The poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works and days, and the shield of Herakles 9780520292864, 9780520966222, 9780520292857, 0520292855, 0520292863

Table of contents :
General introduction : Hesiod and his poems --
Introduction to the Theogony --
Theogony --
Introduction to the Works and days --
Works and days --
Introducton to The Shield of Herakles --
The Shield of Herakles.

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The Poems of Hesiod Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles

A New Translation by Barry B. Powell

University of California Press

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Classical Literature Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Joan Palevsky.

The Poems of Hesiod

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The Poems of Hesiod Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles

A New Translation by Barry B. Powell

University of California Press

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hesiod, author. | Powell, Barry B., translator, writer of introduction. | Container of (expression): Hesiod. Theogony. English. | Container of (expression): Hesiod. Works and days. English. | Container of (expression): Hesiod. Shield of Heracles. English. Title: The poems of Hesiod : Theogony, Works and days, and The Shield / a new translation by Barry B. Powell. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016056629 (print) | lccn 2017000427 (ebook) | isbn 780520292857 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520292864 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520966222 () Subjects: lcsh: Hesiod—Translations into English. | Hesiod— Criticism and interpretation. Classification: lcc pa4010 .e5 2017 (print) | lcc pa4010 (ebook) | ddc 881/.01—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056629 Printed in China 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

vii

List of Illustrations

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Spelling, the Pronunciation of Ancient Names, and Map References

xiv

Maps 1

General Introduction: Hesiod and His Poems

21

Introduction to the Theogony

31

Theogony

97

Introduction to the Works and Days

109

Works and Days

145

Introducton to The Shield of Herakles

151

The Shield of Herakles

173

Bibliography

177

Glossary / Index

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Illustrations

maps xiv

1. The Mediterranean

xiv

2. The Aegean Sea

xv

3. Central Greece

figures 7

1. Drunken symposiast and lyre

10

2. Anatolian storm god

11

3. Zeus throwing lightning at Typhon

32

4. A Muse playing the lyre

43

5. The birth of Aphrodite

48

6. Amphitritê stands before Poseidon

51

7. The head of Medusa

55

8. The Chimaira

70

9. The punishment of Atlas and Prometheus

78

10. Hades and Persephone

82

11. Zeus fights Typhon

92

12. Dawn pursues the Trojan prince Tithonos

105

13. Egyptian relief of Maat vii

113

14. Pandora born from the Earth

117

15. The Cretan princess Ariadnê and Retribution

124

16. A naked plowman

130

17. A winged North Wind (Boreas) rapes Oreithyia

136

18. A satyr presents a tripod with handles to Dionysos

149

19. The theater and reconstructed columns of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

159

20. The Lapith Kaineus being destroyed by a centaur

161

21. A centaur tries to carry off Hippodameia

163

22. The Gorgons pursue Perseus

168

23. Zeus parts Athena and Ares

genealogical charts

viii

38

1. The primordial gods

40

2. The children of Earth and Sky

44

3. The offspring of Earth and the blood of Sky and the birth of Aphroditê

46

4. The descendants of Night (Nyx) and Strife (Eris)

50

5. The descendants Earth and Sea

53

6. The descendants of Phorkys and Keto

56

7. Other descendants of Phorkys and Keto

59

8. The children of Okeanos and Tethys

61

9. The descendants of Theia and Hyperion and Kreios and Eurybia

63

10. The children of Pallas and Styx

63

11. The descendants of Koios and Phoibê

65

12. The children of Kronos and Rhea

69

13. The descendants of Iapetos and Klymenê illustrations

85

14. The offspring of Zeus and his many wives

87

15. The descendants of Ares and Aphrodite

89

16. The descendants of Helios and Perseïs

91

17. Other children of Kadmos and Harmonia

93

18. The children of Dawn (Eos)

95

19. The descendants of Kalypso, Circe, and Aiëtes

152

20. The descendants of Perseus and Andromeda

illustrations

ix

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mary Kay Gamel, Silvia Montiglio, and Carolina Lopez-Ruiz for their encouragement and helpful comments. In my introduction to the Theogony, I have made use of critical material published earlier in my Classical Myth, 8th edition (Boston: Pearson, 2014), and in my Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). My introduction to Works and Days owes much to my teacher Joseph Fontenrose (1903–1986); see especially his “Work, Justice, and Hesiod’s Five Ages,” Classical Philology 69 (1974): 1–16, and Python (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959). My introduction to the Shield of Herakles is indebted to R. Janko, “The Shield of Herakles and the Legend of Cycnus,” Classical Quarterly 36 (1986): 38–59. My thanks to Eric Schmidt of the University of California Press for his cheerful support. I also wish to thank Paul Psoinos for his expert copyediting of a difficult manuscript.

xi

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Spelling, the Pronunciation of Ancient Names, and Map References

How to spell the names is always a problem in the translation of ancient texts. The older Latin system is recommended, because those are the forms usually found in dictionaries, but modern style has on the whole preferred a Greek spelling. I have adopted a middle way, following the practice of Margalit Finkelberg’s The Homer Encyclopedia (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), where common names are given in the Latin style (hence “Achilles,” not “Akhilleus”), but less common names in the Greek (hence “Kalliopê,” not “Calliope”). I have in general (though not always) given place names in their Latin or modern form (hence “Crete,” not “Kreta”; “Boeotia,” not “Boiotia”). I place a circumflex over a final -e (or -es) when it is to be pronounced (hence Mnemosynê, Brontês), except in such common names as Achilles, Aphrodite, or Persephone. Because there is much confusion, and little agreement, on the pronunciation of ancient names, I have given the preferred pronunciation for unfamiliar names in parentheses in the index and in the notes when the name occurs for the first time. I place long marks over long vowels in the English pronunciation and highlight the accented syllable by printing it boldfaced (hence “Cyclopês, si-klō-pēz”). There are many places referred to in Hesiod’s poems. The first time a place name appears, in each poem or in its introduction or notes, I show the name in small capital letters, meaning that the place can be found on one of the three maps printed at the beginning of the text. I follow the texts as edited by Martin West for Theogony and Works and Days and the text as edited by Friedrich Solmsen (in Solmsen, Merkelbach, and West) for The Shield of Herakles. (See the Bibliography.) xiii

Atlantic Ocean

Black Sea Colchis

A RI

CORSICA

Rome ITALY ISCHIA

SARDINIA

Hattusa ns ai PHRYGIA LIA nt ASSYRIA O M T Troy ou A ES M AN us MT. CASIUS OPO LYDIA Tig ur a T ris AM T R. PERSIA CARIA Al Mina Athens IA Babylon E uph SYRIA rates Paphos Per R. CYPRUS sia CRETE Gulf n

CE HRA

T Delphi

of Gibra ltar

Oronte

s R.

Strait

a Se

R.

RU

ET

Danube

n ia

p as

C

Caucausus Mountains Po R.

Mediterranean Sea

EGYPT Nile

Red

R.

100 200

Sea

Luxor

N 0

W

Map 1. The Mediterranean.

Adriatic Sea

Black Sea

THRACE

Propontis

Thasos ITALY MACEDONIA PIERIA Mt. Olympos

NG

Aegean Sea

Lesbos Skyros Kymê EUBOEA . Euripos os R AETOLIA PHOCIS Herm LYDIA Delphi Thebes Channel CHIOS BOEOTIA Aulis Sikyon SAMOS Athens Corinth ANDROS Mycenae NemeaAegina Alpheio s R. Argos Tiryns Ephesos ARCADIA DELOS PELOPONNESUS NAXOS CARIA Pylos Sparta Kos E

OR

Gulf of Corinth

MIN

Ithaca

RHODES

Cythera

Med

Map 2. The Aegean.

PHRYGIA

ASIA

RA

IONIAN ISLANDS

Troy

Tenedos LIS

S

THESSALY Iolkos MAGNESIA HELLAS PHTHIA

AIO

O

ND

PI

CORCYRA

Samothrace Imbros Lemnos

iterr

anea

CRETE Lyktos

n Se a

E S

Min

Mt. Olympos

ios

R.

ne

Pe

Mt. Ossa

M

AG

NE

SI A Pagasai Iolkos

THESSALY

Gulf of Pagasai

ACHAEA TIS PHTHIO Mt. Othrys

DOLOPIA

MALIS

Sperc

heios

R.

DIAN EPICNEMI LOCRIS Mt. OetaTrachis

AEA

OET

OPUNTIAN LOCRIS

DORIS

AETOLIA

Delphi

Mt. Parnassos

PHOCIS IAN OZOL IS LOCR

Kirrha?

Mt. Kithairon

AT orinth CORIN

TI

MEG

ARIS

THIA

ARCADIA

ARGOLIS

Map 3. Central Greece.

OEA

BOEOTIA

Gulf of C ACHAEA

EUB Chalcis Eretria

Aulis

Thebes

Askra Mt. Helikon

Euripos Channel

CA

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General Introduction Hesiod and His Poems

The Theogony is one of the most important mythical texts to survive from antiquity, and I devote the first section of this translation to it. It tells of the creation of the present world order under the rule of almighty Zeus. The Works and Days, in the second section, describes a bitter dispute between Hesiod and his brother over the disposition of their father’s property, a theme that allows Hesiod to range widely over issues of right and wrong. The Shield of Herakles, whose centerpiece is a long description of a work of art, is not by Hesiod, at least most of it, but it was always attributed to him in antiquity. It is Hesiodic in style and has always formed part of the Hesiodic corpus. It makes up the third section of this book. The influence of Homer’s poems on Greek and later culture is inestimable, but Homer never tells us who he is; he stands behind his poems, invisible, all-knowing. His probable contemporary Hesiod, by contrast, is the first self-conscious author in Western literature. Hesiod tells us something about himself in his poetry. His name seems to mean “he who takes pleasure in a journey” (for what it is worth) but in the Works and Days he may play with the meaning of “he who sends forth song.” As with all names—for example, Homer, meaning “hostage,” or Herodotus, meaning “a warrior’s gift”—the name of a poet may have nothing to do with his actual career. Hesiod’s father, so the poet tells us, once lived in Asia Minor, in Aiolian Kymê, then moved to Askra in mainland Greece, a small, forlorn village at the foot of Mount Helikon near Thebes, where Hesiod lived. Like Homer, Hesiod became an aoidos, an oral “singer.” While he was tending his flocks on Helikon, the Muses, inspirers of poetry, came to him in a vision, giving him a staff of laurel and the power of song. They commanded him to sing of the gods, which he does in the Theogony. For this reason “Helikon” is synonymous with poetic inspiration in the Western tradition. Later, in Works and Days, Hesiod tells of a dispute with his brother Persês about the division of their inheritance. His brother took more than his fair share, 1

depending on gift-devouring elders for corrupt judgments rather than on his own hard work. Hesiod also tells us that his father had sailed the seas in search of livelihood, but he himself had no experience of the sea, except for a journey from Aulis to Chalcis on the island of Euboea (a distance of about 200 yards!). In Chalcis, in a poetry contest at the funeral games for one Amphidamas, he won a tripod, which he dedicated to the Muses in their shrine on Mount Helikon. Scholars have speculated that Hesiod’s successful poem was some version of the Theogony. Because of the poet’s close relationship with the Muses, he can speak with authority about past, present, and future. Hesiod is inspired with a mission divinely ordained. Scholars have argued since antiquity about the meaning of these few details. There is no reason not to accept them at face value, however one wishes to interpret Hesiod’s description of his meeting with the Muses. He must mean that his poetic gifts came to him without human teachers, but this is a poetic exaggeration. All singers have teachers. As Hesiod himself explains, the Muses can tell both truth and lies.

The Problem of the Alphabet and the Date of Hesiod We cannot accurately date Hesiod’s poetry, though he must belong to the eighth or ninth centuries b.c. Ancient traditions made him a contemporary of Homer. What, then, is the date of Homer? Good evidence places him at or near the time of the invention of the Greek alphabet, the first writing capable of recording his poetry, and the poetry of Hesiod, which no earlier system of writing could have done. No alphabet, no Homer—and no Hesiod. The problem of the invention of alphabetic writing is intimately associated with attempts to date Homer and Hesiod. The Greek alphabet was invented on the basis of the preexisting West Semitic (so-called Phoenician) writing, an odd sort of phonetic syllabary with a small number of signs (around twenty-two) representing consonantal qualities with an implied vowel to be provided by the reader. The original Greek alphabet, by contrast, consists of two sorts of signs, the so-called consonants, which cannot be pronounced by themselves, and five vowel signs, 2

general introduction

which can be. Four of the vowel signs were adapted from West Semitic consonantal syllabograms and the fifth, upsilon, was created by splitting a West Semitic sign into a consonant (digamma, our “F”) and a vowel added to the end of the series after “T,” where it still resides today. Only a single person working alone could have made this arbitrary alteration to its model. Three additional consonantal signs were also added to the signary. To this division of the signary into two kinds of signs was added the spelling rule that a pronounceable vowel sign must always accompany an unpronounceable consonantal sign. It is virtually the same system of writing in use today in the Western world and by others who use an alphabet, the writing on this page. The Greek alphabet is one of the most important developments in the history of culture: It is the basis of modern civilization, including Eastern civilizations that have adopted it in order to function in the modern world. For the first time it became possible to record in writing an approximation of what somebody said, a technology of universal application. Earlier systems of writing, which were only partly phonetic, did not allow such freedom. The earliest epigraphic finds of Greek alphabetic writing are dated to around 775–750 b.c. They come from Eretria in Euboea near the Euripos Channel, over which Hesiod traveled to the funeral games of Amphidamas, not far from Mount Helikon on whose slopes Hesiod lived. Other early finds have turned up in a site in nearby Boeotia; from an Eretrian colony in Italy; and, recently discovered, from an Eretrian colony in northern Greece. Phrygia, an early adopter of the system, has also produced early finds. The Greek alphabet seems to have been invented somewhat before our earliest epigraphical finds, say ca. 850 b.c., no doubt in Euboea or near there. The inventor, whom we may call “the Adapter,” was probably a Semitic speaker, a Phoenician familiar with the very old West Semitic (that is, Phoenician) writing, which goes back to about 1500 b.c. West Semitic writing was used to make rough phonetic notations of Semitic speech, and sometimes Semitic poetry, providing only the consonantal qualities, with the result that it can be pronounced only by a native speaker. The Adapter of this Semitic system of writing to make the Greek alphabet must have been bilingual, perhaps the product of intermarriage. Semitic speakers were certainly living in Euboea at this time, and the Phoenician general introduction

3

Kadmos, whose Semitic name means “man of the East,” founded the city of Thebes in Boeotia, according to legend. The Adapter’s name may have been Palamedês, who in legend made changes to the alphabet and whose father was Nauplius, a legendary king on the island of Euboea. Evidently the Adapter attempted to apply the West Semitic syllabary to the recording of Greek oral verse, as the system had been used to record roughly Semitic speech; but because of the very different phonologies of the two languages, he was able to make little headway. At this moment he discovered the division of the list of signs into two kinds and the spelling rule that a pronounceable sign, a vowel sign, must always accompany a nowunpronounceable sign, a consonantal sign. The new system of writing would make it possible to recover an approximation of the sound of the Greek hexameter, which depends on vowel sounds for its complex meter. In fact, the earliest epigraphic finds in the Greek alphabet are hexametric. The likely inspiration for this invention is Homer himself, who was certainly famous in his lifetime and who attracted the Adapter’s attention. The Odyssey celebrates the earliest exploration of the far West, a journey actually made by Euboean settlers, and Euboeans would have been a natural audience for the poem. The earliest Greek settlement in the West was on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, where Euboeans established a trading colony. Very early examples of Greek alphabetic writing have been found on Ischia, including two perfect hexameters that seem to refer to the text of the Iliad.1 Hesiod, if a contemporary with Homer as reported, would have been well known to the Adapter too; or he may have been recorded somewhat later. Tellingly, neither Homer nor Hesiod ever mentions writing, although they otherwise describe many features of daily life. They must have lived in an illiterate age. Homer composed in a West Ionic dialect, the speech of Euboea, the same dialect as Hesiod—all singers shared a common dialect for oral composition— though Hesiod must have spoken Aeolic as his native dialect. Early Greek alphabetic writing appears to have been used primarily for the recording by dictation of oral poetry, never for such mundane usages as 1. The famous Cup of Nestor inscription. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Nestor%27s_Cup#The_.22Cup_of_Nestor.22_from_Pithekoussai.

