key Characters’ lists will indicate the important variants.

All dates are BCE unless it is obvious or otherwise specified.

SECTION 1

MYTHS AND MYTHOLOGY

A Greek living in the fifth century would not have needed a book like this. Their mythology was like the air they breathed, and it is only relatively late that we find handbooks of Greek mythology. The most important collection, which dates from the first century CE, is The Library by Apollodoros. This is an extensive work, and although the end is missing, we do have an abridged Epitome, which gives us a complete overview. What Apollodoros chose to include or omit has been extremely important in defining what we now think of as Greek myth ology. He takes us from the creation of the gods down to the Odyssey and its sequels, and within those parameters the Trojan War is really the central event. Much of the mythical material heads towards it, with the climax occurring in Homer’s Iliad, before the heroes make their way home. Most of the major texts are readily available in good English translations:

•   Homer (eighth century): purported author of the Iliad (an episode during the Trojan War) and the Odyssey (Odysseus’ homecoming after it), although the poems were the products of a long oral tradition before they were committed to writing.

•   Hesiod (c.700): wrote the Theogony, dealing with the origins of the gods, the Works and Days and the fragmentary Catalogue of Women, which also contain important mythical material.

•   The Homeric Hymns (seventh/sixth centuries): epic-style poems honouring some of the major Greek deities which include major stories from their mythologies.

•   Pindar (518–438): a lyric poet whose work is replete with mythological allusions.

•   Herodotos (mid-fifth century): the ‘Father of History’. A widely travelled man who recorded a great many mythological tales despite his occasional scepticism.

•   Aiskhylos (Aeschylus, 525–456), Sophokles (Sophocles, 496–406) and Euripides (485–406): the ‘Big Three’ Athenian tragic dramatists, who drew heavily on the mythical tradition, and often reworked it.

•   Aristophanes (c.445–385): an Athenian comic playwright who often parodied or subverted mythological stories in his plays.

•   Plato (c.427–347): an Athenian philosopher who used ‘myths’ to illustrate his ideas, and who gave us the Atlantis story.

•   Kallimakhos (third century): a learned scholar-poet working out of Alexandria in Egypt, who composed highly polished poems crammed with abstruse mythological allusions, including six Hymns to major deities.

•   Apollonios Rhodios (third century): the librarian at Alexandria, whose Argonautika forms the definitive version of the Jason and the Golden Fleece story.

•   Theokritos (third century): a Hellenistic poet whose work includes important poems on themes from the Argonautika and the life of Herakles (Hercules).

•   Virgil (70–19): a Roman epic poet whose Aeneid tells the tale of the Trojan hero Aineias (Aeneas) and his journey from Troy to Italy.

•   Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE): a Roman poet whose Metamorphoses covers a vast swathe of the Greek tradition. His tales of supernatural transformation became extremely popular in the Renaissance. He is arguably the most influential author about myth in Western literature.

•   Plutarch (50–120 CE): a Greek biographer who wrote a series of ‘Parallel Lives’ of famous Greeks and Romans, including the Athenian hero Theseus.

•   Pausanias (mid-second century CE): a Greek travel writer who recorded a large amount of mythical material garnered from the temples and sites that he visited.

In addition to these authors is a vast number of less well-known ones, some of whose work is fragmentary or lost, as well as scholars who wrote commentaries and notes (scholia) on the major works, which frequently give variant versions of the tales and preserve interesting snippets of information, often from works that no longer survive. Inscriptions and papyrus fragments also form an important part of the jigsaw.

Art has its place in the tradition too. Vase painting provides an enormous resource of images of stories that might otherwise remain unknown, or depicts alternative versions of those that do survive; sculpture often illustrates mythical scenes, either in an architectural context or in free-standing pieces; and we have descriptions of famous paintings that no longer exist, but which once provided vivid renderings of many mythological scenes.

The ancient Greeks were surrounded by their mythical heritage all the time. These tales were a vital part of how they defined who they were.

Myths and Traditional Tales

These days the words ‘myth’ and ‘mythology’ are used with a widespread range of meanings that vary according to context. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, defines myth as ‘a purely fictitious narrative’.

‘Myth’ is regularly used to denote a widely held mis -conception, such as the idea that lemmings all jump off cliffs into the sea; it is a ‘myth’ that they do this, and Disney created it. ‘Wikipedia Theory’, referring to Wikipedia the online encyclopedia that can be edited by its users, states that myths are born when one ‘Wikipedian’ creates a lie/article, another adds more untruth to it, others still repeat the process, and the original lie/article becomes a self-replicating entity that breaks out of Wikipedia into the world at large.

But Greek myth is about far more than falsehood. The stories may be false, factually suspect, or not 100 per cent true in the form they are told, but this does not diminish their power, richness and relevance. They can have enormous social significance, and be used to embody the values of entire societies: as one scholar has argued, ‘myth is “true” for those who use it’,¹ and as far as most ancient Greeks were concerned, myths were far more than silly children’s stories, even though some philosophers thought that was all they were. Xenophanes observed that man creates gods in his own image, as do donkeys:

Yet mortal men imagine gods are born
and dress like them, are shaped like them, and
have their speech.²

To modern people the word ‘myth’ can be somewhat ambivalent: when politicians denounce an opinion as ‘myth’ they are usually rejecting it as wrong, possibly dangerous; but ‘myth’ can also have a nostalgic overtone of important realities concealed in the recesses of the past. Myth is frequently defined in terms of what is not myth: it is not reality (it is fiction); and it is not rational (it is absurd).

In essence Greek myths are traditional tales relevant to society, they are ‘good to think with’, and they embody a great deal of the way in which the Greeks understood their world. They were not regarded as revealed scriptures, let alone the truth about the gods, but they did help to define human beings’ relationship with the gods. And one vital concept here is anthropomorphism: Greek gods took the form of men and women. This means that they often behave in a way that we associate more with humans than with gods: they fight, argue, sulk, get drunk and commit adultery, which means, of course, that it is easy to tell stories about them, and the personalities of the gods and heroes of Greek mythology are one of the features that make the tales so engaging.

The English word ‘myth’ goes back to the Greek word mythos – a tale, or something you say. It has a broad frame of reference ranging from a statement, to a story, the plot of a play, a conversation, and such like. Its meaning has also shifted over the centuries. For instance, at the time of Homer in the eighth century a mythos was not necessarily something untrue. In the Iliad, Hektor (Hector) asks a servant where his wife Andromakhe (Andromache) is:

Then in turn the hard-working housekeeper gave him an answer [mythos]:

‘Hektor, since you have urged me to tell you [mytheisthai] the truth . . .’³

The woman gives Hektor good information, and her answer is her mythos. Similarly when Akhilleus (Achilles) rejects a request to return to the fighting at Troy, the reaction of the envoys is illuminating:

So he spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence in amazement at his words [mythos].⁴

Homer’s heroes are expected to be adept with words, as well as formidable on the battlefield.

