Theogony

Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first known Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared. Theogonies are a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing.[3]

Further, in the "Kings and Singers" passage (80–103)[4] Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority usually reserved to sacred kingship. The poet declares that it is he, where we might have expected some king instead, upon whom the Muses have bestowed the two gifts of a scepter and an authoritative voice (Hesiod, Theogony 30–3), which are the visible signs of kingship. It is not that this gesture is meant to make Hesiod a king. Rather, the point is that the authority of kingship now belongs to the poetic voice, the voice that is declaiming the Theogony.

The nine muses on a Roman sarcophagus (second century AD)—Louvre, Paris

Although it is often used as a sourcebook for Greek mythology,[5] the Theogony is both more and less than that. In formal terms it is a hymn invoking Zeus and the Muses: parallel passages between it and the much shorter Homeric Hymn to the Muses make it clear that the Theogony developed out of a tradition of hymnic preludes with which an ancient Greek rhapsode would begin his performance at poetic competitions. It is necessary to see the Theogony not as the definitive source of Greek mythology, but rather as a snapshot of a dynamic tradition that happened to crystallize when Hesiod formulated the myths he knew—and to remember that the traditions have continued evolving since that time.

The written form of the Theogony was established in the 6th century BC. Even some conservative editors have concluded that the Typhon episode (820–68) is an interpolation.[6]

Hesiod was probably influenced by some Near-Eastern traditions, such as the Babylonian Dynasty of Dunnum,[7] which were mixed with local traditions, but they are more likely to be lingering traces from the Mycenaean tradition than the result of oriental contacts in Hesiod's own time.

The decipherment of Hittite mythical texts, notably the Kingship in Heaven text first presented in 1946, with its castration mytheme, offers in the figure of Kumarbi an Anatolian parallel to Hesiod's Uranus–Cronus conflict.[8]

The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn: fresco by Giorgio Vasari and Cristofano Gherardi, c. 1560(Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio)

One of the principal components of the Theogony is the presentation of what is called the "Succession Myth", which tells how Cronus overthrew Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos.[9]

Uranus (Sky) initially produced eighteen children with his mother Gaia (Earth): the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers),[10] but hating them,[11] he hid them away somewhere inside Gaia.[12] Angry and in distress, Gaia fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus, the youngest Titan, was willing to do so.[13] So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush" and gave him the adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father.[14] This enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume supreme command of the cosmos.[15]

Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control. Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of the children she birthed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (in that order), to Rhea's great sorrow.[16] However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus, and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion.[17] Meanwhile, Rhea gave Cronus a huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's children.[18]

The Fall of the Titans by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1596–1598)

Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children.[19] Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon, the thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia.[20] A great war was begun, the Titanomachy, between the new gods, Zeus and his siblings, and the old gods, Cronus and the Titans, for control of the cosmos. In the tenth year of that war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans, helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury of his thunderbolt at the Titans, defeating them and throwing them into Tartarus.[21]

A final threat to Zeus' power was to come in the form of the monster Typhon, son of Gaia and Tartarus. Zeus with his thunderbolt was quickly victorious, and Typhon was also imprisoned in Tartarus.[22]

Zeus, by Gaia's advice, was elected king of the gods, and he apportioned various honors among the gods.[23] Zeus then married his first wife Metis, but when he learned that Metis was fated to produce a son which might usurp his rule, by the advice of Gaia and Uranus, Zeus swallowed Metis (while still pregnant with Athena). And so Zeus managed to end the cycle of succession and secure his eternal rule over the cosmos.[24]

Laconic bowl depicting Prometheus and Atlas enduring their respective punishments, circa 550 B.C.

The Theogony, after listing the offspring of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, as Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, and telling briefly what happened to each, tells the story of Prometheus.[98] When the gods and men met at Mekone to decide how sacrifices should be distributed, Prometheus sought to trick Zeus. Slaughtering an ox, he took the valuable fat and meat, and covered it with the ox's stomach. Prometheus then took the bones and hid them with a thin glistening layer of fat. Prometheus asked Zeus' opinion on which offering pile he found more desirable, hoping to trick the god into selecting the less desirable portion. Though Zeus saw through the trick, he chose the fat covered bones, and so it was established that ever after men would burn the bones as sacrifice to the gods, keeping the choice meat and fat for themselves. But in punishment for this trick, an angry Zeus decided to deny mankind the use of fire. But Prometheus stole fire inside a fennel stalk, and gave it to humanity. Zeus then ordered the creation of the first woman Pandora as a new punishment for mankind. And Prometheus was chained to a cliff, where an eagle fed on his ever-regenerating liver every day, until eventually Zeus' son Heracles came to free him.