4

general introduction

keeping business accounts, though those who understood the system used it to scribble their names on pots and stones. It was not easy to read. Reading an early alphabetic text was completely different from the experience of a modern reader, because apprehension took place through the ear. The sound was puzzled out from the graphic mark; then the meaning of the text was understood. An early text of the first lines of Hesiod’s Works and Days might have looked something like this:2

The writing was probably continuous. The text begins from right to left, then curls around at the end to read left-to-right, then again right-to-left. (Such writing is called boustrophedon, “in the manner of an ox turning” in a furrow.) There was no separation between words, a convention of modern literacy: Linguists cannot even define “word,” except as an item that occurs in a dictionary. There were no diacritical marks—commas, periods, colons, capitals, or paragraph divisions. An ou is written as o; no distinction is made between long ē (later eta) and short e (later epsilon) or between long ō (later omega) and short o (later omicron); elided vowels are written out; and doubled consonants are not ordinarily written. Such early Greek texts as Hesiod’s poetry were visible representations of a continuous stream of sound. By contrast, we read from sight, from the appearance of the writing on the page, where the text is richly supported by diacritical devices of all kinds. In general we do not sound out the words but understand them from their visual representation. Much misunderstanding of ancient Greek literature depends on modern scholars’ thinking that the ancient Greeks read texts as we do, but they did not. 2. From M. L. West, ed., Works and Days (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 60.

general introduction

5

The Social Environment of Early Greek Poetry In the eighth and ninth centuries b.c., the days of Homer and Hesiod, texts circulated in small numbers among a restricted and refined upper class of wealthy amateurs—seafarers, warriors, aristocrats. There was no scribal class in ancient Greece, unlike in all earlier civilizations, where literacy was confined to one percent or less of the general population. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, where immensely complex systems of writing, only partly phonetic, were in use, and even in the Persian imperial bureaucracy, where the syllabic West Semitic system was in use, scribes were scarcely distinguished from the ruling class. In Palestine, writing was more widely used, but to be literate was always equivalent to being a possessor of power, and Eastern scribes guarded their power smugly and with arrogance. In Greece there was no book trade in early times and no general readership. Greek aristocrats socialized in the all-male symposium, the drinking party. If women were present, they were prostitutes. A small number of these men had learned the secrets of alphabetic literacy from one another, passed down from the Adapter’s hand. Possessing this secret, they were able painstakingly to puzzle out a small number of poetic texts that circulated in the symposium. Greek aristocrats read not for pleasure but in order that they might memorize poetry that had once been oral and represent it at the symposium to the accompaniment of the lyre. These texts, the schoolbooks of the literati, originated in the songs of aoidoi, oral poets, who had dictated their verse to someone who understood alphabetic writing. Such aoidoi—Homer and Hesiod—could not themselves read or write. This is how Greek, and Western, literacy began. Later, specialists gave up the lyre and accompanied their delivery to the beat of a staff. They were called rhapsodes, “staff singers,”3 and could speak in a learned way about the meaning of their texts. Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 b.c.) 3. Later Greeks, as early as Pindar (ca. 522–ca. 443 b.c.), played with this word, making it come from rhapto, “to stitch,” as if singers were “song stitchers,” linking together formulaic expressions to create their verses; but it must derive from rhabdos, “staff,” just as citharode, “lyre singer,” and aulode, “flute singer,” derive from the appropriate instruments.

6

general introduction

Figure 1. A drunken symposiast reclines on a couch and vomits into a jar, assisted by a naked cupbearer. Such cupbearers were often the object of amorous attention by older Greeks. Notice the lyre on the wall, used to accompany the symposiast’s recitation of poetry. Athenian red-figure painting, ca. 500–470 b.c. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen (Photo: Stefano Bolognini; https://upload .wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Nationalmuseet_-_Cophenaghen _-_brygos_vomiting1.jpg)

makes fun of these pretenders to wisdom in his dialogue Ion. Rhapsodes were not oral poets, but they understood the secrets of alphabetic writing and bathed in the glory that came from reciting and commenting on memorized versions of great oral poets. It is common to speak of rhapsodic interpolations in examining ancient texts, but they were probably uncommon. A rhapsode may make up verses to suit his pleasure, but unless they are written down in the tradition that becomes canonical—that is, copied and recopied—they do not survive. Therefore the texts of Homer and Hesiod that we possess must be substantially the texts that these poets composed, recorded by dictation at the dawn of alphabetic literacy. Of course such texts are liable to the usual distortions that come from copying and recopying, but these distortions are always minor and do not affect the main narrative, in spite of an inordinate amount of scholarly speculation about interpolated, nongenuine, portions of the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. By the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., those literate in the alphabet realized that they could compose fresh verse in writing, a revolutionary development. This is the age of the lyric poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, and many others. It is the beginning of modern alphabetic literacy. Still heavily influenced by their education in recorded epic, such poets often echo epic poetry in their language and themes, but their poetry was created in writing, not orally composed. These literate poets are much given to the creation of new words that, thanks to the genius of alphabetic writing, could be pronounced by absent readers. Such poetry was, however, still meant to be memorized and recited in public, and never read for pleasure as we read modern poetry. The greatest flower of this development was Greek tragedy, wherein several copies of a written, previously unknown text could be distributed to a company of actors, who could all be expected to pronounce and memorize it. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of culture, and some of these texts, from the fifth century B.C., have survived to this day.

Hesiod’s Debt to the Near East Hesiod, and Homer, share in a community of Near Eastern literary themes and styles, and we cannot doubt a direct connection, although the details of 8

general introduction

transmission remain obscure. The relationships of humans to gods are similar in East and West, as are such specifically poetic themes as the origin of the cosmos, the loss of a golden age, women’s introduction of evil into the world, and the necessity of labor in order to survive in a fallen world distant from the paradise in which humans once lived. In Eastern literature and Western, human suffering comes from the gods’ anger, as do human blessings and divine favor granted to certain people. Kingship comes from heaven in both traditions. The division of the universe into heaven, earth, sea, and underworld is Eastern, as is the picture of a world bounded by water and a land of no return ruled by a king or queen, a place of gloom and filth, where reside the bloodless dead and the enemies of the gods. Narrative strategies are similar too: for example, the initiation of an action by describing an unsatisfactory situation, followed by a complaint to the gods, the gods’ deliberation, then measures taken. Messengers drive the action. Stereotyped formulas introduce direct speech. There are scenes of feasting, wherein singers entertain and visitors arrive, and scenes of arming and journeys by chariot. In descriptions of war, single combat is waged, as between Zeus and Typhon, and similes, long or short, enhance vividness. Resemblances between actual verbal formulations can be surprisingly close. The Theogony, a description of the creation of the present world order, owes a great deal to Mesopotamian myth. Euboean tradesmen, in addition to their exploration of the far West, had established a colony in the eastern Mediterranean, at a place called Al Mina on the north Syrian coast, near the mouth of the Orontes River (see Map 1). Apparently it was hereabouts that Euboeans learned of such Eastern stories as how the storm god overcame an earlier generation of gods and monsters in a battle to establish his own power. Although Zeus is Indo-European in origin—his name means something like “shiner”—his office, epithets, and forms of behavior are taken from Eastern archetypes. Just north of Al Mina is Mount Casius, which the Hurrians of northern Syria, a people who spoke a language of unknown affinity, considered the home of their storm god, Teshub. Teshub is pictured in art holding a triple thunderbolt and an axe or mace, just as does Zeus (figs. 2 and 3). The Hurrians took over stories from the very ancient general introduction

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Figure 2. Eastern storm god, perhaps the Hurrian Teshub. In his right hand he holds a mace and in his left hand a forklike implement, evidently representing a thunderbolt. He is bearded and wears a conical cap and a sword. Late Hittite stele from Kürtül, ca. 700 b.c.; Archeological Museum Kahramanmaraş, Turkey (Photo: Klaus-Peter Simon; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons /3/34/Kahramanmaras_Museum_Kürtül.jpg)

Figure 3. The storm god Zeus hurls his thunderbolt from his right hand, a weapon with a triple prong at either end. An eagle(?) perches on his left hand. Athenian red-figure water jar, ca. 480 b.c.; Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Zeus_Louvre_G204.jpg)

Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia, who also spoke a language of unknown affinity, and from the Akkadians, a Semitic people who lived in southern and central Mesopotamia, and handed these stories to the IndoEuropean Hittites, who lived in the central plateau of Anatolia. Then, in the ninth to the seventh centuries b.c., the Hittites occupied the lands of the Hurrians. From this tradition must come Hittite-Hurrian stories about the storm god Teshub.

The Hittite-Hurrian Kingship in Heaven and The Song of Ullikummi Teshub’s victory over earlier generations of gods, which scholars call the Succession Myth, is told in several tablets found in the Hittites’ central Anatolian capital, Hattusa, from around 1300 b.c. Small portions survive of one poem, Kingship in Heaven, which has clear relevance to Hesiod’s Greek story. The poem tells how in earlier years a certain Alalu was king in heaven, and Anu (Sky) was his servant. For nine years Alalu was king in heaven. Then Anu made war against Alalu, defeated him, and sent him under the dark earth. Then Anu was king, and Kumarbi was his servant. Kumarbi gave Anu things to eat and drink and bowed down at his feet. For nine years Anu ruled. Then Kumarbi warred against him. Anu flew into the sky. Kumarbi, close behind him, grabbed Anu’s feet and bit off his genitals. Anu’s sperm went into Kumarbi’s stomach, but Anu laughed and said that Kumarbi was now pregnant with Teshub (the Hurrian storm god), the river Tigris, and another god. Kumarbi spit out the semen—but here the tablet breaks off. When it resumes, we learn that Anu (Sky) argued with Teshub (the storm god), still inside Kumarbi, over how Teshub should escape from Kumarbi’s body. Kumarbi felt dizzy and asked Ea (ē-a, the clever Near Eastern god of fresh water and magic) for something to eat. Kumarbi ate something that hurt his mouth. At last the storm god Teshub, being warned not to come out through various openings, especially not through Kumarbi’s anus, came out of the “good place,” apparently Kumarbi’s penis. The rest is lost, but somehow Teshub escaped from Kumarbi’s body, overthrew Kumarbi, and became king of heaven. 12

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Another Hittite-Hurrian tale, called The Song of Ullikummi, tells us more about the celestial kingship and Kumarbi’s struggle for power, as in Hesiod’s description of Zeus’s fight with the monster Typhon, a child of Earth who threatens the creation. Kumarbi was not at all happy with the way things had gone, and he planned to destroy Teshub. Kumarbi “took wisdom into his mind,” rose from his chair, took a staff, put sandals on his feet, and set out to a place called Cool Pond. There Kumarbi had intercourse with a huge rock: “Five times he possessed it, and again ten times he possessed it.” The rock became pregnant and gave birth to a stone child. The child was placed on Kumarbi’s knees; Kumarbi named him Ullikummi, “destroyer of Kummiya,” the city of the storm god Teshub. Kumarbi then delivered the child to Ubelluri, a giant who, like the Greek Atlas, carried heaven and earth. Ubelluri placed the child Ullikummi on his shoulder, where he grew an acre each month. Soon he was so big that the sea came up only to his waist and his head reached the sky. To get a good look at the monster, Teshub climbed up Mount Casius. Overwhelmed, Teshub sat down and cried. The goddess Ishtar tried to enchant Ullikummi by her womanly charms, but her attempts were in vain because the stone monster Ullikummi was deaf and blind. The storm god Teshub decides to fight Ullikummi. He marshals seventy gods, but they are powerless. Ullikummi reaches Kummiya, Teshub’s home, in the mountains of southeastern Anatolia. Teshub goes for help to Ea, the always-helpful god who lives in the apsu, the subterranean fresh water. Ea orders the gods of the old generations, who live in the underworld, to produce the tool by which heaven and earth once had been cut apart. With this tool Teshub cuts Ullikummi from the body of Ubelluri, breaking his power. Teshub now takes heart and mounts his chariot to fight again. Here the tablet breaks off, but certainly Teshub, highest god of the Hittite-Hurrian pantheon, overcame the monstrous Ullikummi to become king of heaven.

The Babylonian Enuma elish The Succession Myth of the Theogony is also found in the famous Babylonian poem Enuma elish, “When on high,” which tells of the victory of the general introduction

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Babylonian storm god, Marduk, over the watery chaos demon Tiamat. The text reached its present form well before 1100 b.c., although it preserves far older material. The poem was recited at the Babylonian New Year festival. Telling of the first days of the creation, the story had the magical power to renew the world at the critical joining of one year with the next. The poem opens with the gods of the primordial waters, male Apsu, fresh water, and female Tiamat (tē-a-mat), salt water, mingled together in an indeterminate mass. From Apsu and Tiamat came forth four generations of gods, including Anu (Sky) and the powerful and clever Ea. The new gods came together to dance. Their activity and noise disturbed Apsu’s rest. With his officer Mummu, Apsu went to Tiamat to suggest that the new gods be destroyed. Although the loving mother Tiamat vigorously opposed Apsu’s wish, Mummu urged it, and Apsu kissed his officer in gratitude. When the younger gods heard of the plan to destroy them, they fell into a panic. Only Ea, “who knows everything, the skillful, the wise,” kept his head. He cast a spell over Apsu and Mummu, sending them into a deep sleep, killed Apsu, and strung a rope through Mummu’s nose. On top of the dead Apsu, Ea built his house, into which he moved with his wife, who gave birth to the real hero of the poem, Marduk, god of Babylon. Marduk was in every way extraordinary and mighty, and he had four mouths and four ears. Marduk’s grandfather Anu (Sky) was so proud of his grandson that he fashioned four winds for Marduk’s plaything, appropriately for the future storm god. The winds blew constantly back and forth, once more stirring the waters of Tiamat. Again the older gods complained. Tiamat, who had earlier defended the younger gods, now determined to destroy them. She gave birth to an army of monsters. To lead the horde, she chose a new husband, Kingu, “her only lover,” placed him on a throne, and armed him with the mysterious Tablets of Destiny, which confer power over the universe. When Ea hears of the fresh preparations, he loses his nerve and consults the other new gods, who demand that Ea war against Tiamat. At this point the tablet is broken, but apparently Ea was unsuccessful, for when the text resumes, it is Anu who attacks Tiamat. She puts her hand against him, and Anu runs away in terror. The gods lose all hope and sink into despair. 14

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Then Marduk comes forth. He agrees to fight Tiamat and her army of monsters, but only on condition that he be granted absolute power. He takes a bow and arrows, a mace and a net, and with lightning flashing before him and seven winds at his back he mounts his chariot—the image of a thunderstorm. Marduk roars down the road toward Tiamat, but when he sees her, he loses his nerve (like Ea and Anu before him). Then he regains his courage and so insults her that Tiamat is seized by uncontrollable rage. She gives out a roar and attacks. Marduk spreads out his net, drives a storm into her mouth, puffs her up, and kills her with an arrow. He throws down her corpse and catches the army of monsters in his net, fixes them with nose ropes, and binds their arms. Marduk imprisons Kingu and seizes the Tablets of Destiny. Then he smashes Tiamat’s skull and splits open her corpse like a clamshell. He raises up the parts, making the sky and earth. He makes the constellations, establishes the calendar, puts the North Star in the sky, and brings forth the sun and moon. From Tiamat’s spittle he makes the clouds, the wind, the rain, and from her poison the billowing fog. He heaps a mountain over her head and pierces her eyes, from which flow the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. He heaps other mountains over her breasts, then bends her tail into the sky to make the Milky Way. With her crotch he holds up the sky. Marduk returns home in triumph, delivers the Tablets of Destiny to Anu, and presents his captives before the gods. He washes off the gore of battle, dresses in royal attire, and sits on a high throne to receive homage from the gods. He proclaims that he will build a great temple, a luxurious dwelling for himself and all the gods. He brings the rebel Kingu before the assembly, executes him, and from his blood makes human beings. Marduk then divides the gods into those who live in the sky and those beneath the earth. The grateful gods eagerly build the palace of which Marduk had spoken, and after two years they complete the great ziggurat of Babylon. A banquet is held, and Marduk is proclaimed lord of the universe. The story ends with a long list of the fifty names of Marduk (over a fourth of the total poem), with detailed explanations of each of them. In this way the world was made, and the same order of kingship was established among the gods as in Babylon itself. general introduction

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Prominent Themes in Eastern Creation Stories In Enuma elish and other Mesopotamian myths, the original creative element is watery, feminine, and ambivalent, both life-giving and life-destroying. The dangerous, chaotic waters may be represented by a monster or dragon that is overcome by a hero, who fashions the cosmos. There is a complex association between water, chaos, monsters, and death. Creation and dragon combat can be one and the same. The hero establishes the world order and his own permanent reign over the corpse of the monster. Eastern myths, like Hesiod’s story in the Theogony, envision the formation and organization of the world and of human society as process and change. The world has not always been the way it is now. Its initial unity in the primeval waters has moved to diversity. Creation is not from nothing but, as in Hesiod, from a primordial something by means of sexual reproduction and a series of successively more powerful generations. A younger generation opposes, overcomes, and controls or destroys an older generation until the present world order comes into being. Similarities between the Hittite-Hurrian and Hesiodic myths are striking. According to Kingship in Heaven, first a primordial god (Alalu) was ruler, then the sky god (Anu) ruled, then another god (Kumarbi), and then, probably, the storm god (Teshub). The same sequence of generations appears in Hesiod. First came Chaos (= Alalu?), then Sky/Ouranos (= Anu), then Kronos (= Kumarbi), then the storm god Zeus (= Teshub). Both Anu (Sky) and Ouranos (Sky) were castrated by their sons, and gods were born from the severed organs. As long as heaven and earth are locked in sexual embrace, forming a solid whole, there is no space within which the created world can appear. Castration was a real practice imposed on enemies taken in ancient war (and in modern too), but in the logic of the myth castration is separation, and separation is creation. Both males, Kumarbi and Kronos, have children within themselves. The children of each, Teshub and Zeus, both of them storm gods, overcome their fathers to win victory in heaven. According to the Hittite-Hurrian Song of Ullikummi, the storm god, Teshub, must defend his reign against a dragon of chaos, Ullikummi, even as 16