A slightly different nuance of mythos appears in the fifth-century historian Thukydides, who admits that his work might not appeal to what he calls to mythodes (‘the mythos-quality’), but defends it as a serious historical narrative, not just a story or a tale. This was a major shift, and since that time the word has always been applicable to the corpus of Greek myths, although they are still told and enjoyed in spite of the fact that they are ‘neither true nor probable’, as one anonymous Latin writer put it.

The word ‘mythology’ in English can also muddy the waters: it can mean either the study of myths, or their content, or a particular set of myths. Furthermore, this material can be presented as texts, be transmitted orally, dramatized, represented in art, and constantly reinterpreted. One fact that can make Greek mythology somewhat confusing is that it comprises all the representations of myths ever produced. The following chapters will attempt to illustrate the richness and variety of this tradition.

We can perhaps gain a firmer understanding of the issue if we can ascertain who told myths, when, where, why and to whom, and luckily Greek literature has lots of references to the use of myths. They were often transmitted orally, frequently by women working at the loom:

Is it the man

Whose adventures we are told at weaving-time,

The brave fighter Iolaos

Who went with Herakles to his labours,

And stayed with him to the bitter end?

[ . . . ]

Many a song and story I have heard

Of sons that mortal women bore to gods,

And not one tells of happiness.⁵

In Plato’s Republic Sokrates speaks of the influence of myths told by mothers and wet nurses:

‘These [stories] are of two kinds, true stories and fiction.⁶ Our education must use both and start with fiction.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘But you know that we begin by telling children stories. These are, in general, fiction, though they contain some truth. And we tell children stories before we start them on physical training.’[ . . . ]

‘Shall we therefore readily allow our children to listen to any stories made up by anyone, and to form opinions that are for the most part the opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up?’

‘We certainly shall not.’

‘Then it seems that our first business is to supervise the production of stories, and choose only those we think suitable, and reject the rest. We shall persuade mothers and nurses to tell our chosen stories to their children, and by means of them to mould their minds and characters which are more important than their bodies. The greater part of the stories current today we shall have to reject.’

‘Which are you thinking of?’

‘We can take some of the major legends as typical. For all, whether major or minor, should be cast in the same mould, and have the same effect. Do you agree?’

‘Yes: but I’m not sure which you refer to as major.’

‘The stories in Homer and Hesiod and the poets. For it is the poets who have always made up fictions and stories to tell to men.’⁷

The most recent scholarly analyses emphasize that myths are traditional tales; and one definition that is widely approved of is that of Walter Burkert who suggests that ‘Myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance.’⁸ However, the traditional nature of Greek myths is by no means a straightforward issue, since a great many tales were recorded relatively late, which makes it difficult to pinpoint their dates of origin. And answering the question, ‘Where do myths come from?’ is fraught with difficulty. Homer, for instance, refers to the Theban stories, the Argonauts, and the Labours of Herakles, which must, therefore, pre-date the eighth century, but we can go further back than this. The approach known as ‘comparative mythology’⁹ suggests that Greek and ancient Hindu poetry not only shared similar formulaic phrases, but also had tales with closely corresponding motifs: Vedic Indra’s fight against the demon Visvarupa, who had hidden his cows in a cave, invites comparison with Herakles’ encounter with Kakos,¹⁰ who had done the same to his cows and bulls. Some mythical themes seem to go back to time immemorial.

On the other hand, myth can be untraditional. In the Odyssey Penelope’s suitors want to hear the newest song, and in fact many mythoi are not very old: for instance, the stories of the nostoi (homecomings) of the heroes from Troy¹¹ must date from after the Greek colonization of southern Italy in the eighth century. The originality of these mythoi must have been recognized at their premiere performances, even if they subsequently became an established part of the traditional body of myths. And of course, people can literally become ‘legends in their own lifetime’. Much mythology is improvised: it is free-flowing, adaptable and adept at responding to new times and new experiences, and so myths can be contemporary inventions as well as ancient tales.

These days the Greek myths are normally read, but in Homer’s day the mythoi were recited in front of an audience by the aoidos (‘bard’), who, as a public performer, had to take his audience’s tastes into account. Telling an unpopular new myth, or producing an unacceptable version of an old one, could result in offence and/or rejection, as happened in the case with Apollonios Rhodios’ first version of the Argonauts tale.¹² However, as time went by the acceptance of myth changed, and so did the status of the poets, who grew much more aware of their own creativity: the Roman Virgil deliberately asserts his own originality when he starts his Aeneid with the words ‘I sing of arms and the man’;¹³ Homer had appealed to the Muses for his inspiration: ‘Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Akhilleus . . .’¹⁴

The development of literacy also changed the mythical environment, since intellectuals could now fix and analyse the myths, and philosophers and historians could attack them. When Pausanias recorded mythical stories at the places he visited in the second century CE, many of them were no longer relevant to the community, and yet their popularity lasted well into the Roman Empire: Ovid’s Metamorphoses are one of the main sources of transmission for a great many Greek myths. It appears that myth, therefore, meant different things to the Greeks at different stages of their history.

It is often debated whether we can distinguish Greek myth from other types of popular tales, such as legends or fairy-tales. This particular distinction seems to go back to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early nineteenth century, since no European language had really differentiated them previously. Sometimes it is easier to separate the two as Terry Wogan discovered while commentating on the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest: ‘It says here: “Peppino is a myth in the world of Italian song.” He looks real enough to me. Perhaps they meant a “legend”.’ At other times, however, the choice is not so clear-cut, although many cultures have the separate words ‘myth’, ‘legend’ and ‘folk-tale’.

Folk-tales are generally told in private and in prose. They can also be set in any time and any place. Fairy-tales often commence ‘once upon a time’ – they never specify where or when – and they often end ‘and they lived happily ever after’, a clear indication that the story is fiction. In addition, they often fail to give specific names to their characters, preferring generic or typical names like Jack, the Giant, or Little Red Riding Hood. Fairies, ogres and deities may appear, but the tales usually describe the adventures of animals or humans. The Greek myths are very different: the characters, especially the hero, are highly specific, and their genealogies are painstakingly outlined; they are attached to a particular region (which may vary according to where the myth is being told); and they are connected with families, tribes, cities, places, rituals, festivals, gods and heroes. As Burkert observes,¹⁵ the story about Helen being carried off and brought back again is just a general type of story – there are many like it the world over – but because it contains Agamemnon of Mycenae, Menelaos of Sparta and Greeks fighting Trojans at Ilion, it becomes a myth through which fifth-century Greeks asserted their identity in relation to the Barbarians. Delete the reference and the myth turns into a folk-tale. Folk-tales seem to exist in isolation, while the Greek myths dovetail with other stories involving the same heroes. Moreover, although they frequently have moralistic overtones, fairy-tales are told to entertain, not to explain the world.