Ancient Roman mosaic from Johannisstraße, Trier, dating to the early third century AD, showing the Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander of Miletus holding a sundial[99]

The heritage of Greek mythology already embodied the desire to articulate reality as a whole, and this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first projects of speculative theorizing. It appears that the order of being was first imaginatively visualized before it was abstractly thought. Hesiod, impressed by necessity governing the ordering of things, discloses a definite pattern in the genesis and appearance of the gods. These ideas made something like cosmological speculation possible. The earliest rhetoric of reflection all centers about two interrelated things: the experience of wonder as a living involvement with the divine order of things; and the absolute conviction that, beyond the totality of things, reality forms a beautiful and harmonious whole.[100]

In the Theogony, the origin (arche) is Chaos, a divine primordial condition, and there are the roots and the ends of the earth, sky, sea, and Tartarus. Pherecydes of Syros (6th century BC), believed that there were three pre-existent divine principles and called the water also Chaos.[101] In the language of the archaic period (8th – 6th century BC), arche (or archai) designates the source, origin, or root of things that exist. If a thing is to be well established or founded, its arche or static point must be secure, and the most secure foundations are those provided by the gods: the indestructible, immutable, and eternal ordering of things.[102]

In ancient Greek philosophy, arche is the element or first principle of all things, a permanent nature or substance which is conserved in the generation of the rest of it. From this, all things come to be, and into it they are resolved in a final state.[103] It is the divine horizon of substance that encompasses and rules all things. Thales (7th – 6th century BC), the first Greek philosopher, claimed that the first principle of all things is water. Anaximander (6th century BC) was the first philosopher who used the term arche for that which writers from Aristotle on call the "substratum".[104] Anaximander claimed that the beginning or first principle is an endless mass (Apeiron) subject to neither age nor decay, from which all things are being born and then they are destroyed there. A fragment from Xenophanes (6th century BC) shows the transition from Chaos to Apeiron: "The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit of earth reaches down to the unlimited (i.e the Apeiron)."[105]

Ancient cylinder seal impression possibly showing a scene from the Enûma Eliš in which the Babylonian god Marduk slays Tiamat, the personification of watery chaos[106]

In the Theogony the initial state of the universe, or the origin (arche) is Chaos, a gaping void (abyss) considered as a divine primordial condition, from which appeared everything that exists. Then came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the cave-like space under the earth; the later-born Erebus is the darkness in this space), and Eros (representing sexual desire - the urge to reproduce - instead of the emotion of love as is the common misconception). Hesiod made an abstraction because his original chaos is something completely indefinite.[107]

By contrast, in the Orphic cosmogony the unaging Chronos produced Aether and Chaos and made a silvery egg in divine Aether. From it appeared the androgynous god Phanes, identified by the Orphics as Eros, who becomes the creator of the world.[108]

Some similar ideas appear in the Vedic and Hindu cosmologies. In the Vedic cosmology the universe is created from nothing by the great heat. Kāma (Desire) the primal seed of spirit, is the link which connected the existent with the non-existent [109] In the Hindu cosmology, in the beginning there was nothing in the universe but only darkness and the divine essence who removed the darkness and created the primordial waters. His seed produced the universal germ (Hiranyagarbha), from which everything else appeared.[110]

In the Babylonian creation story Enûma Eliš the universe was in a formless state and is described as a watery chaos. From it emerged two primary gods, the male Apsu and female Tiamat, and a third deity who is the maker Mummu and his power for the progression of cosmogonic births to begin.[111]

Norse mythology also describes Ginnungagap as the primordial abyss from which sprang the first living creatures, including the giant Ymir whose body eventually became the world, whose blood became the seas, and so on; another version describes the origin of the world as a result of the fiery and cold parts of Hel colliding.

• Ancient literature
• Gigantomachy
• Theomachy
• Titanomachy

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• Clay, Jenny Strauss, Hesiod's Cosmos, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-82392-0.
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• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360.
• Lamberton, Robert, Hesiod, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-300-04068-7. Cf. Chapter II, "The Theogony", pp. 38–104.
• Montanari, F.; Rengakos, A.; Tsagalis, C., eds. (2009). Brill's Companion to Hesiod. Leiden. doi:10.1163/9789047440758. ISBN 978-90-04-17840-3.
  • Cingano, E. "The Hesiodic Corpus". In Montanari, Rengakos & Tsagalis (2009), pp. 91–130. doi:10.1163/9789047440758_006
  • Rutherford, I. "Hesiod and the Literary Traditions of the Near East". In Montanari, Rengakos & Tsagalis (2009), pp. 9–35. doi:10.1163/9789047440758_003
• Most, G.W., Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library No. 57, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-674-99720-2. Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Tandy, David W., and Neale, Walter C. [translators], Works and Days: a translation and commentary for the social sciences, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ISBN 0-520-20383-6
• West, M. L. (1966), Hesiod: Theogony, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814169-6.
• West, M. L. (1988), Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953831-7.
• Verdenius, Willem Jacob, A Commentary on Hesiod Works and Days vv 1-382 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985). ISBN 90-04-07465-1

•  Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Θεογονία
• Works related to Theogony at Wikisource
• Hesiod, Theogony: text in English translation.
• Hesiod, Theogony e-text in Ancient Greek (from Perseus)
• Hesiod, Theogony e-text in English (from Perseus)
• Theogony public domain audiobook at LibriVox