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Zeus takes on the formidable Typhon. The Hittite-Hurrian Ea uses the weapon with which heaven and earth were separated to cut the enormous Ullikummi, born from a rock, away from Ubelluri, the giant who holds up the world; Zeus too uses a special weapon, the thunderbolt, against the monster Typhon. Teshub takes his stand on Mount Casius in Syria to view Ullikummi, the same mountain on which the battle against Typhon takes place, according to Apollodorus, a Greek compiler of myths of the second century a.d. In fact the name “Typhon” seems to be derived from the West Semitic Sapon, the god of Mount Casius. The stone that Kronos swallows instead of his children is similar in the equation of stone with offspring in the Hittite-Hurrian myth. In Enuma elish, first came the generation of Apsu and Tiamat and their descendants. These new gods bring a principle of movement into the world (their dance) that contrasts sharply with the older forces, standing for inactivity and inertia (symbolized by their desire to rest). The primordial gods’ resistance to change leads to a battle in which the newer gods overthrow the older. This succession motif is also the basis of Hesiod’s story. In the first round of the battle, the wise and clever Ea overcomes wicked Apsu by a spell; his magical power resides in the spoken word. Ea’s cleverness is contrasted with Apsu’s brutish lust to destroy, a common folktale motif. The dragon’s slayer is clever and tricky; his opponent, dull and stupid. Tiamat (like Hesiod’s Earth in the Theogony) is both beneficent and malevolent, first opposing her husband’s destructive designs but then giving birth to an army of monsters. Later, in a repetition of the succession motif, Tiamat is destroyed by her grandson Marduk, who becomes ruler of the world. In both Enuma elish and in Hesiod’s Theogony the first generation of gods is made up of primal pairs: Apsu, the male sweet waters, and Tiamat, the female salt waters; and in Hesiod, Sky and Earth. The fathers Apsu and Sky hate their first children, who are begotten within the mother. In an initial round of conflict, the sons, clever Ea and wily Kronos, overthrow their fathers. In a second round of conflict, gods of the third generation—the storm god Marduk and the storm god Zeus—revolt against an earlier generation. Terrible monsters are overcome: Tiamat and her offspring in Enuma elish; the Titans and Typhon, children of Earth, in the Greek story. The general introduction

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storm god is then made king. Eastern and Hesiodic myths alike report a cosmic history that begins with mighty powers of nature and ends in the organization of the universe as a monarchic, patriarchal state. There are differences in detail and profound differences in tone between the Eastern stories and the Greek. The writing systems of the Mesopotamians and Hittite-Hurrians, unlike the Greek alphabet, were unable to record the suppleness and color of spoken language. Nonetheless, there are enough similarities to place beyond doubt that the Hesiodic cosmogonic tradition is old and has passed across linguistic and cultural lines. Hesiodic myth partly reflects the Greeks’ own attitudes, but its basic structure, and many of its cultural assumptions, come from non-Greek peoples.

Other Eastern Motifs in Hesiod’s Poetry Works and Days, too, belongs to an ancient Eastern literary genre called Wisdom Poetry, wherein a wise or prophetic teacher admonishes an errant ruler or relative. Many of Hesiod’s moralizing maxims in the Works and Days have clear Eastern parallels—for example, the admonition to labor and the need to avoid idleness. The Prometheus myth’s explanation of sacrificial practice has Eastern precedents. Often in the East many deities work together to make a creature, as the Olympian gods make Pandora. Parallels to the certainly non-Greek Myth of the Five Races are found in Iran and Judea, including such specific features as long life, good weather, and a single language for the Golden Age, followed by short life and a breakdown of family and virtue in the last age. Animal fable is part of the Eastern genre of wisdom from the earliest times, as represented in Hesiod’s story of the Hawk and the Nightingale. The promise of good times to follow on righteous behavior is paralleled by Yahweh’s instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai, as are similar Hesiodic moral precepts by other Eastern sources. Hesiod’s list of lucky and unlucky days has clear Eastern parallels. The myths of Herakles, one of which is told in The Shield of Herakles, seem almost entirely inspired by Eastern tales. The story of Herakles’ birth, told in the Shield, is very like Egyptian propaganda for the birth of Pharaoh in the New Kingdom, wherein the great god Amon visits the queen on the 18

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same night as her husband. Most of Herakles’ traditional exploits, though not told in the Shield, find Eastern parallels too, sometimes close (the lion combat, the seven-headed Hydra, the Golden Apples of the Hesperidês), and are especially reminiscent of the adventures of Samson. Like Herakles, Samson kills a lion with his bare hands and is undone by a woman. The notion of a cycle of labors is Eastern, reminding us of the eleven labors of a Mesopotamian hero named Ninurta.

The Transmission of Eastern Motifs to Greece Somehow Eastern literary expression, then, became part of the special language of the Greek aoidos, the singer of tales. But how did such elements cross from East to West? How did they cross the barriers of language and custom? Homer and Hesiod were aoidoi (“singers”), heirs to ancient traditions of making oral verse, whereas in the East the scribal schools were transcendent. In comparing Western literature like Hesiod’s poems with Eastern literature, we are comparing alphabetic, aoidic, dictated documents by men of questionable social status with nonalphabetic exercises produced in the scribal schools by learned professionals of high social status, meant to impress and educate students and peers. But Hesiod’s story of the storm god’s war against his forefathers and a dragon of chaos can have come to Greece only through oral means. It is easy to conceive of bilingual speakers, not being sure if we mean biliterate as well, or instead. If we think of bilingualism as meaning the ability to speak two languages, we can imagine a bilingual community wherein people spoke both Greek and a Semitic language. The transmission of oral song must have taken place in such an illiterate environment. Greek-speaking singers may have heard and learned from Semitic-speaking singers, but the closeness of Semitic expressions and poetic style to Greek expressions and poetic style make it more likely that individual bilingual poets could sing in both a Semitic language and in Greek. It is striking that the flow of tradition is entirely in one direction, as if an inheritor of an ancient tradition of Semitic song passes it on to a feeble Hellenic tradition that is quickly enveloped and taken over. general introduction

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Bilingual speakers are common in the world today, but in an illiterate environment it is probably not possible for a Greek to learn a West Semitic language well through casual contact or vice versa. We must therefore assume intermarriage and bilingual households, some of them including oral performers who could sing in either language. Such households are at every level plausible and are probably attested archeologically in mixed Semitic-Greek epigraphic finds from eighth-century Ischia, in Italy, and Eretria, in Euboea. The transmission of culture from Semitic speakers to Greek speakers remains a mystery, but it somehow took place. Hesiod’s poems are the strongest testimony to this.

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Introduction to the Theogony

There was no official account of the creation in Greek culture, but Hesiod’s Theogony provided by far the most common one. Hesiod tells of the origin of the universe through succeeding generations of gods, and much of the Theogony is devoted to the recitation of genealogies. Cosmogony, “the begetting of the cosmos,” a story that explains the origin of the world, is for Hesiod the same as theogony, “the begetting of the gods,” a story that explains the origin of the gods and their rise to power. In form Hesiod’s poem is an elaborate hymn to the Greek storm god, Zeus. To explain the glory of Zeus, and how his rule over the world came to pass, Hesiod must go back to the beginning of things, to the generations of Chaos, “chasm,” Earth (Gaia, ghī-a), and Sky (Ouranos, oo-ra-nos).

Summary of the Poem First came Chaos, not a thing or condition, but a being of some kind. Chaos was not always there, yet where it comes from Hesiod does not tell, and we are not sure what Hesiod meant by the word. “Chaos” is cognate with our “gap” and “yawn.” It means “chasm,” in which a separation has taken place, leaving a gap in the middle, and separation is a traditional way of thinking about creation. Also Earth came into being, the world’s solid foundation. Then, or at the same time, came Tartaros, another being, but also a place far below Earth. Earth later has offspring fathered by Tartaros. Hesiod is trying, in mythical terms, to delineate the space of the world we live in. Another primordial original god is Eros, “desire,” the force that brings sexual beings together to produce still more offspring. Eros is a being too. From sexual generation will come the complex genealogies that make up so much of the Theogony. Apparently Earth and Eros did not come from Chaos or from each other, but they constitute the three-formed aspect of the primordial stuff from which the world arose: a gaping (Chaos), the foundation 21

of everything (Earth), and sexual attraction (Eros), which guarantees future generation and change. Darkness (Erebos, er-e-bos) and Night (Nyx) emerged from Chaos. They are really qualities of Chaos. From Earth, the foundation of all, sprang a host of creatures, baffling in their complexity and in their origins and nature. Earth bore first, without the benefit of sexual intercourse, Sky, the Mountains, and Sea (Pontos). Then in sexual union with her own son Sky, Earth gave birth to six male and six female Titans. What “Titan” means is unknown. Last of the Titans to be born was Kronos, Sky’s rival for power. One Titan was the watery male Ocean (Okeanos, ō-kē-a-nos) and the female Tethys (tē-this), her name probably a distortion of the Mesopotamian watery Tiamat (see the section on Enuma elish in the General Introduction). Ocean is a river that goes around the world, where the arc of the sky touches the earth’s surface. Ocean feeds the waters of springs, wells, and rivers. Ocean and Tethys united to give birth to six thousand Oceanids (ō-sē-a-nids), who are spirits of the sea, rivers, and fountains. Other Titans are Koios and Kreios, whose names are obscure, and Theia, “goddess.” They have little role to play in myth, as does the Titan Phoibê (fē-bē), “brilliant goddess,” somehow connected with the light of the sky. The Titan Themis, “law,” refers to what is secure and stable. Oracles were given in her name, and she will bear children to Zeus. The name of the Titan Mnemosynê (nē-mos-i-nē) means “memory,” and she will bear the Muses to Zeus. Iapetos looks like the name of one of the biblical sons of Noah, Japheth, ancestor of the Europeans, but there is no other resemblance. Kronos and Rhea (rē-a) are doublets for Sky and Earth. They are father and mother, or grandfather and grandmother, of the twelve Olympians, including Zeus, the principal subject of praise in the Theogony. Earth also bore in union with Sky the three Cyclopês (si-klō-pēz), “round-eyes,” and the hugely powerful Hundred-Handers (Hekatonkirês, he-ka-ton-kī-rēz). The relation of the Cyclopês to the shepherd Cyclops, Poseidon’s son, who imprisons Odysseus in the Odyssey, has never been clarified. Hesiod’s Cyclopês were divine smiths who manufactured Zeus’s overwhelming weapon—the lightning. They are named Brontês, “thunderer,” Steropês, “flasher,” and Argês, “brightener.” The three Hundred-Handers 22

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had each a hundred arms that shot from their shoulders and fifty heads. They are creatures of indomitable power who can mangle an enemy in their massive hands. The name of the Titan Hyperion means “he who goes above.” He is a sun god. In union with Theia, he is father to Helios, a sun god too; Moon (Selenê, se-lē-nē); and Dawn (Eos, ē-os). Daughters of Night are the Fates (Moirai, moy-rī), who determine one’s birth, the length of one’s life, and the time of one’s death. Nemesis (nem-e-sis), “she who gives what is due,” is another daughter of Night: she brings punishment for evil deeds. Then Darkness and Night had sexual intercourse and produced their opposites: Brightness (Aithêr, ī-ther) and Day (Hemera, hē-mer-a). Although Sky and Earth produced many children, none could come forth, because Sky loathed his own children. He hid them away “in a hiding place of Earth.” An unhappy Earth therefore plotted with her son Kronos to overcome the despotic Sky. She gave Kronos a steel sickle, and then, when Sky came to Earth “dragging night, and he lay all over Earth wanting to make love, and he was spread out all over her,” Kronos reached out and cut away his father’s genitals. Great Earth below, fertilized by the drops of blood that fell from the gory wound, gave birth to Erinys (er-in-is), a Fury, a fierce female being who persecutes and drives to madness anyone who sheds kindred blood or who has broken a solemn oath (often in the plural, Erinyes (er-in-i-ez), the Furies). Also from the drops of blood were born the Giants, “Earth-born ones,” creatures of huge power and unbridled ferocity. (One day they will bring their power against Zeus and the Olympians, although Hesiod does not tell this story.) Sky lay constantly across Earth, an image of perpetual sexual intercourse. He fertilized her but would not permit his children to come forth. There is no place for the activity of the world. By cutting off his father’s genitals, Kronos separated Earth and Sky. Sky rose to where he was supposed to be, giving the world its proper shape, with Sky above and Earth beneath, and Tartaros someplace beneath Earth. Ocean flows around the whole, the primeval waters. All this has come from Chaos, “chasm,” but the separation of the primordial elements has been bought at a high cost—the violence of son against father. Sky cursed his traitorous son, Kronos. introduction to the theogony

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The blood of Sky fell on Earth, but Sky’s genitals fell into the sea. The foam of the sea sloshed around them, an extended metaphor from human intercourse, until the foam (Greek aphros) produced a goddess of awesome strength, Aphrodite. Thus the principle of overwhelming sexual desire was born from the gory genitals of a primordial god, the product of a vicious dismemberment. The story encodes the destructive power of sexual attraction, a persistent theme in Greek myth. Earth gave birth to the Titans, the Cyclopês, and the Hundred-Handers through intercourse with her own son Sky, but she also had sex with Sea, another son, giving rise to a sequence of complex genealogies of other children. Some were noted for their monstrous forms; others had a variable appearance, like the sea itself. As portrayed in Greek art, the Sphinx was female, with wings and a lion’s body. Geryon (jer-i-on), an enemy of Herakles, had three bodies fused at the waist, and he had a two-headed dog, Orthos. Kerberos had fifty heads and guarded the gates of Hades’ house. The water serpent Hydra, “watery,” had seven heads. Echidna was an ordinary woman from the waist up but snaky beneath. Chimaira (ki-mē-ra), “she-goat,” had a lion’s body, a serpent’s tail, and a goat’s head protruding from her back (see fig. 8). Keto (kē-to), “sea monster,” was a fiend of the sea. The Gray Old Ladies (Graiai, grī-ī), were gray from birth but had beautiful cheeks. The Nemean Lion could not be killed by ordinary means. Nereus (nē-rūs), the Old Man of the Sea, could tell the future, like many sea gods, and he could change into any shape he wished. He was the father of the fifty-two Nereids (nē-re-idz), hard to tell apart from the Oceanids, but there were far fewer of them. Thetis (thē-tis) was the best-known Nereid, because she was the mother of Achilles. Thetis could also change her shape at will. Now that Sky was overthrown, Kronos became lord of the world, but he needed to be devious, violent, and wary to maintain his rule. Because his parents, Sky and Earth, warned him that he would fall victim to one of his children, Kronos gulped them down as fast as his wife and sister, Rhea, gave birth. Rhea sought advice from Earth and Sky, her parents, about this terrible situation. They told her to go to the island of Crete. There she should bear her youngest child, Zeus. She hid the child deep in a Cretan cave so he could 24

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not be discovered. When Kronos demanded the latest child in order that he could swallow him, Rhea gave him a huge stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Kronos swallowed it down, and Zeus was saved. He grew to manhood on Crete. Hesiod does not reveal what happened next. Somehow Zeus forced Kronos to vomit up his children. The stone came out, too. (It was later displayed at Apollo’s shrine at Delphi.) Now Zeus became king of the gods. He and his brothers and sisters took up residence on Mount Olympos, the highest mountain in Greece. But the Titans resented this arrangement. They gathered together and attacked the Olympian gods in the colossal Titanomachy (tī–tan-o-ma-kē), the Battle of the Titans (Greek machê means “battle”). Earth advised Zeus that he could be victorious in the battle only with the help of the three Hundred-Handers. He therefore released them, along with the Cyclopês, from Tartaros, where Sky, fearing their strength, had confined them. The Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopês were enfeebled from long captivity, but they restored their strength by drinking nectar (perhaps meaning “what overcomes death”) and a magical food called ambrosia (“undying”). The grateful Cyclopês, brilliant metallurgists, now made the thunderbolt for Zeus, his distinctive weapon. With the Hundred-Handers’ help, the course of the war was turned. Zeus cast the Titans into black Tartaros. Poseidon fixed gates of bronze in a wall that imprisoned them, and the Hundred-Handers bound the Titans and kept guard. Thus Zeus relegated to primal darkness the forces that threaten to disrupt the world order. Zeus placed the Titan Atlas, a son of Iapetos and an Oceanid, at the edge of the world, ordering him to hold up the heavens (see fig. 9). Thus Zeus guaranteed the lasting separation of Sky and Earth. But Zeus’s struggle was not over. Earth had directed Zeus to muster the Hundred-Handers in his fight against her own offspring, the Titans, but she now regretted Zeus’s triumph and became his greatest adversary. Having sex with her child Tartaros, she gave birth to Typhon (tī-fon), a gigantic monster. Typhon would have taken over the entire earth, but Zeus attacked with his lightning bolts, melted the lands all around, and defeated the monster, imprisoning him beneath the earth. introduction to the theogony

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Although he had been victorious against the Titans and against Typhon, Zeus was still insecure in his rule. The logic of the Succession Myth required that he too would be overthrown. Kronos was craftier than Sky, and Zeus was craftier than Kronos. Who would outwit Zeus? To forestall his own destruction, Zeus swallowed his pregnant first wife, the Oceanid Metis (mē-tis), “mind.” Zeus had learned from Sky and Earth that Metis’ second child after Athena, with whom she was already pregnant, would depose him. Sky had maintained ascendancy by thrusting his children down in a hiding place of their mother. Kronos gobbled up his offspring. Zeus simply swallowed the mother before the baby was born. Metis, “mind,” “cleverness,” thus became a part of his own being. According to later tradition, Zeus suffered a severe headache. Either Prometheus or Hephaistos smacked his head with an ax. Out leaped Athena fully armed, shouting the war cry. Athena is female, but she has masculine qualities, and she is wholly Zeus’s child, owing loyalty to him alone. Thus the child predestined to overthrow Zeus was never born. Zeus flouted the prophecy by defying the biological principle by which only a female can give birth. The theme of Zeus’s possible overthrow—like his grandfather’s and his father’s—is not confined to the prophecy attached to Metis. The “wily” Titan Prometheus possesses in his epithet the essential requirement for an enemy of the king of the gods. Using a trick similar to that practiced on Kronos by Rhea, Prometheus disguised the best part of the sacrificial offering in the dispute over its division. Zeus chose the bones, hidden in fat, over the rich flesh, which is now reserved for men. Hesiod says that Zeus saw through the trick, but the poet only explains a tradition degrading to the king of the gods, who here acts like the stupid ogre. Playing the role of tyrant, Zeus inflicts retribution on men for Prometheus’ trick by withholding fire. But Prometheus outsmarts the evil lord for a second time, stealing fire from heaven in a fennel stalk. The enraged Zeus devises a terrible punishment. He orders Hephaistos to make a woman (named Pandora in the Works and Days). Athena gives the girl clothes and a crown. She is beautiful, a wonder to behold, but “a great affliction for men.” The poet’s conclusion—a pious “So nobody ever gets around the king of the 26

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gods”—hardly accords with the two deceptions that Prometheus has practiced on Zeus. Prometheus does not overcome Zeus and replace him, as earlier protagonists in the Succession Myth had done, but he does limit Zeus’s prerogatives in the unequal distribution of the Greek sacrifice. Prometheus shows Zeus’s power to be maleficent, an enemy of goodness, in the great king’s fashioning of Pandora. There is no escaping the harm that her descendants—women— will bring to men. Zeus may be great, the subject of Hesiod’s hymn, but his power can work to man’s disadvantage.