The English word ‘legend’ comes from the Latin legenda, ‘things to be read’; ‘myth’ comes from the Greek mythos, ‘something spoken’. Legends are more often secular than sacred, and their principal characters are human. They tell of migrations, wars, victories, deeds of great heroes, the succession in ruling dynasties, and they also include local tales of buried treasure, ghosts, fairies and saints. Yet, although they claim to be true, these legends do not normally claim to be divinely inspired; and unlike at Rome, where the foundation story of Romulus and Remus was apparently handed down in prose, for centuries Greek myths were the territory of the poets. So legends can again be distinguished from myths to some extent.

There are other types of story that the Greeks classified as mythoi. Aristophanes’ Wasps is about the conflict between an old man, Prokleon, and his trendy son Antikleon, and it contains a scene in which Antikleon dresses his father up in fashionable clothes and tries to educate him in the etiquette of a sophisticated dinner party. He then asks Prokleon if he knows how to tell elevated stories in the company of learned and clever men, and his father says of course he can:

ANTIKLEON: What will you tell them?

PROKLEON: Oh, I know lots. There’s the one about that Vampire that farted when she got caught; or I could tell them what Kardopion did to his mother –

ANTIKLEON: No, not that mythical stuff [mythoi]: something from real life – the kind of thing people usually talk about. Give it a domestic touch.

PROKLEON: Domestic, eh? Well, how about this? Once upon a time there was a cat and it met a mouse, and –

ANTIKLEON: My dear fellow, where were you brought up?¹⁶

Prokleon’s examples humorously show how he has completely failed to grasp what Antikleon meant. The Vampire and Kardopion really belong to the category of folklore, which can come in various guises. One type of folk-tale is what the Greeks called the ainos or ‘moral fable’. A collection of these fables was made in the early Hellenistic period by Demetrios of Phaleron and attributed to Aisopos (Aesop, sixth century) – ‘Aesop’s Fables’. One interesting aspect of the fables is that they can probably be dated as early/late by the wording of the morals that follow them. In the period prior to Alexander the Great a fable tended to be called a logos, but from the Hellenistic period onwards the word mythos was used instead: ‘This mythos shows that . . .’¹⁷

The Ugly Slave Girl and Aphrodite

A master was in love with an ugly and ill-natured slave girl. With the money that he gave her, she adorned herself with sparkling ornaments and rivalled her own mistress. She made continual sacrifices to Aphrodite, goddess of love, and beseeched her to make her beautiful. But Aphrodite appeared to the slave in a dream and said to her:

‘I don’t want to make you beautiful, because I am angry with this man for thinking that you already are.’

Thus, one must not become blinded by pride when one is enriched by shameful means, especially when one is of low birth and without beauty.¹⁸

Another kind of folk-tale is represented by the stories told to each other by the semi-choruses in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. These are essentially stories that draw a moral connected with the immediate situation. So the chorus of old men sing a mythos about a young man who spurned women and marriage and spent his time hunting on the mountains:

 Yes, he was truly wise, this lad,

 Loathed women through and through,

And following his example we

 Detest the creatures too.

The women then reply in kind:

I’ll tell a little tale [mythos] myself

 (I like this little game)

About a man who had no home

 And Timon was his name.

He lived among the thorns and briars,

 And never served on juries;

Some said his mother really was

 A sister of the Furies.

This Timon went away and lived

 So far from mortal ken

Not out of hate of women but

 Because of hate of men.

He loathed them for their wickedness

 Their company he abhorred

And cursed them long and loud and deep

 But women he adored.¹⁹

Another type of folk-tale is the anecdote, which generally relates to a famous historical person and ends with a clever remark. Typical of these is the story of Xerxes’ response to hearing that the bridges he had constructed across the Hellespont had been destroyed in a storm:

Xerxes was very angry [ . . . ] and gave orders that the Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes and have a pair of fetters thrown into it. I have heard before now that he also sent people to brand it with hot irons. He certainly instructed the men with the whips to utter, as they wielded them, the barbarous and presumptuous words: ‘You salt and bitter stream, your master lays this punishment upon you for injuring him, who never injured you. But Xerxes the King will cross you, with or without your permission. No man sacrifices to you, and you deserve the neglect by your acid and muddy waters.’²⁰

This bears an interesting similarity to the story of King Canute commanding the incoming tide to halt: according to Henry of Huntingdon the king staged the scene to demonstrate to his fawning courtiers that he was powerless before the forces of nature and their creator, but later generations have made him an example of regal hybris like Xerxes.

Another kind of story is the joke. Over 250 ancient Greek jokes survive in a collection known as Philogelos (the Friend of Laughter). The butts of these jokes are generic types, usually Sicilians or people from Abdera, who for some reason were considered to be stupid, or someone labelled skholiastikos, a kind of idiot academic:

Someone met a skholiastikos and said, ‘That slave you sold me has just died.’ The skholiastikos replied, ‘Funny, he never did anything like that when he was with me!’²¹

A Sidonian rhetorician was talking with his friends. One of them said it wasn’t right to slaughter sheep, because they gave us milk and wool; and the other remarked that it wasn’t right to kill cows either, because they gave us milk and ploughed the fields. At this the rhetorician replied that it wasn’t right to slaughter pigs, as they gave us liver, and sow’s udder, and kidney.²²

Towards a Definition

So tales, mythoi, are told for a number of reasons: to entertain, to instruct, to persuade, to provide examples and so on. Myths are seldom told without a motive, and although the Greek word mythos seems to encompass what we might categorize as myth, legend and folk-tale, we can certainly make some general points:

•   A Greek myth is a set of variants of the same story which exist either as texts, and/or in an oral form, and/or in art, or independently;

•   The story concerns the divine or the supernatural, or the heroic, or animals or paradigmatic humans;

•   The time-frame is usually indefinable by human chronology;

•   Each re-telling or application produces a new variant;

•   The tale is traditional;

•   Myths are relevant to society.