Prominent Themes in Hesiod’s Theogony Hesiod’s story of the creation of the world and the gods owes much to folktale. Gods act as villains (Sky, Kronos) and tricksters (Kronos, Zeus); goddesses are sexual victims (Earth, Rhea), dangerous females (Earth), and helpful guardians (Earth, Rhea). Typhon is a fearsome dragon; Zeus, his slayer. Rancorous dispute within the family motivates the narrative: Wives scheme against husbands (Earth against Sky), sons against fathers (Kronos against Sky, Zeus against Kronos), and fathers against children (Kronos against the Olympians). Olden stories have been reshaped to fashion a stirring tale that solves the question of how Zeus became lord of the world. Hesiod’s world is not a fixed construction, created by God all at once and for all time. Rather, the creation arises from continuous growth, from constant progression away from an initial unity. First came Chaos/Chasm, then Night and Darkness, which engender their opposites, Brightness and Day. Then came Earth, the first living being, a female who without the benefit of sexual intercourse gave birth to Sea and Sky. Eros/Sexual Desire arose too, to drive the growing creation. Later, Earth had sex with her own offspring, and after this, with rare exceptions, procreation was through sexual means. Hesiod’s tale reports the climb to power of male over female. Originally was female Earth, the all-mother; in the end is the male Zeus, lord of the creation. When evolutionary growth began, Earth produced children without sex; in the end, Zeus acts likewise when Athena leaps from his head fully introduction to the theogony

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armed. For Greeks it was normal that a well-ordered creation, like an organized home or town, was one governed by a wily and formidable male. This was the prevailing model, and yet the sway of Earth is never totally gone. Earth remains the fundamental basis of the world. Earth, wife and mother of Sky, plotted with her son, the crafty Kronos, to maim Father Sky and destroy his power. Sky was an ogre; he was against life and what was to come. He heeded only his own passion. Like the hero in folktale, crafty Kronos leaped from a hiding place to destroy the monster who like the dragon of folktale sexually imperiled the woman. Kronos unmanned his own father with an adamantine sickle, a distinctive weapon like those that folktale heroes use to defeat their adversaries. As in many folktales, the story takes place within the ambiguities of the family: A father produces a son in the hope that the son may succeed him, not destroy him! Sky, a nasty father, got what was coming to him; but Kronos was scarcely any better. Sky kept his children down in the womb of Earth. The flesh-eating Kronos took them into his own stomach. (The Greek nêdys means both “womb” and “stomach.”) Sky and Earth, now acting together, informed Rhea how to outsmart her husband. The onetime-crafty Kronos has become the foolish ogre, confusing a stone with his own offspring. Rhea, a doublet of Earth, takes the baby to a Cretan cavern, the womb of Earth, where a fresh champion grows up, the crafty Zeus. In the feature of Zeus’s childhood on Crete, folktale is shaped by historical cult. On Crete there was an old religion of a youthful male god, evidently the associate of a mother goddess venerated in caves on Crete. When the conquering Greeks discovered the male god of the native, non-Greek people of Crete, they associated him with their own male god, Zeus, although as a dying god of nature the Cretan god was wholly unlike the Greek storm god. The Greeks called this god the Cretan Zeus, in order to distinguish him from the Olympian god. Cretans even pointed out where the Cretan Zeus was buried. According to Cretan myth, Rhea gave the baby Zeus to a group of young men called Curetês, “youths,” who danced around while noisily banging their spears against shields to conceal the baby’s cries from Kronos. The Curetês were not simply players in myth but in history actually worshipped the mother goddess in this way. 28

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The Titans, whose name is mysterious, came to stand for the wild powers of nature. Their offspring are the seas, the rivers, and the stars in the sky. Crafty Zeus, the entirely anthropomorphic god of the Classical period (during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.), could not overcome them without the help of the Cyclopês and the Hundred-Handers. Only with their help could he cast the Titans and Typhon into Tartaros. He freed the Cyclopês and the Hundred-Handers from Tartaros. The Cyclopês became Zeus’s armorers; the Hundred-Handers, his mercenaries. Fashioning a new order, Zeus behaved as a politician, correcting the mistakes of earlier days. The ambivalence of the female is a hallmark of Hesiod’s tale. At first Earth encourages change; then, bitter because of the Titans’ defeat, she works against it. She gives birth to Typhon, adversary of the new order. Zeus cannot in truth slay Typhon any more than he can overcome Earth herself, so he imprisons him beneath the earth. Typhon is still in our world, in the savage winds that shake the sea. As a prize for defeating the dragon, Zeus becomes king, marries, and fathers many children. Many folktales end in just this way. In Hesiod’s creation myth, the motifs of separation, succession, and dragon combat are ingeniously melded to tell the story of the fashioning of the ordered and diverse world from the disordered and homogeneous one that preceded it.

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Theogony

The Muses of Helikon—let us begin with them, who live on the great and mystical mountain Helikon, and dance around the violet spring on light feet, and the altar of the mighty son of Kronos.° Bathing their tender skin in the spring of Permessos, or the Spring of the Horse, or in sacred Olmeios, they make their dance on the highest peak of Helikon—lovely, desirable!—and they dance with power.° Leaping up from there, hidden in a thick mist, they go forth at night, sending forth their most beautiful song, singing of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, and divine Hera of Argos, who walks in golden sandals, and the daughter of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, flashing-eyed Athena, and Phoibos Apollo, and Artemis who thrills to shoot arrows, and Poseidon, who holds the earth, lord of earthquake, and holy Themis and Aphrodite, who twinkles with her eyes, and golden-crowned Hebê, and beautiful Dionê, and Leto, and Iapetos, and crooked-counseling Kronos, and Dawn, and great Helios and shining Moon, and Earth, and great Ocean, and dark Night, and the sacred race of the other deathless

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3. . . . son of Kronos: This is Zeus, who must have had an altar on Mount Helikon. Helikon is a snow-capped mountain around 6,000 feet high, ten miles inland from the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, halfway between Thebes and Delphi. It is the tallest mountain in Boeotia. The Muses (perhaps “thinkers”) are goddesses personifying the spirit of the oral tradition that allows the singer to compose his song. Hesiod feels that his song comes from outside himself, a common impression among great artists. (Bob Dylan speaks of “that creative something out there.”) Hesiod’s Theogony begins with a proem that is similar to the Homeric Hymns to various gods, which also seem to have introduced other songs. 6. . . . with power: Permessos, Spring of the Horse, and Olmeios are local names for actual springs or watercourses near the top of Helikon. Later the name Spring of the Horse (hippokrenê in Greek) was explained as deriving from the winged horse Pegasos’ striking the earth there with his hoof, causing a spring to rise up.

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Figure 4. A Muse playing the lyre. A bird perches on the ground before her. She wears a gown that shows beneath a robe wrapped around her waist. The lyre has seven strings and a wooden sounding box. Written on the rock, beneath her, is the word HLIKON, an explicit reference to Hesiod’s poem. Above the Muse is a kalos inscription, “So-and-So is handsome.” Of uncertain purpose, kalos (“handsome”) inscriptions were part of the culture of sexual love between older men and boys in the Greek symposium and are often found on Athenian pottery between roughly 550 and 430 b.c. This one reads: AXEIOPEITHES [is] HANDSOME [and so is] ALKIMACHO[S]. Athenian white-ground oil jar, ca. 440–430 b.c. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich (Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol; https://upload.wikimedia.org /wikipedia/commons/6/63/Mousai_Helikon_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_Schoen80_n1.jpg)

ones, who never die.° These Muses once taught Hesiod beautiful song while he looked after his sheep beneath sacred Helikon. First of all the goddesses spoke this word to me, the Muses who live on Olympos, the daughters of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish: “You, rough shepherds! Wretched objects of reproach—nothing but bellies!—we know how to speak many false things that look like the truth, and we know how, when we wish, to speak the truth.” So spoke the eloquent daughters of great Zeus. They plucked and gave me a staff, the shoot of a blooming laurel,° a thing of wonder, and they breathed into me a marvelous voice so that I might celebrate what came before and what will come after. And they commanded me to sing of the race of the blessed gods who never die, to sing of them first of all, and last. But why do I talk about an oak or a rock? ° So come you, let us begin with the Muses, who delight with song the great mind of their father Zeus in Olympos, telling in harmony of how things are now, and how they will be, and how they once were. Untiring, 18. . . . who never die: The Muses’ song begins with Zeus and his wife, Hera, who had a famous temple near Argos. The meaning of the Greek aigiochos, “aegis-bearing,” here translated as “who carries the goatskin fetish,” is unclear, but it seems to refer to a magical shield usually carried by Zeus or worn as a cloak by Athena, made of goatskin (aigis means “goat”) with snakes for tassels. The Muses’ song passes then to Zeus’s daughter, Athena, and Zeus’s children, Apollo and Artemis. Then comes the great god Poseidon and the mighty goddesses Themis, “law” (she is actually a Titan), and Aphrodite, who suggests Hebê, “youth,” and Dionê, a feminine form of “Zeus,” who in Homer is Aphrodite’s mother (but in Hesiod she is some kind of nymph). Then comes the powerful goddess Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, and two Titans: Iapetos, probably the same name as the biblical Japheth (but they are not at all the same character), the father of Prometheus; and Kronos. Kronos’ epithet “CrookedCounseling” (angkylometis) may originally have meant “he of the curved sickle.” Finally come the elemental gods: Dawn (Eos), Sun (Helios), Moon (Selenê), Earth (Gaia), Ocean (Okeanos), and Night (Nyx). Hesiod gives us a catalogue of gods in a generally sensible order. His poetry is much given to the making of lists, and there are several such in the Theogony. 26. laurel: The laurel was sacred to Apollo, the god of song. Ordinarily such hexametric poetry was sung to the lyre. Perhaps the meaning is that Hesiod is so rustic that he could not play the lyre. 30. . . . a rock: This phrase has never been explained, but must refer to some proverb. Its meaning is “why avoid our main topic by talking of irrelevant things.”

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their sweet voice flows from their mouths, and the house of father Zeus, the thunderer, laughs at the delicate voice of the goddesses as it spreads across the room, and the peaks of snowy Olympos ring, and the houses of the deathless ones. And they, sending forth an undying voice, celebrate first of all in their song the holy race of the gods from the beginning, those whom Earth and broad Sky ° first begot, and the gods who came forth from them, the bestowers of good things. Second, they celebrate Zeus, the father of gods and men, both in the beginning of their song and at its end: how he is the greatest of the gods, and most mighty in power. And again, the Muses, the daughters of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, who dwell on Olympos, delight the mind of Zeus in Olympos by singing of the race of men, and of the powerful Giants.° For Mnemosynê, who rules over the hills of Eleutherai, bore the Muses in Pieria after sleeping with the son of Kronos, to be a respite from evil and a cessation of sorrow.° For nine nights did Zeus the Counselor mix with her in love, entering her holy bed set apart from the deathless ones. And when a year had passed, and the seasons were turned as the months waned, and many days came to completion, she bore nine daughters of like mind who care for song in their hearts, their spirits 39. Sky: The Greek for Earth is Gaia; and for Sky, Ouranos (Latin Uranus); but they seem more principles than personalities. 46. Giants: But Hesiod never mentions the Battle of the Gods and the Giants, an important myth not clearly attested until the fifth century b.c. (in Pindar, Nemean 1.67–69), three hundred years after Hesiod. In Homer and Hesiod, the Giants are obscure, powerful beings about whom few details are told, seemingly halfway between men and gods. 48. . . . of sorrow: Mnemosynê, “memory,” is the mother of the Muses because the Muses pass on the stories of olden times, knowledge of which depends on memory. Eleutherai is on Mount Kithairon, near Helikon, in Boeotia. Pieria is the region north of Olympos, sacred to the Muses, where the gods first alight when descending from Mount Olympos. Apparently there was an ancient cult to the Muses in Pieria; they often are called Pierides.

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without care, a little bit away from the topmost peak of snowy Olympos. There are their brilliant dancing places and their beautiful houses. Beside them dwell the Graces, and Desire,° in joyous festivities. Sending forth a lovely sound from their mouth, they sing of the laws of all, and they celebrate the cherished habits of the deathless ones, sending forth their lovely voice. Then they went to Olympos, rejoicing in their beautiful voice, their ambrosial° song, and the black earth resounded about them as they sang, and a lovely sound rose up beneath their feet as they went to their father. He ruled over the sky, himself holding the thunderbolt and the flashing lightning, having overcome through strength his father, Kronos. And he fairly allotted every portion to the deathless ones, and he established their ranks. So of these things the Muses sang, who have their houses on Olympos, the nine daughters begotten of great Zeus—Kleio and Euterpê and Thaleia and Melpomenê and Terpsichorê and Erato and Polyhymnia and Ourania and Kalliopê, who is the foremost of all, for she too attends upon respected princes.° Whomever of the god-nourished princes the daughters of great Zeus honor and behold at birth, they pour sweet dew upon his tongue, and from his mouth words flow like honey. All the people look toward him as he settles cases with true judgments. And he, speaking convincingly,

56. Graces and Desire: The Greek terms are Charites and Himeros: They dwell beside the Muses on Mount Olympos, because they have much in common. 60. ambrosial: Usually “ambrosial” means “immortal,” but here probably just “pleasant,” “fragrant.” 70. . . . respected princes: Hesiod perhaps invented these names of the Muses, which correspond to the functions of song as Hesiod understands them. Later, the Muses were assigned to specific genres: Kleio (“making famous”), history; Euterpê (“giving delight”), elegiac poetry; Thalia(“blooming”), comedy; Melpomenê (“of sweet song”), tragedy; Terpsichorê (“delighting in dance”), dance; Erato (“of love”), lyric poetry; Polyhymnia (“much-hymned”), hymns; Ourania (“heavenly”), astronomy; Kalliopê (“of beautiful voice”), epic poetry. Hesiod’s poem is pitched to the social elite, the princes who require the services of the Muses in maintaining their hold on power.

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quickly, and knowingly puts an end to even a great quarrel. For this reason there are wise princes, who turn matters around when the people go astray in assembly, persuading them with gentle words. And when the prince passes through a crowd, people seek his favor with honeyed respect. He stands out when people are assembled: Such is the sacred gift of the Muses to men. From the Muses and Apollo, who shoots from afar, come singers upon the earth, and the lyre players, but from Zeus come the kings: That man is blessed, whomever the Muses love—sweet is the voice that flows from his mouth. For if someone has recent pain in his breast and groans, troubled in heart, but a singer, servant of the Muses, sings of the great deeds of men of olden times and of the blessed gods who live on Olympos— then quickly that man forgets his troubles, unconcerned with his sorrows. The gifts of the goddesses quickly turn him away from these. So greetings, children of Zeus! Give me lovely song! Celebrate the holy race of the deathless ones , who last forever, who came forth from Earth and starry Sky, and dark Night, and those whom salty Sea nourished. Tell us how the gods and Earth first came into being, and the rivers and the endless sea raging with swells, and the shining stars, and the broad heaven up above. And tell which gods came from them, the bestowers of good things, and how they divided their wealth, and how they divided their spheres of influence, and how they first took possession of Olympos with its many valleys.° Sing to me these things, Muses who live on Olympos! From the beginning, tell me which gods first came into being! First of all Chaos came into being, then broad-breasted Earth, the ever-safe foundation of all the deathless ones, who live on the peaks of snowy Olympos, and shadowy Tartaros in a hiding place of the earth with its wide ways, and Eros, who is the most beautiful of all the deathless gods, who relaxes the limbs and overwhelms

95. . . . valleys: Hesiod does not really fulfill this program, never again mentioning the gods’ wealth or the division of powers or how the gods first took possession of Olympos.

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the mind and wise counsel in the breasts of all the gods and men.° From Chaos came Darkness and black Night, and from Night came Brightness and Day, whom Night conceived and bore by uniting in love with Darkness. Earth bore starry Sky first, like to her in size, so that he covered her all around, everywhere, so that there might always be a secure seat for the blessed gods. And Earth gave birth to the blessed Mountains, the pleasant halls of the gods, the nymphs who live in the wooded hills. She bore the barren waters, raging with its swell, Sea, without making delightful love. But then, uniting with Sky, Earth bore deep-swirling Ocean, and Koios, and Kreios, and Hyperion, and Iapetos, and Theia, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosynê, and golden-crowned Phoibê, and beloved Tethys. After them was born crooked-counseled Kronos, the youngest and most terrible of these children, who hated his powerful father.°

102. . . . and men: Chaos means “chasm” and is related to the English word “gap.” Chaos is a being but embodies the notion that in the beginning there was a separation, as when you open your mouth and a gap appears. Earth and Tartaros then appear (out of Chaos?), both beings too, but also something that one can stand on (Earth), and a dark, mysterious place beneath that something (Tartaros). Eros is sex, the force the makes things happen in the world, that makes one forget what is wise. He is never mentioned again in the Theogony (except once in a different connection, in line 164) but is present throughout as the principle of generation. 105. Darkness: The Greek for Darkness is Erebos; Night is Nyx, Brightness is Aither, and Day is Hemera. In the beginning is darkness, but darkness produces its opposite, light, which is progress. 114. . . . father: These twelve gods are the mysterious Titans, a word of uncertain meaning. The story that once there were older gods, overthrown by a younger generation, originated in Mesopotamia, whence arrived much Greek myth and the general outlines of Hesiod’s story. Except for Kronos and Rhea, who will replace Sky and Earth as masters of the universe, most of these gods are just names. Ocean was the river that surrounds the world, from which all other rivers come. All that we know of Koios is that he was the father of Leto, the sixth wife of Zeus and mother of Apollo and Artemis. Nothing is known about the obscure Kreios. Hyperion (“he who goes above”) is the father of Sun (Helios). Iapetos, evidently the same as the biblical Japeth, a son of Noah (but there are no other obvious connections), is the father of Prometheus. Theia (“goddess”) is the wife of Hyperion. Themis (“law”) and Mnemosynê (“memory”) are early consorts of

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Earth (Gaia) ≈Tartaros

Eros

Typhon (later in the poem) Darkness (Erebos) ≈ Night (Nyx)

Brightness (Aither)

Sky (Ouranos)

Day (Hemera)

Genealogical Chart 1. The primordial gods.

Mountains

Sea (Pontos)

She bore too the Cyclopês with their overweening spirit—Brontês and Steropês and mighty Argês, who gave to Zeus the thunderbolt and manufactured the lightning. These creatures were like the gods in all other ways, but they had a single eye in the middle of their foreheads: So they were called “Round-Eyes,” because there was a single round eye in their foreheads. Strength and power and device were in their works.° Earth and Sky had three other children, great and strong, scarcely to be named—Kottos and Briareos and Gygês, prodigal children. One hundred arms sprang from their shoulders, scarcely to be imagined, and fifty heads grew out of the shoulders of each, mounted on powerful limbs. Their strength was unapproachable, mighty in their great forms. Of all the offspring of Earth and Sky, these were the most terrible children. Their father, Sky, hated them from the beginning. And as soon as one of his children was born, he would hide them all away in a hiding place of Earth and would not allow them to come into the light, and Sky took delight in his evil deed. But huge Earth groaned within from the strain, and she devised an evil trick. Quickly making a gray unconquerable substance,° she fashioned a huge sickle, and she spoke to her dear children. She said, encouragingly, but sorrowing in her own heart: “My children, begotten by a mad father, if you are willing to listen to me,

(114. continued)  Zeus. Phoibê (“brilliant goddess,” not to be confused with Phoibos Apollo) is the wife of Koios and mother of Leto. Tethys (“nourisher”?) is probably the same as Mesopotamian Tiamat, a goddess of the primordial waters from which the world emerged. Kronos’ epithet as “crooked-counseled” and as the youngest, and the last mentioned, mark him out as the successor to Sky; the meaning of his name is unknown. 120. . . . works: Cyclopês means “with round eyes.” Brontês means “thunderer”; Steropês means “flasher,” and Argês means “brightener.” Scholars have been unable to clarify the relation between these Cyclopês, the armorers of Zeus, and the race of lonely shepherds who persecute Odysseus (Odyssey 9). Homer never says that his Cyclops (named Polyphemos) has one eye, but the story requires it. 122. . . . Gygês: Briareos may mean “powerful one,” but the meanings of Kottos and Gygês are not clear. 132. substance: The “unconquerable substance” is adamant, probably meteoric iron or a kind of steel, but the meaning is unclear.

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12 Titans

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Genealogical Chart 2. The children of Earth and Sky.

let us take vengeance for your father’s wicked outrage. For he first devised unseemly deeds.” So she spoke, but fear seized them all, nor did any of them speak. Then, taking courage, the crooked-counseling Kronos answered his excellent mother: “Mother, I will undertake this deed, and I will bring it to completion, for I do not like our father and his evil name. It was he who first began unseemly deeds.” So he spoke, and vast Earth rejoiced greatly in her heart. She took Kronos and hid him in an ambush. She placed the saw-toothed sickle in his hands. She laid out the whole plot. Great Sky came, dragging night, and he lay all over Earth, wanting to make love, and he was spread out all over her. Then the child reached out from his ambush with his left hand, and with his right hand he held the huge sickle, long and saw-toothed, and furiously he cut off his father’s genitals, and he threw them away, to fall backwards. They did not flee from his hand for nothing! Earth received all the bloody drops that shook free, and as the years rolled around, she bore Erinys and the great and mighty Giants, shining in their armor and holding long spears in their hands, and she bore the nymphs that people call the Ash Nymphs upon the boundless earth.° When he first cut off the genitals with his sickle made of an unconquerable substance, he threw them from the land into the churning sea, where they 152. . . . boundless earth: The image is inconsistent. Sky and Earth are apparently locked in perpetual intercourse, so that her children cannot escape from her womb, the “hiding place,” but still Sky comes along desiring sex. The castration of Sky, coming soon in the story, explains how Sky and Earth were separated and the children liberated. According to the pattern of the Succession Myth (see the General Introduction), the son, noted for his cleverness, will overthrow his stupid and brutish father. A sickle is the standard weapon against monsters, used by Perseus against the Gorgon Medusa, and by Herakles against the Lernaean Hydra. Drops from the severed genitals are like semen, fertilizing the Earth to produce Erinys (er-in-is), the vengeful spirit of violated oath (especially oaths of obligation toward one’s parents), and the Giants, “Earth-born ones,” distinguished not so much by their size as by their ferocity as warriors. The Ash-Tree Nymphs (Meliai) are the spirits of ash trees, for some reason singled out here as primordial beings.

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were borne for a long time over the waves, and a white foam [aphros] arose around the deathless flesh. And in it a young woman was raised up. She first came to holy Cythera, and then from there she arrived in Cyprus, wrapped in waves. She came forth an awful and beautiful goddess, and around her slender feet grass grew. Men and gods call her Aphrodite, a goddess born from the foam, and also lovely-crowned Cythereia— because she was born of the foam, and Cythereia because she came to Cythera. And Cyprogenea, because she was born on stormy Cyprus, and Lover of Laughter because she came to light from the genitals.° Eros accompanied her, and beautiful Desire, when she first came into being and went among the tribe of the gods. She has this honor from the beginning, and has attained her portion among men and the deathless gods—the whisperings of young girls, and their smiles and deceptions, and sweet delight, and making love, and gentleness. Great Sky called these offspring the Titans, insulting his own children, because, he said, “tightening” with folly they undertook a great deed, for which vengeance was soon to follow.° And Night bore hateful Doom and black Fate and Death, and she bore Sleep, and she bore the tribe of Dreams. Then she bore Blame and painful Misery—dark Night did, the goddess,

163. . . . genitals: Aphrodite is in origin the Eastern goddess of fertility and war, variously called Astartê, Ishtar, Inanna. Somehow “Aphrodite” comes from the Eastern name, but Hesiod provides a folk etymology for the name and derives it from the story of the castration of Sky, from aphros, the Greek word for “foam.” Aphrodite seems to have entered the Greek world via the island of Cyprus, where Semitic-speaking people lived. She had a cult center at Paphos in the southwestern part of the island. There was also a cult of the goddess on the island of Cythera, off the southern coast of mainland Greece, no doubt brought by Semitic-speaking sailors—that is, Phoenicians. Her epithet “laughter-loving” (philommeidês) looks in Greek as if it means “genital-loving” (“genitals” in Greek is medea), hence Hesiod’s explanation that she came forth “from the genitals.” Hesiod is much interested is such folk etymologies. 165. . . . of the gods: Here Eros seems transmuted from the cosmic principle of generative energy into the Eros that means simply “sexual attraction,” which goes with Desire (Himeros) as a quality of Aphrodite. 171. . . . to follow: Again Hesiod puns, now on titaino, “to tighten,” which really means “to stretch,” as when drawing a bow.

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theogony

Figure 5. The birth of Aphrodite from the so-called Ludovisi Throne. Found in southern Italy, the marble slab was probably part of an altar. The naked goddess rises in the middle, received by two nymphs who stand on the rocky shore at either side. Museo Nazionale Romano of Palazzo Altemps, Rome (Photo: Sailko; https:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Ludovisi_Throne_%288504016347 %29.jpg)

Earth ≈ Sky’s blood

Erinys

Giants

Ash Nymphs (Meliai )

Sky’s genitals Aphrodite

Genealogical Chart 3. The offspring of Earth, the blood of Sky, and the birth of Aphrodite.

without having sex with anyone—and the Hesperidês, who care for the beautiful golden apples and the fruit-bearing trees beyond famous Ocean.° And Night gave birth to the Destinies and the mercilessly punishing Fates [Kêres], Klotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who give good and bad to mortals at their birth, who follow the offenses of men and gods: Nor do the goddesses ever lay off their terrible anger before they take an evil vengeance against anyone who goes astray.° And dread Night bore Nemesis, a burden to mortal men, and afterwards Deceit and Lovemaking and wretched Old Age, and she bore soul-shaking Strife. And wicked Strife bore painful Labor and Forgetfulness and Starvation and tearful Pains and Disturbances and Battles and Murders and Mankillings and Quarrels and Lying Words and Doubletalk and Corruption and Mad Folly—all related to one another; and Oath, which most afflicts mortals upon the earth with pain, when someone knowingly swears a false oath.° And Sea begot Nereus, who never lies, and always tells the truth, the oldest of his children, but they call him the Old Man because he is unerring and kind, nor does he forget what laws are laid down, 175. . . . famous Ocean: Fate (Kêr) seems in origin to be a spirit of death, as we say “Lord Death,” a kind of being. Then Kêr comes to mean “mortal allotment,” “Fate,” and in the plural, the Fates. The Hesperidês, “nymphs of the West,” guarded a magical tree that grew in the west at the end of the world. On this tree grew the Golden Apples of Immortality. One of Herakles’ labors was to retrieve these apples. As dwellers in the western seas, where the sun sets, the Hesperidês were tantamount to spirits of death; hence they are the offspring of Night. Nemesis, “she who gives what is due,” is the spirit of retribution against excess, whether of good or evil. 180. . . . goes astray: Klotho means “spinner”; Lachesis, “disposer of lots”; and Atropos, “unbending.” The image of the Fates (here Kêres) is that they are like spinners, measuring out a length of thread, then cutting it off. They are also punitive spirits, aware of wrongdoing. Later (line 708–9) Hesiod says that Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are the names of the Moirai, “apportioners” or “destinies,” hence “Fates.” 188. . . . a false oath: These typical offspring of Night include Lovemaking because in adultery all manner of evils are made, including the Trojan War through the adultery of Paris with Helen. In origin an oath is a curse that one lays upon oneself, which will come to fruition if what one declares is false: If you swear falsely, then you invite punishment by Oath.

theogony

45

175

180

185

190

Night (Nyx) Doom

Fate (Kêr)

Death (Thanatos)

Misery Hesperidês

Destinies (Moirai )

Nemesis Deceit Lovemaking

Labor Disturbances

Mankillings Doubletalk

Sleep (Hypnos)

Dreams

Blame

Fates (Kêres: Klotho, Lachesis, Atropos) Old Age

Forgetfulness (Lethê )

Strife (Eris)

Starvation

Battles (Machai )

Pains Murders

Quarrels Corruption

Lying Words Mad Folly (Atê )

Genealogical Chart 4. The descendants of Night (Nyx) and Strife (Eris).

Oath

but his thoughts are just and kind. Uniting with Earth, Sea then begot great Thaumas and noble Phorkys, and Keto with beautiful cheeks, and Eurybia, who has a heart of an unconquerable substance in her breast.° Of Nereus and Doris of the lovely locks, daughter of Ocean, the circling river, were born children in the restless sea, lovely among the goddesses— Protho and Eukrantê and Sao and Amphitritê and Eudorê and Thetis and Galenê and Glaukê and Kymothoê and swift Speo and darling Thalia and Pasithea and Erato and Eunikê with arms like roses, and graceful Melitê and Eulimenê and Agavê and Doto and Proto and Pherousa and Dynamenê and Nesaiê and Aktaiê and Protomedeia and Doris and Panopê and beautiful Galateia and darling Hippothoê and Hipponoê with arms like roses, and Kymodokê, who together with Kymatolegê and Amphitritê, who has fine ankles, easily calms the waves on the misty sea and the blasts of savage winds, and Kymo and Eionê and Halimedê with the fine crown, and Glaukonomê, lover of laughter, and Pontoporeia and Leiagorê and Euagorê and Laomedeia and Poulynoê and Autonoê and Lysianassa and Euarnê, lovely in appearance and blameless in form, and Psamathê, charming in her figure, and the divine Menippê and Neso and Eupompê and Themisto and Pronoê and Nemertês, who has the mind of her deathless father. These were the daughters of blameless Nereus, fifty in number, knowing faultless crafts.° Thaumas united with Elektra,

193. . . . in her breast: Hesiod mixes up personifications with mythical figures: Thaumas (“wonder”) is a personification of a quality of the Sea. Phorkys is an old spirit of the sea, its powers and dangers, just like Nereus, with whom he is often confused. Keto is “sea monster,” though with beautiful cheeks. Eurybia means “wide of strength,” but otherwise we know nothing about her. 212. . . . faultless crafts: The list of the fifty Nereids, the daughters of Nereus and Doris (a daughter of Ocean) is a tour de force, the sort of catalogue in which Hesiod excelled. The names mainly denote positive aspects of the sea: for example, Pasithea “all-divine”; Melitê “like honey”; Galenê “calm”; Kymothoê “wave-swift”; Pontoporeia “making for easy passage on the sea.” Mostly they are just names, but Thetis (of unknown meaning) is the mother of Achilles, and Amphitritê (meaning unknown) is the consort of Poseidon.

theogony

47

195

200

205

210

Figure 6. Amphitritê stands before Poseidon, her hand raised, as he holds a trident (most of the sea god is broken away). The inscription on the plaque reads, in Corinthian script, APHIRITAEMIPO—that is, “I am A[m]phirita [wife of ] Po[seidon].” A[M]PHIRITA is Corinthian dialect for “Amphitritê.” Probably the letters in front of the trident, crowned with a circlet, spell out THR[IAINA]: that is, “trident.” Painted plaque, ca. 560 b.c., from Polyskouphia. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/5/5f/Amphitrite_Penteskouphia_Louvre_MNC208.jpg)

the daughter of Ocean with his deep waves, and gave birth to swift Iris and the Harpies who have nice hair, Storm Wind and Fast Flier, who follow together the blasts of the winds and the birds on their swift wings, for they soar high in the air.° And Keto bore the Gray Old Ladies, with beautiful cheeks, to Phorkys—gray from birth, whom the deathless gods and men who live on the earth call the Old Ladies, Pemphredo with the lovely gown and Enyo with the saffron gown— and the Gorgons, who live beyond famous Ocean at the edge of Night, where are the Hesperidês, with their high-pitched voices, Sthenno and Euryalê and Medusa, who came to a bad end. She was mortal, but the others were deathless and ageless, the two of them. The Blue-haired god° slept with Medusa on the gentle meadow amidst the spring flowers. And when Perseus cut off her head, great Chrysaor leaped out, and the horse Pegasos, so called because he was born near the springs [pegai] of Ocean. Chrysaor was called that because he held a golden [chryseion] sword in his hands.° Now Pegasos flew off from the earth, the mother of sheep, and came to the deathless ones. He dwells in the house of Zeus, carrying the thunder and the lightning flash for Zeus the Counselor. Chrysaor begot three-headed Geryon, having united in love with Kallirhoê, the daughter of famous Ocean.