‘Myth’ is mercurial, but a very useful working definition is this:

A myth is a socially powerful traditional story.²³

In that sense it could be said that Greek mythology is fundamentally about human beings: what makes Greek myth mythical is not the participation of gods, talking animals or magic (although they can be present); it is the involvement of men and women who lived in the very remote past. But they were extraordinary men and women, as Aristotle wrote: ‘In the old days, only the leaders were heroes, but the rest of the folk [ . . . ] were only men.’²⁴

SECTION 2

FROM THE PRIMAL VOID TO A LOST CONTINENT: THE MAIN GREEK MYTHS

1

FROM CHAOS AND CASTRATION TO ORDER: THE BIRTH OF THE GODS

Key Characters

Khaos (Chaos)

The primordial void

Ouranos (Uranus)

The Sky, husband of Gaia (Earth); castrated by Kronos

Gaia (Gaea, or Ge)

The Earth; great mother goddess of earth and fertility; wife of Ouranos

Eros (Cupid or Amor)

Love

Kronos (Cronus)

Son of Ouranos and Gaia; overthrown by Zeus

Rheia/Rhea

Wife of Kronos

Zeus (Jupiter)

The supreme Olympian god; son of Kronos and Rheia

The Giants

Opponents of the Olympian gods

Typhoeus (Typhon/Typhaon)

Awesome hybrid monster, opponent of Zeus

The Titans

Mighty opponents of the Olympian gods

Hera (Juno)

      Wife of Zeus

Aphrodite (Venus)

Goddess of sexual love

Creation myths, which tell of the origin of the world and the gods, are essential features of the mythologies of many cultures, and the Greek tradition is definitively expounded in the writings of Hesiod (c.700), whose crucial work is an epic poem called the Theogony (‘The Origin [and Descent] of the Gods’). After a very genuine invocation to the Muses (by no means a flippant, Byronic ‘Hail, Muse, et cetera!’), Hesiod not only introduces three divine generations that go back to the creation of the world, those of Ouranos and Gaia, Kronos and Rheia, and Zeus and Hera, but also provides an interpretation of the universal order over which Zeus comes to preside.

The First Generation: Ouranos (Sky) and Gaia (Earth) and their Titanic and Monstrous Offspring

According to Hesiod, Khaos (Latinized to Chaos) came into being first of all, and did so by an unspecified, asexual process. Clearly the Greek gods were not mighty enough to create the world by themselves. The Greek word Khaos has connotations of ‘gaping’ or ‘yawning’, and seems to be some kind of gaping void or primordial abyss. After Khaos came ‘broad-bosomed’ Gaia (Earth), along with ‘misty’ Tartaros, a gloomy place located the same distance underneath the earth as the earth is from the sky – a bronze anvil would take nine days and nights to fall from heaven to earth, and nine days and nights to fall from earth to Tartaros. At this point we also see the emergence of Eros (Love), described as the ‘most beautiful of all the deathless gods’, an awesome elemental power rather than a pretty Renaissance-style putto:

                           He makes men weak

He overpowers the clever mind, and tames
The spirit in the breasts of men and gods.¹

From Khaos also came black Nyx (Night) and Erebos (a dark, infernal region rather like Tartaros), who produced Hemere (Day) and Aither (Space/Bright Air – Ether). Nyx was also the parent of sinister, negative forces like Moros (Doom), Ker (Fate), Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep) and Dreams, and, without intercourse with anyone, the Hesperides, Momos (Blame), Oizys (Distress), Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Sexual Affection), Geras (Age) and Eris (Strife).

Like Khaos, Gaia reproduced asexually and created her equal Ouranos (Sky), to ‘cover her all over, and be a resting-place, always secure, for all the blessed gods’,² and then the hills and Pontos (the Sea). Then, since Eros was now fully operative, Gaia was able to have sex with Ouranos, and various offspring ensued. Collectively they are known as the Titans, a moniker that Hesiod derives from the Greek teino (‘I strain’) because they ‘strain in insolence’,³ along with their siblings the Cyclopes (who each have one round eye in the middle of their forehead, but differ radically from the creatures that Odysseus meets, who reject the norms of society and do not respect the gods, in that they fight for order and justice on Zeus’ side in his conflict with the Titans) and the mighty and violent Hundred-handers, who each had fifty heads and a hundred arms. Together they form a group of enigmatic and potent primeval monsters.

Clearly, powerful and monstrous children like this were difficult to control. In fact Ouranos hated them. As soon as each Titan was born, he hid it in a secret place in Gaia (or in Tartaros in other traditions). Gaia became stretched and strained as a result, and responded by making grey adamant, a mythical metal harder than anything else, and forming a mighty saw-toothed sickle. She asked her sons to help her repay their father’s wickedness, and Kronos responded positively. Gaia hid him, gave him the sickle, and when Ouranos came to her longing for love,

                                       The hidden boy

Stretched forth his left hand; in his right he took

The great long jagged sickle; eagerly

He harvested his father’s genitals

And threw them off behind.⁴

The blood from the castration fell on to Gaia and inevitably impregnated her, resulting in the birth of the Erinyes (the Furies, called Alekto, Tisiphone and Megaira), the Giants and the Melian (Ash-tree) Nymphs;⁵ the consequence of the semen oozing from the severed member as it fell into the sea was the birth of Aphrodite.

Aphrodite’s name was believed to be derived from the Greek aphros (‘foam’), in which Hesiod says she grew. It touched on the island of Kythera (giving her the name Kythereia) and on Cyprus, where the goddess was born (which is why she is called Kyprogenea, ‘Cyprus-born’). She is accompanied by Eros (indeed in other traditions Eros is her son), and together they form an irresistible procreative power. As the Roman poet Lucretius puts it his work On the Nature of the Universe:

Into the breasts of one and all you instil alluring love, so that with passionate longing the [animals] reproduce their several breeds.⁶

In a beautiful yet ominous ode in his tragedy Hippolytos, Euripides tells how dangerous she can be:

How terrible is the advent of Aphrodite.

When thunder and flame fell upon Semele

And she gave birth to Bakkhos, son of Zeus,

Aphrodite laid her to bed,

A bride in the embrace of Death.

The breath of her terror is felt in every land,

And as a bee’s flight is the path of her power.⁷

Yet interestingly, especially in the midst of the violence of much of his poem, Hesiod elects to focus on the more favourable aspects of Aphrodite’s power:

Eros is her companion; fair Desire⁸

Followed her from the first, both at birth

And when she joined the company of the gods.

From the beginning, both among gods and men,

She had this honour and received this power:

Fond murmuring of girls, and smiles, and tricks,

And sweet delight, and friendliness, and charm.⁹

Once the fabric of the Earth, Sky, Sea and Mountains is firmly established, Ouranos fades from Hesiod’s narrative somewhat, but not before warning Kronos that he will be overcome by one of his own sons. Duly alerted, Kronos chooses his sister Rheia (or Rhea) to be his wife, and becomes king.