216. . . . high in the air: Elektra the daughter of Ocean, is not to be confused with Elektra the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or with Elektra the daughter of Atlas, one of the Pleiadês (plē-a-dēz). Elektra means “amber-colored.” Iris (“rainbow”) is the usual messenger of the gods in Homer’s Iliad (but not in the Odyssey). The Harpies, “snatchers,” are storm winds who, like the spirits of death, sweep one away. The Greek for “storm wind” is Aello, and “fast flier” is Okypetê. 223. . . . two of them: The Gray Old Ladies are the Graiai, Pemphredo (perhaps “wasp”) and Enyo (“warlike”). Two of the Gorgons (“fierce ones”) are immortal: Sthenno (“strength”) and Euryalê (perhaps “she of the wide salt sea”). One is mortal: Medusa (“ruler”). 224. Blue-haired god: Poseidon. 228. . . . in his hands: Perseus’ decapitation of Medusa is the central event in his legend. Chrysaor means “he of the golden sword.”

theogony

49

215

220

225

230

Earth (Gaia) ≈ Sea (Pontos) Phorkys

Keto

Eurybia (“wide-ruling”) Doris ≈ Nereus (“Old Man of the Sea”)

Thetis

Amphitritê

48 other Nereids

Elektra ≈Thaumas (“wonder”)

Iris

Genealogical Chart 5. The descendants of Earth and Sea.

Harpies

Figure 7. The head of Medusa, from an Etruscan temple in Orvieto, Italy, ca. 380 b.c. The head is typical for its boar’s tusks, lolling tongue, fearsome eyes and expression, and snaky hair. The temple in which the terra-cotta face was found appears to have been dedicated to Tinia, the Etruscan Zeus. The Etruscans admired Greek myth and adopted many of its main stories. Museo Claudio Faina, Italy (Photo: Sailko; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /Category:Gorgoneia#/media/File:Gorgoneion_dal_tempio_di_belvedere ,_orvieto,_fine_V_sec._ac..JPG)

235

240

245

250

The mighty Herakles killed Geryon beside his shamble-footed cattle in Erytheia, surrounded by water, on the day when he rustled the broadbrowed cattle and drove them to holy Tiryns, crossing the stream of Ocean, and he killed Orthos and Eurytion the herdsman in the misty farmstead beyond famous Ocean.° She° bore another irresistible monster, not like mortal men, nor like the deathless gods, in a hollow cave, the divine and mighty Echidna, half a young girl with dashing eyes, of beautiful cheeks, and half a savage snake, huge and terrible, nimble and flesh-eating, beneath the hidden parts of the sacred earth. There she ° has a cave deep under the hollow rock, far from the deathless gods and mortal men, where the gods appointed a famous house for her to live in. Gloomy Echidna dwells among the Arimoi beneath the earth, the deathless young girl, ageless for all her days.° They say that Typhon—awful, violent, living without laws—made love with the glancing-eyed girl, and that she conceived and brought forth ferocious children. First she gave birth to Orthos, the hound of Geryon; then she gave birth to Kerberos, irresistible, indescribable, the devourer of raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades with fifty heads, ruthless and powerful. Third, she brought forth the Hydra of Lerna, knowing only evil things, whom the goddess white-armed Hera 237. . . . famous Ocean: Erytheia, “the red land,” is an island somewhere in the far West. Herakles, obeying the commands of his tyrannical cousin, Eurystheus, could reach it only by borrowing the “cup of the sun,” a special vessel by which the sun travels over the sky. Kallirhoê, “beautiful-flowing,” is an Oceanid, belonging to a group parallel to the Nereids but far greater in number (3,000: line 290). Orthos, “true,” was a savage, two-headed hound that with Eurytion (“easily flowing”) protected Geryon’s cattle (the meaning of “Geryon” is unknown). 237. She: Presumably Keto. 242. there she: Presumably Echidna, but because Hesiod goes on to speak otherwise of Echidna’s home, “she” may mean Keto. 245. . . . all her days: It is unclear what is meant by “among the Arimoi,” but perhaps “among the Aramaeans”: that is, the inhabitants of ancient Syria, from where this story may have come.

52

theogony

Phorkys ≈ Keto

Gray Old Ladies (Graiai )

Gorgons: Sthenno Euryalê Medusa ≈ Poseidon

Chrysaor ≈ Kallirhoê Geryon Genealogical Chart 6. The descendants of Phorkys and Keto.

Pegasos

255

260

265

270

raised up, being extremely angry with Herakles. Herakles, the son of Zeus of the family of Amphitryon, killed the Hydra with his pitiless bronze, joined by war-loving Iolaos, through the plans of Athena, leader of the war host.° She° gave birth to Chimaira, breathing deadly fire, terrible, huge, swift-footed, and powerful. She had three heads: one of a savage lion, one of a goat, one of a snake, a mighty serpent. In the front she was a lion, in the back a serpent, in the middle a goat, breathing out the awful strength of blazing fire. Pegasos and noble Bellerophon killed her. Chimaira gave birth to the Sphinx, the bane of the Kadmeians, seduced in love by Orthos; and the Nemean Lion, that Hera, glorious wife of Zeus, raised up and settled in the hills of Nemea, a plague to men. Dwelling there he preyed on the tribes of people, having power over Tretos in the territory of Nemea and Apesas, but the might of Herakles overcame him.° Keto united in love with Phorkys and begot as her youngest child the dreadful snake that guards the apples all of gold in the crannies of the dark earth at its great limits.° These are the offspring of Keto and Phorkys. Tethys bore to Ocean the swirling rivers, Nile and Alpheios and deep-eddying Eridanos and Strymon and Maiandros and beautiful256. . . . of the war host: It was not until the fifth century b.c. that the adventures of Herakles were canonized as twelve in number. Hesiod here mentions the contest with Geryon, Kerberos, and the Lernaean Hydra, all children of the monstrous Typhon, who later in the poem will be Zeus’s most formidable enemy (lines 646–85.). Lerna is a swamp in the southwestern Argive Plain. Iolaos, who assisted Herakles on this adventure, is Herakles’ nephew. 256. She: Echidna or Hydra; it is not clear which. 266. . . . overcame him: “She” could be Echidna or Chimaira (“she-goat”) but is probably Chimaira. The Kadmeians, “descendants of Kadmos,” are the Thebans, whom the Sphinx persecuted. Tretos and Apesas are mountains between Mycenae and Corinth. After killing the Nemean Lion, Herakles wore his skin as a cloak and helmet. 269. . . . great limits: That is, the snake who guards the Golden Apples of the Hesperidês on the tree that grows at the edge of the world (elsewhere the snake is called Ladon, the name of a river that Hesiod is about to mention).

54

theogony

Figure 8. The Chimaira, a monster with the body of a lion, a goat growing from its back, and a serpent for a tail. South Italian red-figure dish, ca. 350–340 b.c., Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/b/b3/Chimera_Apulia_Louvre_K362.jpg)

Keto ≈ Phorkys

Typhon ≈ Echidna

Chimaira ≈ Orthos

Sphinx

Kerberos

snake, guardian of the Golden Apples Hydra of Lerna

Nemean Lion

Genealogical Chart 7. Other descendants of Keto and Phorkys.

flowing Ister and Phasis and Rhesos and silver-swirling Acheloös and Nessos and Rhodios and Haliakmon and Heptaporos and Granikos and divine Aisepos and Simoeis and Peneios and broad Hermos and the fair stream of Kaïkos and great Sangarios and Ladon and Parthenios and Euenos and divine Ardeskos and Skamandros.° She gave birth to a holy race of daughters, who care for youths over the earth, along with Apollo the king, and the Rivers, and they have this lot from Zeus: Peitho and Admetê and Ianthê and Elektra and Doris and Prymno and godlike Ouraniê and Hippo and Klymenê and Rhodeia and Kallirhoê and Zeuxo and Klytiê and Eiduia and Pasithoê and Plexaurê and Galaxaurê and lovely Dionê and Melobosis and Thoê and handsome Polydorê and Kerkeïs, lovely in appearance, and cow-eyed Plouto, Perseïs and Ianeira and Akastê and Xanthê and fair Petraiê and Menestho and Europê and Metis and Eurynomê and Telesto with the saffron gown and Chryseïs and Asiê and desirable Kalypso and Eudorê and Tychê and Amphiro and Okyrhoê and Styx, who stood out from all the rest.°

275

280

285

276. . . . Skamandros: The Nile is not mentioned in Homer, where the river is called Aigyptos, Eridanos was later identified with the Po River in northern Italy; Strymon is in Thrace; Ister is the Danube; Phasis is a legendary river thought to be at the eastern end of the Black Sea; Rhesos is unknown but perhaps a tributary of the Granikos, northeast of Troy; several rivers were named Acheloös, but probably what is meant is the one in the southwestern mainland, the largest river in Greece; Rhodios is in the Troad, flowing down from Mount Ida; Haliakmon is in Macedonia; Heptaporos is in the Troad, a tributary of Skamandros; Granikos, Aisepos, and Simoeis are in the Troad; Peneios is in Thessaly; Hermos is in Lydia, flowing past Sardis, and the Kaïkos is farther north; Sangarios is in Phrygia; Ladon is in Arcadia, a tributary of Alpheios; Parthenios is a small river on the southern shore of the Black Sea; Euenos is in western mainland Greece, where Herakles fought the centaur Nessos, but the Nessos River appears to be in Thrace; Ardeskos is someplace in Thrace; Skamandros is in the Troad. There is little order in this list, reflecting Hesiod’s ignorance of real geography. 289. . . . all the rest: The Oceanids listed here have a variable importance, or none at all; many seem to have been invented for this catalogue. Some may be the names of real springs; some have no connection with water at all. Their only function, according to Hesiod, is to care for the young. Peitho, “persuasion,” is a nymph who adorns Pandora, along with the Graces (Works and Days, line 75); Admetê, “unbroken,” is appropriate to a nourisher of

theogony

57

290

295

300

These were the oldest offspring of Ocean and Tethys, but there are many more besides. There are three thousand slender-ankled Oceanids, who, dispersed abroad over the earth and the depth of the waters, in every place serve alike, the glorious children of goddesses. As many other rivers as there are, babbling along, the sons of Ocean, whom the revered Tethys bore—of them it would be hard for a mortal man to tell all the names, but those people know who live near them. And Theia, submitting in love to Hyperion, bore great Helios and shining Moon and Dawn, who shines for all upon the earth and for the deathless gods who possess broad heaven. Eurybia, the awesome goddess, mixing in love with Kreios begot great Astraios and great Pallas and Persês, who stands out among (289. continued) youths; Ianthê, “violet,” may refer to the color of a spring; Elektra, “amber-colored,” was wife of the sea god Thaumas and the mother of the messenger goddess Iris and the Harpies; Doris, “giver,” was the mother of the Nereids; Prymno, “undermost,” was perhaps a nymph of the groundwater; Ouraniê, “heavenly,” was also the name of one of the Muses. Aquatic deities are often associated with horses, or represented as them, hence Hippo, “horse.” Klymenê, “famous one,” was the wife of the Titan Iapetos and mother of Prometheus; Rhodeia means “rose-colored”; Kallirhoê, “fair-flowing,” was the mother of Geryon; Zeuxo’s name, “she who joins,” marks her as a goddess of marriage; Eiduia, “knowing,” was wife to King Aietês of Colchis and the mother of Medea, perhaps a goddess of witchcraft; Pasithoê, “all-swift,” may refer to a fast-flowing spring; Plexaurê perhaps means “water-weaver,” and Galaxaurê means “water like milk”; Dionê, “female Zeus,” was Zeus’s consort at the oracular shrine of Dodona in northwestern Greece; Melobosis, “sheep feeder,” is probably a nymph of grassy pastures; Thoê means “swift”; Polydorê is “much-giver,” and Plouto is “wealth”; Kerkeïs is obscure; Perseïs, “destroyer,” is the mother by Helios of the Eastern despot Aietês and the witch Circe (“hawk”); Ianeira is perhaps goddess of the Ionians; Akastê, “irregular,” Xanthê, “yellow,” Petraiê, “rocky,” and Menestho, perhaps “lasting,” refer to qualities of springs; Europa is goddess of the continent and the name of a spring in Dodona. Metis, “mind,” is Zeus’s first consort; Eurynomê, “wide-ruling,” is Zeus’s third consort and mother of the Graces; Telesto means “accomplisher”; Chryseïs is “golden”; Asia, perhaps “muddy,” is the goddess of the territory of Lydia, the sister of Europa, and the wife of Prometheus; Kalypso, “concealer,” is probably not the Kalypso (the daughter of Atlas, not of Ocean) who imprisoned Odysseus for seven years in the Odyssey (7.259); Eudorê is “well-giving”; Tychê is “chance,” “luck,” a great goddess in later times; Amphiro is “flowing-around,” and Okyrhoê is “swift-flowing.” Styx, “hateful,” is the famous river of the underworld.

58

theogony

Ocean ≈ Tethys

Rivers (25 named)

3,000 Oceanids (41 named)

Genealogical Chart 8. The children of Ocean and Tethys.

all wise men.°

305

310

315

320

Dawn bore to Astraios the powerful winds, the brightening West Wind and swift North Wind and South Wind, a goddess lying in love with a god. After these Early-Born bore the star Dawn Bringer and the shining Stars that crown the heaven.° And Styx, the daughter of Ocean, sleeping with Pallas, begot Emulation and Victory, with slender ankles, in the house. And Styx begot Strength and Power, splendid children.° They have no house apart from Zeus, nor any seat, nor any path except that whereon the god leads them, but always they take their seat beside loud-thundering Zeus. For so did Styx, the deathless Oceanid, decide on that day when the Olympian who hurls the lightning° called together all the deathless gods to high Olympos, and he said that whoever of the gods would fight along with him against the Titans, that they would not be deprived of their reward, but would have, each of them, the honor that he had before among the deathless gods. He said too that whoever was without honor and reward under the reign of Kronos would receive honor and reward, as is right. Deathless Styx first came to Olympos with her children through the devising of her father. Zeus honored her and gave her exceptional gifts. He made her to be the great oath of the gods,° and her children 301. . . . all wise men: The Sun is Helios, the Moon is Selenê, and Dawn is Eos. The children of Kreios are nonentities: Astraios, “starry,” is perhaps invented as the father of the stars. Pallas is utterly obscure, as is his relationship to Pallas Athena, to a Giant of the same name whom she killed, and to an early Athenian hero of the same name. Persês is the father of Hekatê. 304. . . . the heaven: West Wind is Zephyros; North Wind is Boreas; South Wind is Notos. Early-Born is Erigeneia, a title of Dawn (Eos); Dawn Bringer is Eosphoros: that is, Venus, the only planet mentioned in Greek literature before the fourth century b.c., the brightest star in the sky, appearing only in the morning and evening. 307. . . . splendid children: Emulation is Zelos; Victory is Nikê; Strength is Kratos; Power is Bia. 311. . . . lightning: Zeus. 320. oath of the gods: Only gods could swear by Styx; such an oath could never be broken.

60

theogony

Theia ≈ Hyperion Kreios ≈ Eurybia

Sun (Helios )

West Wind (Zephyros)

Moon (Selenê )

Dawn (Eos, Erigeneia) ≈ Astraios Pallas Persês

North Wind (Boreas)

South Wind (Notos)

Dawn Bringer Stars (Eosphoros)

Genealogical Chart 9. The descendants of Theia and Hyperion and of Kreios and Eurybia.

325

330

335

340

345

to live with him for all their days. And just as he promised, he brought it about fully for all, for he himself reigns and rules with power. Then Phoibê came to the much-beloved bed of Koios. The goddess, sleeping with the god, conceived and gave birth to dark-gowned Leto, always gentle, sweet to men and the deathless gods, gentle from the beginning, the most kindly of those in Olympos. Phoibê begot the honored Asteria, whom Persês led into his great house to be called his dear wife. And Asteria conceived and gave birth to Hekatê, whom Zeus, the son of Kronos, honored above all others.° He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and of the barren sea. He allotted her honor in the starry heaven, and she is honored especially by all the deathless gods. And even now, when someone of earth-dwelling men makes a lovely holy sacrifice, and prays for favor according to custom, he calls out to Hekatê. Much honor easily follows him whose prayers the goddess eagerly follows, and she sends wealth to him, for she has the power to do so. For among as many as were born from Earth and Sky, and have received their apportionment of honor, she has her due. Nor did the son of Kronos do her violence nor take anything away from what she had been apportioned among the former Titan gods, but she holds her reward upon the earth and in heaven and on the sea, as much as was the first division from the beginning. Nor, because she was an only child, did the goddess receive less honor, but she holds even much more, because Zeus honors her. As she wishes, she stands at one’s side and assists with all her power. She sits beside respected chiefs in judgment 329. . . . above all others: Asteria was also a name of the island of Delos, where Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. In later times Hekatê was a goddess of the crossroads, of witchcraft, magic, and the occult arts, but in Hesiod she is a great goddess of boundless benevolence, with whom Hesiod perhaps had a personal relationship. Her cult seems to come from Caria, in southern Asia Minor, where Hesiod’s father may have had connections. Perhaps for this reason he named Hesiod’s brother Persês (in Works and Days), the name of Hekatê’s father. Hekatê plays little role in Greek myth.