The Second Generation: Kronos and Rheia

The generation of Kronos and Rheia seems to be a transitional period: the Sun, Moon, Stars, Rivers and Winds all come into existence, as do personifications such as Themis (Divine Justice), Mnemosyne (Memory), Metis (Cunning Intelligence), Zelos (Glory), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Strength) and Bie (Violence).

Because of the prophecy that he would be dethroned by his own son, Kronos chose not to incarcerate his children in their mother’s body as his father had done, but to shut them up in his own. Accordingly Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and sometimes Poseidon were all duly swallowed at birth.

But when Rheia fell pregnant with Zeus, who is often known by the epithet Kronion or Kronides (‘Son of Kronos’), she begged her parents, Gaia and Ouranos, to find a way of hiding the birth of her son and bringing the Erinys (Fury) down on Kronos. They advised her to go to Crete and give birth to Zeus there, and it has been suggested that this aspect of Zeus’ mythology could go back to the Minoan civilization in the second millennium or even earlier, since he looks more like a primitive Mediterranean deity who embodies the processes of fertility within the earth, than the Indo-European sky god who rejuvenates them with life-bringing rain. If this is so, Hesiod seems to combine both aspects, since it is undoubtedly the sky god who defeats Kronos.

The place where Zeus was born and raised varies in different traditions – Hesiod calls it Lyktos, but sometimes it is a cave on Mount Dikte, or on Mount Ida, or some conflation of these: Apollodoros, for instance, names the mountain Dikte and calls one of Zeus’ nurses Ida. Rheia entrusted her child to the daimones (spirits) called the Kouretes¹⁰ and to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, who nourished him with the milk of Amaltheia, who, according to Kallimakhos, was not a nymph but a terrifying she-goat descended from Helios (the Sun). Amaltheia hung Zeus in a cradle on a tree to prevent his father finding him in heaven, or on earth or in the sea,¹¹ while the Kouretes performed noisy dances, clashing their spears on their shields to prevent Kronos hearing his cries. Rheia wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Kronos to swallow, which he did, thinking it was his newborn child.

So Zeus reached manhood, and as Kronos had overthrown his father Ouranos, so Zeus took over from Kronos. It is remarkable how these myths recycle their own motifs: both Zeus and Kronos violently depose their fathers, using a paternal atrocity as their grounds for doing so.

Ultimately Gaia forced Kronos to vomit up Zeus’ brothers and sisters in reverse order, stone first. Technically this made Zeus the eldest child, since they had now all been born after him. Apollodoros tells us that Kronos was overpowered when Metis give him a drug, and an Orphic source claims that, on Nyx’s suggestion, Kronos was drugged with honey, tied up, and castrated with the same sickle that he had used on Ouranos. According to Plutarch, Kronos sleeps for ever on a remote holy island near Britain;¹² the stone that Kronos vomited up became a cult object at Delphi.

With Kronos successfully vanquished, Zeus had to confront a new challenge in the form of a ten-year war against Kronos’ siblings the Titans – the so-called ‘Titanomachy’. Gaia prophesied that Zeus could not win this war without recruiting those who had been hurled down to Tartaros, so he slew their female jailer Kampe and released them, unleashing a literally titanic conflict:

The boundless sea roared terribly around,

The great earth rumbled, and broad heaven groaned,

shaken; and tall Olympos was disturbed

down to its roots, when the immortals charged.

The heavy quaking from their footsteps reached

Down to dark Tartaros, and piercing sounds

Of awful battle, and their mighty shafts.

They hurled their wounding missiles, and the voice

Of both sides, shouting, reached the starry sky,

And when they met, their ALALE!¹³ was great.¹⁴

The Cyclopes furnished Zeus with a thunderbolt,¹⁵ to which Hades added a helmet and Poseidon a trident, and Zeus won the day, imprisoned the Titans in Tartaros, and installed the Hundred-handers as their guards.

Vanquished though they were, the Titans left a considerable legacy in terms of their offspring, which included: major rivers; personifications such as Persuasion, Chance, Cunning, Intelligence, Victory, Power and Force; thousands of nymphs with shapely ankles; the Dawn, the Sun and the Moon; Atlas and Prometheus; the Centaur Kheiron (Chiron); the winds and the stars; Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea; Iris, the divine messenger and goddess of the rainbow, and the Harpies; the Gorgons and the semi beautiful-girl, semi raw-flesh-eating snake Ekhinda; and the Nereids.

The victory over the Titans heralded the establishment of the true world order. Zeus married Metis (Cunning Intelligence) and became King of the Gods, and various spheres of influence were allocated by drawing lots: Zeus received the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades became overlord of the Underworld. As Poseidon eloquently puts it in Homer’s Iliad:

All was divided among us three ways, each given his domain. I when the lots were shaken drew the grey sea to live in forever; Hades drew the lot of the mists and the darkness, and Zeus was allotted the wide sky, in the cloud and the bright air. But earth and high Olympos are common to all three.¹⁶

The Greek Zeus is, in origin, the Indo-European sky god Dyaus. He has interesting connections. The Vedic sky god Dyaus derives his name from the Sanskrit root diut, ‘to beam’, and diu, ‘sky’ and ‘day’; Zeus pater, ‘father Zeus’, comes from the same Indo-European root; the Nordic sky god Tiw, who gives his name to Tuesday, has the same derivation; and so does the Latin Jupiter, who has an older form Diespiter – the same root gives the Latin words deus, ‘god’ and dies, ‘day’. But Zeus is more than just a sky god: he is the head of the gods who live on Mount Olympos (the ‘Olympian Gods’), and his powers are nicely detailed in a fragment of Aiskhylos (Aeschylus):

Zeus is the air, Zeus earth, and Zeus the sky,

Zeus everything, and all that’s more than these.¹⁷

Zeus was also the protector of the household, and could strike men down or raise them up at will:

Through Zeus each man is famous or unknown,

Talked-of or left obscure, through his great will.

With ease he strengthens any man; with ease

He makes the strong man humble and with ease

He levels mountains and exalts the plain,

Withers the proud and makes the crooked straight

With ease, the Thunderer whose home is high.¹⁸

The focus of Hesiod’s Theogony is the gods. It has nothing to say about the origin of humanity, but according to his Works and Days the first human beings were created by the Titans and lived during the reign of Kronos.

The Third Generation: Zeus and the Olympians

Zeus now had permanent control of the universe, but his authority did not remain unchallenged.

Apollodoros tells us that despite their marriage Metis turned into many shapes to avoid Zeus’ advances. Zeus got her pregnant with Athena even so, but it was prophesied that after giving birth to her, Metis would then bear a son who would supplant Zeus as King of Heaven. To forestall this disastrous outcome Zeus swallowed Metis, so that she could ‘counsel him in both good and evil plans’. He regularly carried the epithet Metieta, ‘the Counsellor’, and by ingesting his spouse he assumed the responsibility for giving birth to Athena, the highly intelligent grey-eyed goddess. When the gestation period was complete, in an incident that was very popular with vase painters and which adorned the east pediment of the Parthenon at Athens, Hephaistos¹⁹ split Zeus’ head open with an axe and Athena sprang forth fully armed. His head-born daughter posed no menace to Zeus, and the son who might have superseded him was never conceived.

Zeus still needed to overcome further threats, though, principally from Gaia and her progeny. She incited her children, the Giants, into a conflict against the Olympians known as the Gigantomachy. The conflict was another literary favourite, and a very common subject for vase paintings and temple sculptures ranging from the sixth-century Siphnian Treasury at Delphi to the Hellenistic Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon. Some sources have the Giants born in Phlegrai, others in Pallene,²⁰ and the venue for the conflict also varies, but all agree on their matchless bulk and invincible might. They had long hair cascading from their heads and chins, and the scales of dragons for feet, and they assaulted the sky by hurling rocks and blazing oaks at it. The gods had an oracle that they could only vanquish the Giants with the aid of a mortal, so they recruited Herakles.

The Gigantomachy was a conflict that reflected its name. Herakles drew first blood by shooting Alkyoneus with an arrow, but as the giant was immortal in the land of his birth, and recovered when he fell to the ground, Herakles had to drag him out of Pallene to kill him; Porphyrion, the King of the Giants, attempted to rape Hera, so Zeus blasted him with a thunderbolt and Herakles (or Apollo) shot him dead; Apollo and Herakles teamed up to shoot Ephialtes in each eye; Dionysos accounted for Eurytos with his thyrsos; Hekate slew Klytios with her torches; Hephaistos slaughtered Mimas with missiles of red-hot metal;²¹ Athena despatched Enkelados by hurling the island of Sicily on to him, and she flayed Pallas and used his skin as body armour; Poseidon chased Polybotes through the sea to Kos, where he broke off a piece of the island and threw it on him; Hermes donned the helmet of Hades, thereby rendering himself invisible, and slew Hippolytos; Artemis saw off Gration; the Fates wielded brazen clubs and battered Agrios and Thoas to death; Zeus destroyed the rest with thunderbolts and Herakles gave them the coup de grâce with arrows as they lay dying.

Gaia’s quest for revenge did not stop with the Gigantomachy. She had a child named Typhoeus (or Typhon or Typhaon, according to tradition), whose paternity is given as Tartaros or Kronos, and whose tale is told, with variants, by a number of ancient sources. He was born in Cilicia (the southern coast of modern Turkey), and was the ultimate monstrosity, a ghastly man/beast hybrid, human from the thighs up, but so massive that he towered over the mountains and his head often scraped the stars. One of his hands could touch the west while the other touched the east:

                                       On his shoulders grew

A hundred snaky heads, strange dragon heads

With black tongues darting out. His eyes flashed fire

Beneath the brows upon those heads, and fire

Blazed out from every head when he looked round.

Astounding voices came from those weird heads,

all kinds of voices.²²

From the thighs down he had huge coils of vipers, which hissed grotesquely; his body was winged or feathered; and dishevelled hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks.

Hissing, shouting and spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth, Typhoeus assaulted heaven with flaming rocks. In the Theogony Zeus has a relatively easy time of it: the shock and awe of his thunderbolts are sufficient to hurl Typhoeus down to Tartaros, where he becomes responsible for fierce rain-blowing winds. However, the conflict is more intense and difficult in other versions, where the Olympian gods metamorphose themselves into animals and flee to Egypt. Zeus stands his ground, though, and using thunderbolts and an adamant sickle he forces Typhoeus to flee, and gives chase as far as Mount Casius, near the mouth of the River Orontes in Syria. There the two engage in hand-to-hand combat. Typhoeus grips Zeus in his snaky coils, wrenches the sickle from his grasp, and severs the sinews of his hands and feet. He then carries the helpless god through the sea to Cilicia, dumps him in the Corycian cave, hides the sinews in a bearskin, and assigns the semi-bestial she-dragon Delphyne to guard them.

However, Hermes and Aigipan (‘Goat Pan’) are able to steal the sinews and secretly reinstall them into Zeus.²³ Duly revived, he takes the offensive and showers Typhoeus with thunderbolts from a chariot of winged horses. Typhoeus flees to Mount Nysa, where the Fates trick him into tasting the ephemeral fruits by saying that they will strengthen him, and further pursuit sees the protagonists arrive at Mount Haimos in Thrace, where Typhoeus hurls mountains which Zeus blasts back with thunderbolts. A stream of blood gushes from Mount Haimos, ‘the Bloody Mountain’, (Greek haima, ‘blood’), and when Typhoeus finally tries to escape via the Sicilian sea, Zeus heaves Mount Etna on top of him.²⁴ Various ancient authors allude to the idea that Etna’s volcanic activity is caused by the thunderbolts thrown in this tussle, and J.G. Frazer goes so far as to suggest that volcanic phenomena and large fossil bones were the principal sources of these tales. Michael Grant says that Typhoeus’ fate may be interpreted as a Greek suppression of the weird gods worshipped by the Hittites and Semites, and notes that Zeus is the forerunner of many dragon-slayers, including St George of Cappadocia.

With these conflicts finally at an end, and with his authority over the universe now on a firm footing, Zeus married his long-term partner Hera and sired Hebe, Eileithyia and Ares,²⁵ but that did not prevent him having intercourse with many other women, both mortal and immortal. Here again the traditions vary, but influential offspring included: Athena (born from Zeus’ head after he swallowed Metis), the Seasons, the Fates, the Graces, Persephone, the Nine Muses (Kalliope, Klio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsikhore, Ourania, Thalia and Polymnia), Artemis and Apollo, Pan, Herakles, Perseus, Minos and Sarpedon, Helen, Kastor and Polydeukes (Pollux), and Dionysos.

Zeus’ behaviour not only caused untold marital disharmony, but it really offended the early Christians, whose response is typified by Arnobius of Sicca’s ‘Was Juno [i.e. Hera] not enough for him?’ Well, obviously not. Zeus’ love life was nothing if not complex, although he usually seems to be well on top of the situation and not always too secretive about it. Indeed, just prior to making love with Hera in the Iliad, he tells her how much he wants her, and then proceeds to list many of his previous conquests:

Now let us go to bed and turn to love-making.