62

theogony

Pallas ≈ Styx (an Oceanid)

Emulation (Zelos)

Victory (Nikê )

Strength (Kratos)

Genealogical Chart 10. The children of Pallas and Styx.

Koios ≈ Phoibê

Leto

Asteria ≈ Persês Hekatê

Genealogical Chart 11. The descendants of Koios and Phoibê.

Power (Bia)

350

355

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and, in the assembly, that man stands out among the people, whomever she wishes. And when men arm themselves for man-destroying war, then the goddess is there, and she happily grants victory and extends glory to whomever she wishes. Good is she to stand by horsemen, whomever she wishes, and also when men contend at the games: There the goddess stands at their side and gives assistance. And when someone conquers with strength and power, he easily carries the noble contest, rejoicing, and he brings glory to his parents. And to those who work the blue distempered sea, who pray to Hekatê and to the loud-crashing Earthshaker,° the reverend goddess easily grants an abundant catch, and she easily takes it back when it appears, if she wishes. She is good at increasing, with the help of Hermes, the flocks in the fold. She increases from a few the herds of cattle and the broad herds of goats and the flocks of fleecy sheep, if she wishes, or makes the many to be less. Thus, though her mother begot but one child, she is honored by all the deathless gods. The son of Kronos made her to be a nurse of youths who after her see with their eyes the light of the all-seeing Dawn. And so from the beginning she is the nurse of the young, and such are her spheres of influence. Rhea, sleeping with Kronos, bore splendid children, Hestia and Demeter and Hera with the golden sandals and powerful Hades, who dwells beneath the earth with his pitiless heart, and loud-crashing, earthshaking Poseidon, and wily Zeus, the father of gods and men, who shakes the broad earth with his thunder.° And great Kronos swallowed them 354. Earthshaker: Poseidon. 368. . . . with his thunder: Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, the focus (Latin for “hearth”) of household activity; she has few myths. Demeter is the goddess of the grain harvest, whose daughter, Persephone, was snatched away by Hades (“unseen”), god of the underworld, to be his bride. Hera is the wife of Zeus, the goddess of marriage, who persecutes Zeus’s illegitimate offspring (especially Herakles). Poseidon is lord of the sea and is besides god of earthquakes and horses. Zeus is the Greek storm god. All ancient pantheons had a storm god, the power that causes rain and lightning.

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Kronos ≈ Rhea

Hestia

Demeter

Hera

Hades

Genealogical Chart 12. The children of Kronos and Rhea.

Poseidon

Zeus

370

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down as each came forth from the holy womb at the knees of its mother.° His intention was to prevent one of the illustrious descendants of Sky from taking the kingly honor among the gods. For Kronos had learned from Earth and starry Sky that he was destined to be overthrown by his own son, strong though he himself was, through the devices of great Zeus. He kept no blind man’s watch, but keeping alert he swallowed down his children. Unceasing pain took hold of Rhea. But when she was about to give birth to Zeus, the father of gods and men, then she begged her own dear parents, Earth and starry Sky, to concoct some plan whereby she might secretly conceal the birth of her dear child, and make the great wily Kronos pay the Erinys of her father, Sky, and of the children whom he had swallowed.° They readily listened to their daughter and obeyed her, and they advised her about what was destined to happen to King Kronos and his powerful son. They sent her to Lyktos, in the rich land of Crete, when she was about to give birth to her youngest child, great Zeus. Great Earth received him from Rhea in broad Crete to raise up and to nourish. There Earth came, carrying him through the swift black night, to Lyktos first, and she took him up in her hands and hid him in a remote cave beneath the crannies of the holy earth, in a wood, thick with trees, on Mount Aigaion.° But for the great ruling son of Sky, 369. . . . its mother: Greek women gave birth in a squatting position. 380. . . . he swallowed: Erinys (or the Erinyes) came into being when Kronos castrated his father, Sky, emerging from the drops of blood that fell on Earth (lines 149–50). Erinyes represent (sometimes) the spirits of vengeance when a wrong has been done, in this case by a father against his children. Sky and Kronos’ children have Erinyes because of Kronos’ evil behavior. 389. . . . Mount Aigaion: Hesiod’s Succession Myth, inherited from the Near East, here attaches to local Cretan traditions, wherein a male year-spirit, who is born and dies annually, is raised in a cave and celebrated by young men banging shields. The Greeks identified this Minoan, non-Greek god with their own Zeus; the supposed grave of Zeus was shown in Crete during the Classical period. Lyktos is in east-central Crete, on the western slope of Mount Lasithi. The cave that Hesiod refers to may be the Psychro Cave, off the high plateau of Mount Lasithi fairly near Lyktos, where votive offerings have been

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king of the earlier gods, she wrapped a huge stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to him. He took it in his hands and pushed it down into his belly —the wretch! He did not know in his heart that, instead of the stone, his own son was left behind safe and sound. That son was soon to overcome Kronos by force and might and take away his office and himself rule among the deathless ones. Then the strength and shining limbs of this king increased quickly. And as the year rolled around, the great wily Kronos, deceived by the eloquent suggestions of Earth, vomited up his offspring, overcome by the arts and power of his own son.° First he vomited up the stone, which he had swallowed last. Zeus set it up in the wide-pathed earth in most holy Pytho,° beneath the valleys of Parnassos, to be a sign in later times, a wonder for mortal men. And he loosed his uncles, the children of Sky, from their deadly bonds, whom their own father had bound in his madness. They were mindful of his kindness, and they gave him the thunder and the shining thunderbolt and the lightning. Before that, huge Earth had hidden them. Trusting in them, Zeus rules over mortals and the deathless ones.° Iapetos took to wife the nymph Klymenê with the slender ankles, daughter of Ocean, and he went up into her bed. She gave birth to the child Atlas with his powerful mind, and she bore the very famous Menoitios and the versatile Prometheus, his mind filled with tricks, and scatterbrained Epimetheus, who from the beginning gave birth to evil for bread-nourished men. For he first

(389. continued) found, but others place the cave on Mount Ida, in central Crete. Mount Aigaion, “goat mountain,” is otherwise unattested but may be an ancient name for Mount Lasithi. 398. . . . own son: Hesiod does not say how Zeus forced Kronos to vomit up his children, but later reports say that he administered an emetic drug. 400. Pytho: Delphi. 406. . . . deathless ones: Zeus’s uncles are the Cyclopês, who forged the thunderbolt by which Zeus overcame the Titans. Earlier they were imprisoned in Tartaros by Sky.

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received from Zeus the molded virgin as his wife.° Far-seeing Zeus threw down the violent Menoitios into Erebos,° hitting him with a smoking thunderbolt because of his foolishness and his horrendous pride. Atlas holds the broad sky from powerful necessity, standing at the ends of the earth near the shrill-voiced Hesperidês, with his inexhaustible head and arms; for wily Zeus assigned this fate for him. He bound the clever Prometheus in unbreakable bonds, savage chains, and drove a shaft through his torso, and he sent a long-winged eagle upon him, who devoured his immortal liver. But it grew back in the night, as much as the long-winged bird ate in the whole day. Herakles, the powerful son of Alkmenê with the beautiful ankles, killed the eagle and warded off the evil affliction from the son of Iapetos, freeing him from his suffering, and not against the will of Olympian Zeus, who reigns on high, so that the glory of Theban-born Herakles might be still more than before upon the rich earth. Thinking of this, Zeus honored his excellent son, and though he was angry he gave up his anger that he held before because Prometheus had matched wits with the mighty son of Kronos. For when gods and mortal men disputed at Mekonê, Prometheus divided up and set before them the portions of a great bull with eager heart, deceiving the mind of Zeus.° For he set out before him 412. . . . as his wife: Atlas is later punished—we do not know why—by being forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders. Menoitios (the same name as the father of Patroklos in the Iliad) is utterly obscure. The etymology of “Prometheus” is unclear, but Hesiod seems to have understood it as “forethinker.” Epimetheus, who may be Hesiod’s invention, means “afterthinker.” Epimetheus acts like a man, not a god, and in other accounts he is the husband of Pandora and the father of Pyrrha, who marries the son of Prometheus, Deukalion, the Greek Noah. Pandora is “molded” because Hephaistos made her from earth. 413. Erebos: Darkness: that is, the underworld. 431. . . . mind of Zeus: Mekonê is an old name for Sikyon, a town to the west of Corinth on the Gulf of Corinth in the Peloponnesus. This etiological myth, set in a time when men and gods dined together, explains why in Greek sacrificial ritual the gods are given the bones wrapped in fat, but men eat the delicious flesh and the entrails. The myth marks the division between men and gods.

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Iapetos ≈ Klymenê

Atlas

Menoitios

Prometheus

Epimetheus

Genealogical Chart 13. The descendants of Iapetos and Klymenê.

Figure 9. The punishments of Atlas and Prometheus. Atlas, accompanied by a snake, holds the world on his shoulders. Prometheus is bound to a pillar surmounted by a crow while an eagle plucks at his chest. Athenian black-figure wine cup, ca. 550 b.c. Vatican Museums, Vatican City (Photo: Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8 /Atlas_Typhon_Prometheus.pdf/page1–1258px-Atlas_Typhon_Prometheus .pdf.jpg)

on the hide the flesh and the entrails rich with fat, concealing them with the bull’s stomach, and then he set out before him in turn the white bones of the bull as a cunning trick, attractively concealing them with shining fat. Then the father of men and gods said to Prometheus: “O son of Iapetos, most excellent of all the gods—wow! How you have divided the portions unequally!” So Zeus spoke with a sneer, knowing all things forever. But wily Prometheus answered him, with a slight smile, not forgetting his cunning deception: “Most glorious and greatest of the everlasting gods, of this offering take whatever your spirit within urges you to.” So he spoke, keeping his trick in mind. Zeus, who knows all things forever, knew and recognized the trick, but he intended evil for mortal man, which was to come to pass.° He took up in both his hands the white fat, and he was angry in his heart, and anger overcame his spirit when he saw the white bones of the bull cunningly decked out. And this is the reason that the tribes of men upon the earth burn the white bones to the gods on the smoking altars. Greatly enraged, cloud-gathering Zeus spoke to Prometheus: “O son of Iapetos, always up to your tricks! So, you have still not let up from your trickery!” Thus spoke Zeus in anger, who knows all things forever. From that time, always mindful of the trick, he has not given to ash trees the strength of untiring fire for mortal men.° But the brave son of Iapetos deceived him when he stole the far-seeing gleam of untiring fire in a hollow stalk of fennel.° This act stung him to the depths of his spirit, Zeus, who thunders on high, 443. . . . to pass: No doubt in an earlier version Zeus was deceived by the trick, but Hesiod wants to preserve the great god’s omniscience. 452. . . . for mortal men: Evidently referring to a widespread belief that fire lies hidden within trees, so that when you rub pieces of wood together vigorously you can start a fire. Also, lightning that strikes trees will often start a fire. The ash is a common tree in Greece. 453. fennel: Not actually a fennel, the Giant Fennel (narthex) is a common plant near the Mediterranean. It has a brilliant yellow flower and a thick stalk whose pith can hold a coal without burning through to the outer rind. It was often used, and still is, to transport fire.

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and his heart grew angry when he saw the far-seeing gleam of fire among men. He immediately fashioned an evil for men, to balance out the fire. The famous crippled god, Hephaistos, made from earth the likeness of a modest young woman through the devisings of the son of Kronos. Flashing-eyed Athena wrapped and adorned her in silvery cloth, and with her hands she drew down over her head an embroidered veil, a marvel to see. And around her head Pallas Athena placed garlands, the flowers of fresh-blooming grass, seductive. And around her head she placed a golden band that the very clever lame god himself had made, working it in his hands, giving pleasure to Father Zeus. He worked into it many ingenious designs, a wonder to see, of wild animals of the kind that inhabit the sea and the dry land—of these wonderful things he placed many examples, like living things with voices, and a great beauty shone from it. But when he had made the beautiful evil as the price for the good,° he brought her forth to where the other gods were, and men, rejoicing in the finery of the flashing-eyed daughter of loud-thundering Zeus.° Amazement filled the deathless gods and mortal men when they saw the bitter deception, which men could not withstand. From her comes the race of tender women, who dwell among men as a great affliction for mortals, not bearing up well in Poverty, but happy in Plenty.° As when bees in roofed hives feed the drones, always up to their evil deeds—the bees are busy by day, and all day long until the sun goes down they lay out the white honeycombs while the drones stay inside the roofed hives and gather the labor of others into their bellies—even so Zeus, who thunders on high, made women an evil for mortal men, conspirators in harsh deeds. And he gave a second evil in return for the good:

469. for the good: The gift of fire. 471. . . . loud-thundering Zeus: The “daughter” is Athena. 474. . . . Plenty: Here Poverty and Plenty are personified, as if they were gods.

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For whoever flees from marriage and the oppressive ways of women and wishes not to marry, then a wretched old age comes upon him, and no one to care for him. And although he lives with sufficient substance, when he dies distant relatives divide up his estate. As for the man who chooses marriage as his lot, and takes a pleasant wife suited to his own mind, from the beginning evil goes with the good. Whoever happens to have a troublemaking wife, he lives with endless sorrow in his heart and his breast—this evil cannot be cured! And so you cannot deceive or get around the mind of Zeus. For not even the generous Prometheus, the son of Iapetos, escaped his heavy anger, but by necessity, though he knew many things, great bonds hold him down. When first Father Sky grew angry in his heart at Briareos and Kottos and Gygês,° he bound them in powerful bonds, amazed at their extraordinary manliness and their good looks and their size. He made them live beneath the wide-wayed earth. There, dwelling beneath the earth at the end of creation, at the limits of its greatness, they were afflicted for a long time, having great suffering in their hearts. But the son of Kronos and the other deathless gods, which bright-haired Rhea begot in lovemaking with Kronos, brought them up again into the light on Earth’s cunning advice. Earth went through the whole thing thoroughly with them, explaining how they could be victorious and win splendid fame; for the Titans and the gods, as many as were begotten by Kronos, were fighting furiously with one another, the bold Titans from forested Mount Othrys, and the gods, the givers of good things, from Mount Olympos—those whom bright-haired Rhea had given birth to, after bedding with Kronos.° They had fought 493. . . . Gygês: The Hundred-Handers. Apparently Sky imprisoned them in Tartaros at the time of his oppression of Earth and her children. 506. . . . bedding with Kronos: Mount Othrys (6,560 feet high), lies on the southwestern plain of Thessaly, and Mount Olympos (9,600 feet high) to its north, so that the battle between the gods and the Titans, the Titanomachy, must have taken place on the plain itself.

theogony

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with one another in bitter rage continually for more than ten years, but there was no resolution or end to their hard anger on either side, and the outcome of the war hung in the balance. But when Zeus provided the Hundred-Handers with all things required, nectar and ambrosia,° the food of the gods, the bold spirit increased in the breasts of them all. And when they had eaten the nectar and the lovely ambrosia, then the father of men and gods addressed them: “Listen to me, you, glorious children of Earth and Sky, while I speak what is in my heart. Already for a long time, all day long, we—the gods born of Kronos— have struggled with the Titans, trying through strength to gain victory. So show forth your great power and your unconquerable hands and fight against the Titans in mournful battle. Remember our kind friendship and all that you suffered before coming back to the light from your cruel bonds in the misty gloom, thanks to our devising.” So he spoke. And blameless Kottos answered him immediately:° “Divine one, you do not speak what we do not know. We know by ourselves that your wisdom is superior, that your mind is superior, and that you have become the defender of the deathless ones from a gory doom. Through your plots we have come back from the misty darkness, away from our cruel bonds, O King, son of Kronos, experiencing what we had never hoped for. For this reason we will now assist your power in dread battle with a fixed purpose and a deliberate will to fight against the Titans in mighty war.” So Kottos spoke, and the gods, the givers of good things, shouted approval when they heard his speech, and their spirits longed for war still more than before. All stirred hated battle on that day, the females and the males, both the Titan gods and those begotten of Kronos, and those whom Zeus 510. ambrosia: Usually nectar is the drink, and ambrosia is the solid food, of the gods. The meaning of nectar seems to be “what overcomes death”; ambrosia means “undying.” 521. . . . immediately: It is not obvious why Kottos should be spokesman.