For never before has love for any goddess or woman

so melted about the heart inside me, broken it to submission,

as now: not that time when I loved the wife of Ixion

who bore me Peirithoos, equal of the gods in counsel,

nor when I loved Akrisios’ daughter, sweet-stepping Danae,

who bore Perseus to me, pre-eminent among all men,

nor when I loved the daughter of far-renowned Phoinix, Europa

who bore Minos to me, and Rhadamanthys the godlike;

not when I loved Semele, or Alkmene in Thebe,

when Alkmene bore me a son, Herakles the strong-hearted,

while Semele’s son was Dionysos, the pleasure of mortals;

not when I loved the queen Demeter of the lovely tresses,

not when it was glorious Leto, nor yourself, so much

as now I love you, and the sweet passion has taken hold of me.²⁶

On this occasion Hera has ulterior motives, and acquiesces, but she was not always so compliant: Hesiod tells how she gave birth to Hephaistos without intercourse in retaliation for Zeus giving birth to Athena.²⁷

Zeus stands at the head of the Olympian gods, who have strongly individualized powers and attributes. (See the table opposite.)

Echoes of Other Mythologies

The grisly yet compelling tales of the mutilation of fathers by sons have caused shock and offence since antiquity. Plato is all for banning the ‘foul story about Ouranos’ from his Ideal State:

The story of what Kronos did, and what he suffered at the hands of his son, is not fit . . . to be lightly repeated to the young and foolish, even if it were true; it would be best to say nothing about it, or if it must be told, tell it to a select few under oath of secrecy . . .

These certainly are difficult stories [says Adeimantos]

And they shall not be repeated in our state, Adeimantos.²⁸

Yet many scholars and artists have not rejected them as Plato did. The tales lend themselves to feminist interpretation, since Gaia is so fundamental and the feminine is aggressively assertive in them. However, it is encroached upon by masculine concepts of the divine, as patriarchy establishes supremacy (though not always total) over matriarchy. Structuralist analysts also have plenty to work with, as the tales are full of interesting binary oppositions: chaos/order; male/female; young/old; beautiful/ugly and so on. Freudians can make much of this too, particularly the castration motifs, and the repeated victories of ambitious sons over ruthless fathers. The Jungian archetype of the holy marriage appears three times (Ouranos and Gaia; Kronos and Rheia; Zeus and Hera), and the characters themselves can be seen as archetypes: earth mother and queen; sky father and king; both vying for control. The tales are also beautiful aetiologies – explanations of the origin of the Universe.

It is, though, the comparatists who have perhaps made the most of these tales, since they regard them as not unique to Greece, but part of a worldwide set of myths that explain the separation of Earth and Sky. Certainly parallels present themselves: the ancient Egyptians believed in a marriage between Keb (Earth) and Nut (Heaven), although here the gender roles are reversed; the Kumana of South Africa call Earth their mother and Sky their father; the Ewe people of Togo think that the Earth is the wife of the Sky, and that they consummate their marriage in the rainy season, when the rain fertilizes Mother Earth and makes the seeds grow into Earth’s children; and likewise myths from the Indian Archipelago personify Sky and Earth as husband and wife and hold that the consummation of their marriage is manifested in the rain, which fertilizes Earth, who gives birth to all manner of agricultural produce.

There are also some fascinating parallel myths to be found close to the Greek world, and the coincidences between Hesiod’s Theogony and three Hittite poems, The Myth of the Kingdom of Heaven, The Song of Ullikummi and The Myth of Illuyanka, are especially striking. It is interesting that the Greek myth of Typhoeus usually locates his birthplace in Cilicia, which was on the very eastern limit of Greek settlement in the archaic period, and that key elements of the story happen at Mount Casius, which was way outside Greek territory. The Hittites were extremely powerful around 1460–1200, and at one time controlled an area that included Cilicia and Mount Casius. Cuneiform tablets written in the Hittite language suggest that elements of this myth were generated in the Near East.

The text of The Myth of the Kingdom of Heaven is fragmentary, but it is clear that Alalu, the first King of Heaven, is overthrown by his son Anu (Sky/Heaven), who in turn is overthrown by Kumarbi. Anu flees upward like a bird, but Kumarbi bites off his penis and spits out his sperm, which hits the earth and produces various mountains, rivers and gods. However, he cannot spit out the seed of the storm god Teshub, who seems destined to overthrow Kumarbi’s power and avenge his father Anu. When the god Kazal comes out of what might be Kumarbi’s head, Kumarbi threatens to eat him. The text suggests that Kumarbi eats something hard – possibly a stone in place of the son that he intended to devour – and it hurts his mouth. He spits it out and it is placed somewhere to serve as a cult object.

Teshub manages to emerge from Kumarbi, perhaps via his penis (the ‘good place’), and other tales say that Teshub deposes Kumarbi and banishes him to the Underworld. Kumarbi then wants vengeance, and according to the Song of Ullikummi, he becomes aroused by a huge and rather erotic rock, which he impregnates, creating Ullikummi, a diorite stone monster which is carried on the shoulders of Upelluri, the giant who supports heaven and earth, rather like Atlas. Ullikummi grows alarmingly: on his fifteenth day he is so big that the sea only comes up to his waist, and by the time Teshub looks down from Mount Casius and decides to attack him, he is 9,000 leagues in both height and width, and his head is higher than the gates of the city of the gods. However, the gods get the ancient copper knife with which they once severed heaven from earth, and use it to hack through Ullikummi’s feet. This destroys his power and enables Teshub to defeat him.

This is not the end of Teshub’s troubles, though. In the Myth of Illuyanka he is overpowered by Illuyanka (‘Snake’), a dragon who takes away his heart and eyes. Teshub goes away, marries a poor man’s daughter, and fathers a son who later marries Illuyanka’s daughter. Then Teshub gets his son to ask his father-in-law for his heart and eyes back, and the request is freely granted. With the storm god back in action, the goddess Inara helps to defeat Illuyanka, by inviting him to a feast where he overindulges so grossly that he is unable to return to his lair. He is then killed by Teshub, and when Teshub’s son intercedes on Illuyanka’s behalf, the storm god slays him too.

Some of the key parallels between the Greek and Hittite succession myths could be tabulated as in the table opposite,²⁹ though not all the motifs occur in the same sequence.

From all this it appears that there is more than just a random connection between the Hittite and Greek succession myths. We might point to:

•   a succession of similar-looking divine kings;

•   monstrous challengers;

•   recurrent motifs such as preventing the birth of children, castrating gods, male pregnancy caused by swallowing sperm, and the creation of other gods by spitting or splitting.

But once the myths are examined more closely, it appears that corresponding motifs often relate to different characters, and some motifs that occur only once or twice in the Hittite myths appear (with variations) for many characters or episodes in the Greek myths. For instance, the male pregnancy motif from the Kumarbi episode appears in the matching Kronos episode, but it also recurs in the myth of the birth of Athena, and possibly in the tale of the birth of Dionysos from Zeus’ thigh;³⁰ the castration motif in the battle between Anu and Kumarbi appears not just in the castration of Kronos but of Ouranos as well; and the removal of Zeus’ sinews by Typhoeus, using the same sickle that castrated Ouranos, seems to reverse the Hittite motif where Teshub uses the copper knife to attack the feet of Ullikummi.

Greek

Hittite

Triadic succession of gods: Ouranos (Sky), Kronos, Zeus (storm god).

Triadic succession of gods: Anu (Sky), Kumarbi (corn god), Teshub (storm god)

Ouranos is castrated by Kronos from within Earth’s womb. Warns the Titans.

Anu is castrated by Kumarbi as he flees up to the sky. Warns Kumarbi.

Kronos swallows his children as they are born from Rheia; has children locked in his belly.

Kumarbi swallows Anu’s genitals, is made pregnant, and has embryos in his belly.

Ouranos’ blood and sperm impregnate Earth, who bears various gods.

Kumarbi spites out Anu’s seed and impregnates Earth, who bears various gods.

Parent (Rheia) gives infant god (Zeus) to remote deities to be raised concealed in cave.

Parent (Kumarbi) gives infant god (Ullikummi) to remote deities to be raised concealed in earth.

Kronos swallows a stone instead of Zeus. The stone is set up in Delphi.

Kumarbi wants to devour his son (?) but eats something hard (a stone?). Sets it up as a cult.

Kronos vomits up children through his mouth.

Teshub is born from the ‘good place’. Another god is possibly born from Kumarbi’s head.

Zeus rules. Kronos goes to Tartaros.

Teshub rules. Kumarbi is displaced.

Kronos (or Tartaros) mates with Earth to beget Typhoeus, who rebels against Zeus.

Kumarbi mates with rock to beget Ullikummi, who rebels against Teshub.

Mount Casius is the site of a battle between Typhoeus and Zeus.

Mount Casius is the site of an emergency assembly of the gods to deliberate about Ullikummi’s attack on Teshub.

The sickle used to castrate Ouranos is reused by Typhoeus to cut Zeus’ sinews.

Teshub reuses the knife which divided heaven and earth to defeat Ullikummi.

Zeus’ son Hermes steals back his sinews.

Teshub’s son tricks Illuyanka into returning his father’s heart and eyes.

The Fates trick Typhoeus into eating the ephemeral fruit which prepares. for his defeat at the hands of Zeus.

TInara tricks Illuyanka into overeating at a feast which prepares for his defeat at the hands of Teshub.

The differences look even stronger in other areas too. For example:

•   Anu (Sky) has a predecessor, Alalu; Ouranos (Sky) does not;

•   the ‘father of the gods’ is Kumarbi (Kronos) not Teshub (Zeus);

•   Ullikummi is a stone monster, not a hybrid beast like Typhoeus;

•   Genealogies, which are so central to Hesiod’s Theogony, hardly appear at all in the Hittite tales.

From all this it looks as if Hesiod could have had some knowledge of Hittite mythology, but whether he drew directly on any of the surviving stories must remain doubtful. The issue of when, where and how the Greeks acquired a knowledge of tales from the Near East is fascinating, though the differences of detail suggest oral transmission was responsible, and we do know that Greeks lived and were active commercially in Cilicia in both the Mycenaean and the archaic periods. That said, it would be rash to argue that any Greek tale can be totally derived from a Hittite one, especially as there are also striking similarities between the myths of Babylon, Phoenicia and Egypt. For example, an Egyptian myth seems to explain the separation of Earth (Geb) and Sky (Nut) by an act of castration, although in this case Sky is female, and she also eats her children. This makes it unlikely that one basic story underlies the different variants: the tales might appear superficially similar, but in fact the differences suggest that we are probably witnessing the creative recycling of common, evolving clusters of mythical ideas. The relationships between these tales has been aptly described as being like a gene pool, where distinctive characteristics are maintained over a long period of time, but where, with the constant alteration of the genetic code, the members will frequently bear closer relation to one another at any point of time than to any particular ancestor.

These myths were extremely popular with ancient artists of all periods. A good case in point is the Gigantomachy, which was one of the favourite subjects for Greek temple decoration. The Archaic Siphnian Treasury at Delphi (c.525) displayed a fine Gigantomachy frieze, where the giants are armed hoplite warriors vainly struggling against the might of the gods; in the Classical era the west metopes of the Parthenon (built between 447 and 438) showed the same subject; and so did the magnificent Hellenistic Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon (c.150), where the anguished Giants with their serpentine tails take on the calmly authoritative Olympians. In none of these cases is it ever in doubt that the gods will win, and that order and civilization will triumph over chaos and barbarity. In the post-Persian-invasion Greek world (after 479), that was a very significant message.

Interesting connections abound here: the Great Altar is mentioned in Revelation 2:13 as the ‘Throne of Satan’, and in Milton’s Paradise Lost the downfall of Satan draws on many elements of Hesiod’s Theogony, as does the Titans’ Fall, which Rubens designed for Philip IV of Spain in 1636. Goya’s bloody and nightmarish Saturn [ Kronos] Devouring one of his Children (1821–3) vividly expresses his insight into human cruelty and self-destructiveness.

The less morbid side of these tales has also filtered through, with Aphrodite (Venus) becoming a very popular subject because of her associations with erotic beauty. Sculptors and painters were particularly attracted to the story of her birth. The Ludovisi throne of c.460 shows her rising from the sea and being clothed by two attendants on a pebble beach, and later in the fifth century an image of Eros receiving her from the sea was depicted on Pheidias’ base of the statue of Zeus at Olympia. She regularly appears rising (anadyomene) from the waves, wringing her beautiful wet hair, and floating ashore on a seashell. Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c.1490) is perhaps the classic version, placing the nude goddess in a modest pose that goes back to ancient Greek sculpture, being offered a cloak by one of the Seasons as Zephyr and Flora blow her towards the shore. The contrast between Botticelli’s young, ethereal Venus and Hesiod’s dangerous, primordial Aphrodite is a fine illustration of how different perspectives of what is essentially the same story can be depicted. This is what gives the Greek mythical tradition so much strength in its post-classical afterlife.