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brought to the light from the Dark Place beneath the earth, those terrible and powerful ones, capable of overwhelming violence. One hundred arms sprang forth from their shoulders on each alike, and each had fifty heads growing from his shoulders on top of his powerful limbs. Well then, the Hundred-Handers stood against the Titans in grim war, holding jagged rocks in their mighty hands. But the Titans, on their side, eagerly formed up into ranks, and each side showed forth the strength of their hands. And the vast sea echoed terribly, and the earth crashed loudly, and the broad heaven, shaken, groaned. High Olympos wobbled on its foundations under the charge of the deathless ones, and a heavy quaking came to shadowy Tartaros from the deep sound of feet and the loud noise of horrid rout and the powerful missiles. And so they cast their groaning shafts at one another. The voices of either side reached the starry heaven as they shouted. They came together with a great battle cry. Nor did Zeus any more hold back his strength, but his whole mind was filled with power, and he showed forth all his might. Straightaway he came from the sky and from Olympos, constantly hurling the lightning. The bolts flew thick and fast from his powerful hand, accompanied by thunder and flashing, rolling along a sacred fire. The life-bearing earth, groaning, was burned up, and the endless forest burst into huge flames. The whole earth was boiling and the currents of Ocean and the tireless sea. A hot breath surrounded the Titans, the children of Earth, and an unending fire rose into the shining sky, and the coruscating brilliance of the thunderbolt and lightning blinded their eyes, though they were powerful. A wondrous heat took hold of the region below the earth. To see it with one’s eyes, and to hear the sound with one’s ears, was as if Earth and broad Sky had come together—so great would have been the roar of the one being fallen upon, and of the other falling down: So great was the roar of the gods clashing in anger. The winds raised up a bustle of dust and thunder and lightning and the shining thunderbolt—the shafts of great Zeus—and they carried the shouting and the crash of battle

theogony

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into the midst of the two sides. A great hubbub of savage strife arose and mighty deeds were done. And then the battle turned. Before then they lay on one another and fought continuously in horrid contention. And among the foremost Kottos and Briareos and Gygês, insatiate of combat, waged bitter war. From their powerful hands they sent forth three-hundred rocks, one after another, and with their weapons they threw a shadow over the Titans. And they sent them beneath the broad-wayed earth and bound them in agonizing bonds, overcoming them with their hands, though they were very strong, as far beneath the earth as the earth is from the sky: So far is it from the earth into misty Tartaros. For nine nights and days an anvil of bronze might fall from the sky, and on the tenth it would arrive on earth; for nine nights and days an anvil of bronze might fall from the earth, and on the tenth it would arrive in Tartaros. A fence of bronze runs all around it, and night is poured all around in three layers, and above are the roots of the earth and of the restless sea. There the divine Titans are imprisoned in the misty darkness, through the will of cloud-gathering Zeus, in a dank place at the ends of the huge earth. There is no way out, but Poseidon has set up doors of bronze, and a wall surrounds it from all sides. There Gygês and Kottos and great-spirited Briareos dwell, the trusted guards of Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish. There, all in order, are the sources and the bounds of gloomy earth and misty Tartaros and the restless sea and the starry sky—loathsome, dank!—which even the gods hate, a great chasm. If a man were to come inside the gates, he would not reach the floor even after a full year, but cruel blast upon blast would carry him this way and that. This marvel is terrible even to the deathless gods. There stands the house of horrid Night, wrapped in dark clouds. And before it stands, immovable, the son of Iapetos,°

592. son of Iapetos: Atlas.

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holding up the broad sky with his head and tireless hands, where Night and Day come close and greet each other as they pass the great bronze threshold. While the one descends downward and within, the other comes out by the door, nor does the house ever hold them both within, but always the one outside the house passes over the earth, and the other, remaining within, waits until the hour of her journey arrives. The one holds all-seeing light for mortals on the earth; the other holds Sleep in her arms, the brother of Death—I mean evil Night, wrapped in misty cloud. There the children of gloomy Night have their house, Sleep and Death, savage gods. Nor does shining Helios ever look with his rays upon them, either going up into the sky, nor coming down from the sky. Of the two, Sleep roams peacefully over the earth and the broad back of the sea and is sweet to men, but Death has an iron heart, and the spirit within his breast is as pitiless as bronze. Whomever of men he once has taken, he holds him fast: He is hateful even to the deathless gods. There, as you go further, stands the echoing house of the god of the underworld, of powerful Hades and of dread Persephone, and a fearful dog stands guard in front,° pitiless, and he has a wicked habit: He fawns with his tail and both his ears at those who enter, but he does not permit them to go out again. He keeps a careful watch and devours whomever he catches going out of the gates of powerful Hades and dread Persephone. There lives the god hated by the deathless ones, the hideous Styx, the eldest daughter of Ocean, who flows back upon himself. She lives in her wonderful house apart from the gods, roofed over by tall rocks, propped up all around by silver pillars, reaching to the sky.Rarely does swift-footed Iris, the daughter of Thaumas, bring a message to her across the broad back of the sea. But when strife and quarrel arise among the deathless ones, and one of the dwellers in the house of Olympos tells a lie, then Zeus sends Iris to bring back from afar the great oath of the gods 609. . . . in front: Kerberos. 617. Iris: “rainbow” a messenger of the gods.

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Figure 10. Hades and Persephone. Hades wears a crown of ivy leaves and carries a cornucopia filled with grapes: His other name, Ploutos, “wealth,” reflects the richness that comes from the earth: in this case, wine. He holds a staff and stands before his wife, Persephone, who holds a dish for sacrificial libations in her right hand and in her left hand a jug of wine. Athenian red-figure wine jug, ca. 470 b.c. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/9/92/Amphora_Hades_Louvre_G209_n2.jpg)

in a golden goblet, the celebrated cold water that drips down from a steep high rock.° Far beneath the broad-wayed earth a branch of Ocean runs out of holy Styx through the black night. A tenth part of its waters is split off from her: In nine silver streams Ocean winds about the earth and the broad back of the sea before falling into the deep, but a tenth flows from the rock, a great affliction for the gods. Whoever of the deathless ones, who live on the peaks of snowy Olympos, swears falsely after pouring a libation from the water of Styx, he lies breathless until a year is passed, nor does he come near to tasting ambrosia or nectar as food, but he lies without air, unable to speak on a strewn bed, shrouded in an evil sleep. But when he has been sick for a long year, then he has to undergo another ordeal, worse. For nine years he is kept apart from the gods, who are for ever, nor does he ever participate in their councils or banquets for a whole nine years. But in the tenth year he again participates in the assemblies of the deathless ones, who inhabit Olympos.° Such an oath have the gods made of the eternal and primordial waters of the Styx, which runs through the rugged land. There are the sources and bounds of the shadowy earth and misty Tartaros and the untiring sea and the starry sky, all in a row, hated and dank, which even the gods detest; there are the gleaming gates and the bronze threshold, immovable, fitted with endless roots, growing by itself. Beyond live the Titans, apart from all the gods, outside gloomy Chaos. But the glorious followers of loud-sounding Zeus have their houses on the foundations of Ocean, Kottos and Gygês. Briareos, because he was good, the deep-sounding Earthshaker has made his son-in-law, giving him his daughter, Kymopoleia.° 622. . . . high rock: That is, you can tell which god is lying by having each swear by the water of Styx, when the oath will bring punishment to the liar. 635. . . . Olympos: No god ever actually undergoes this punishment, so far as we know. 645. . . . Kymopoleia: Hesiod’s description is confused and hard to understand. Apparently the universe is made of four components: Earth, Sea, Sky, and Tartaros. Their sources are separate, but the roots of Earth and Sea lie above the prison of the Titans, located at the farthest end of Tartaros. Tartaros lies as far beneath the earth as the earth is beneath the

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But when Zeus drove out the Titans from heaven, huge Earth gave birth to her youngest son, Typhon, mixing in love with Tartaros° through the agency of golden Aphrodite. His hands were strong, capable of great deeds, and the feet of the powerful god were tireless. From his shoulders grew one hundred serpents, a monstrous dragon, flickering with gloomy tongues, and fire flashed from under the brows of his eyes in his wondrous heads, and fire burned from all his heads as he glared. There were voices in all his terrible heads that uttered every kind of unspeakable sound. At one time they spoke with a voice that the gods could understand, but at another the voice was that of a proud, ungovernable bull whose anger cannot be stopped, and at another time came the voice of a lion, who has a ruthless heart. At another time it sounded like a pack of pups, amazing to hear, and at another time he would hiss, and the high mountains echoed. A deed beyond repair would have happened on that day, and he would have taken the rule over mortals and immortals, except that the father of men and gods quickly perceived it. He thundered mightily and with power and the earth around resounded terribly, and the broad sky above, and the sea and streams of Ocean and the deepest parts of Earth. Great Olympos trembled beneath his deathless feet as the king arose, and the earth groaned. Beneath the two of them the heat of thunder and lightning took hold of the purple sea, and from the fire of so great a monster, and from the scorching wind and the blazing thunderbolt.

(645. continued) sky. In front of Tartaros are Atlas; the houses of Night, Day, Sleep, and Death; the House of Hades, the hound Kerberos, and the river Styx. The gates and the threshold are the entrance to the underworld, from which there is no escape. The Hundred-Handers are set as guards over Tartaros. Chaos here seems to be an open space between Tartaros and Earth. Kymopoleia, “wave walker,” is found only here. 647. Tartaros: Here thought of not as a place but as a god. The offspring of Earth and Tartaros is Typhon.

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The whole earth boiled, and the sky, and the sea. The long waves raged around the headlands at the rush of the deathless ones, and an unstoppable quaking arose. Hades trembled, who rules over the dead below, and the Titans down in Tartaros, who dwell with Kronos, at the unquenchable clamor and the dread battle. Then, when Zeus heaped up his strength and took his armor, thunder and lightning and the shining thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympos and struck him. He burned all the godlike heads of the savage monster. But when he had conquered him and lashed him, Typhon was hurled down, a cripple, and the huge earth groaned. Flame shot from King Typhon, struck by lightning in the murky, rugged groves of the mountain when he was hit. A great part of the huge earth was burned by the divine vapor and melted, just as tin is melted under the art of skilled men in vented pots, or as iron, the strongest of all elements, is dissolved in the groves of the mountain under blazing fire, melted in the divine earth at the hands of Hephaistos. So the earth was melted by the heat of the burning fire. Raging in his heart, Zeus cast down Typhon into the broad earth. From Typhon comes the moist power of rowdy winds, except for South Wind and North Wind and the wild West Wind. The origin of these winds is from the gods, to mortals a refreshing boon. The other gusts of wind blow erratically upon the sea. Some fall upon the misty waters, a great evil to mortals, raging with wicked blast. At different seasons they blow and scatter ships and destroy sailors. There is no defense against this evil for men, who meet them across the sea. Others across the boundless flowering earth destroy the lovely works of men who dwell below, filling them with dust and awful tumult. But when the blessed gods had finished their labor, and settled by violence their struggle with the Titans for honors, then they urged far-seeing Olympian Zeus, through the devices of Earth, to be king and to rule over the deathless ones. And so he divided up their offices among them. Zeus took to wife Metis first, who knew the most things among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to give birth to flashing-eyed Athena, then he deceived her by a trick with clever words and placed her in his belly, accepting the advice of Earth and starry Sky. For thus theogony

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Figure 11. Zeus fights Typhon. Zeus, whose name is written, holds a thunderbolt in his right hand while he takes aim with his left. Typhon is winged, bearded, has pointed ears, and snakes for his lower body. Chalcidian black-figure water jar, ca. 560 b.c. Staatliche Antikensammlung, Munich, Germany (Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Zeus_Typhon_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_596.jpg)

they advised him, so that no other but Zeus might hold the kingship over the gods, who live forever. It was destined that Metis give birth to children most wise: first of all, the daughter flashing-eyed Tritogeneia, having an equal power to her father and the same wise understanding. Though afterwards Metis was to give birth to a son with an overbearing spirit, Zeus, king of gods and men, placed her instead in his belly first so that the goddess might give him good and bad advice.° Next he took to wife shining Themis, who gave birth to the Hours—Good Order, and Justice, and blossoming Peace, who supervise the labors of mortal men—and the Fates, whom Zeus the Counselor endowed with the most honor—Klotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who give to mortals good things and bad. Eurynomê, the daughter of Ocean who has a pleasing form, gave birth to the Graces, who have beautiful cheeks, Aglaia and Euphrosynê and lovely Thalia. From their glancing eyes drip sexual attraction, the looser of limbs, and beautiful is the glance from beneath their brows.° Then he went to the bed of bountiful Demeter, and she gave birth to white-armed Persephone, whom Hades snatched away from her mother. For Zeus the Counselor gave her to him. And straightaway he fell in love

706. . . . bad advice: Metis, an Oceanid, means “mind.” There was a prophecy that a child of Metis would be greater than the father (“a son with an overbearing spirit”), according to the logic of the Succession Myth (see the General Introduction). By swallowing Metis, Zeus interferes with this logic, making “mind” one of his own qualities. Athena, called here Tritogeneia—the meaning of the epithet is unknown—is therefore the child of Zeus alone, a powerful daughter with no mother. 714. . . . their brows: Themis is a Titan; her name means “law” or “natural order,” the way things are. The Hours (Horai) are usually thought of as the seasons, the regular, unchanging progression of the year, but their names—Good Order (Eunomia), Justice (Dikê), and Peace (Eirenê)—indicate broader qualities. The Fates are here the Moirai, the “divisions,” originally of meat at a feast, but in myth the allotments that all people receive at birth (for their names, see note on line 180, above). The three Graces (Charites) are the feminine qualities that please the male and excite sexual desire (eros): Aglaia (“adornment”), Euphrosynê (“merriment”), and Thalia (“joyous festivities”). Eurynomê, an Oceanid, means “with wide rule.”

theogony

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with Mnemosynê of the beautiful tresses, on whom were begotten the nine Muses who wear fillets of gold, who take delight in feasts and the charm of oral poetry. Then Leto, mixing in love with Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish, gave birth to Apollo and Artemis, who delights in arrows, the most pleasing offspring of all those who live on Olympos. Last of all, he made buxom Hera his wife, who gave birth to Hebê and Ares and Eileithyia, mixing in love with the king of gods and men. He gave birth from his own head to the flashing-eyed Tritogeneia—terrible, stirring the cry of war, leading the horde, tireless, revered!—who delights in the hullabaloo of wars and battle. And Hera gave birth to famous Hephaistos without the benefit of sexual intercourse—for she was angry with her bedmate and quarreled with him—who surpasses the Olympians in all crafts. Because of this quarrel she bore the glorious son Hephaistos, without making love with Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish, and he surpassed in skill all the descendants of Sky.° From Amphitritê and the loud-thundering

731. . . . of Sky: Demeter is Zeus’s sister. The union of Hades and Persephone is the only sterile coupling of divine beings in Hesiod. Mnemosynê means “memory,” mother of the nine Muses, referring to the power by which the oral poet composes. Leto may be the name of a primordial mother goddess; with her children, Apollo and Artemis, she heads up a divine family, though in their origins the gods Apollo and Artemis were unrelated. The children of Zeus and Hera play little role in Greek myth: Hebê, “youth” personified, married Herakles after his divinization. Ares is a Thracian god known for his marriage to Aphrodite. Eileithyia is a Cretan goddess of childbirth (her name is probably not Greek). Athena, born without a mother from Zeus’s head, is rivaled by Hephaistos, born without a father by Hera to get even with her husband.   Many scholars think that Hesiod’s Theogony ends someplace around here, but there is no agreement about where. The last two lines of the transmitted text of the Theogony—“And now, O sweet-voiced Muses of Olympos, / daughters of Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish, sing of the tribe of women”—are the beginning of what is called the Catalogue of Women, which described the genealogies of the heroes. Over 1,300 mostly fragmentary lines (not translated here) of this poem survive in papyri and in quotations of later authors, perhaps a third of the original poem. The theory is that someone composed a transition to the Catalogue and attached it to the end of the Theogony. Then, for mysterious reasons, the

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Zeus

≈Maia ≈Metis ≈Themis ≈Alkmenê ≈Eurynomê ≈Semelê ≈Demeter ≈Mnemosynê ≈Leto

Hermes Athena

Herakles

Graces

Dionysos Persephone

Hours Fates

≈Hera

Muses Apollo

Artemis

Eileithyia Ares Hebê

Genealogical Chart 14. The offspring of Zeus and his many wives.

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Earthshaker came great Triton, whose power is wide, who commands the depths of the sea and lives with his mother and his father in their golden house, an awful god.° And Cythereia bore to shield-piercing Ares terrible Fear and Terror, who drive on the thick lines of battle in bloody war along with city-sacking Ares, and Harmonia, whom brave Kadmos took to wife. Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore bold Hermes to Zeus, the herald of the deathless ones, after she went into his holy bed. Semelê, the daughter of Kadmos, mixing in love with Zeus, bore the shining, delightful Dionysos, a mortal woman giving birth to an immortal son. And now both are gods.° Alkmenê gave birth to powerful Herakles, mixing in love with Zeus, who gathers the storm clouds. Hephaistos—famous, with crippled legs— made Aglaia his blooming wife, youngest of the Graces. Dionysos, golden of hair, made yellow-haired Ariadnê, the daughter of Minos, his blooming wife, and Zeus, the son of Kronos, made her deathless

(731. continued) Catalogue itself was lost, and an unknown author created a new Catalogue of Women, fragments of which survive. In this scholastic approach to what, after all, was an oral poem, with its expected irregularities, it is never explained why a second unknown author would have wanted to replace the original poetry with an inferior imitation, or where exactly the hypothetical transition to the Catalogue begins. The argument is based on flimsy observations about style, when a survey of the epic language in the surviving fragments suggests that the Catalogue of Women is in fact very early, perhaps contemporary with Hesiod, or by Hesiod himself. 734. awful god: For Amphitritê, see fig. 6. Triton is a merman, half man, half fish, often portrayed in Greek art of every period. 740. . . . are gods: Cythereia, “she of Cythera,” is an alternative name for Aphrodite; Cythera is an island off the south coast of mainland Greece, where there was a temple to Aphrodite. The sons of Ares and Aphrodite, Fear (Phobos) and Terror (Deimos), are today the names of the moons of the planet Mars (that is, Ares). Maia was one of the seven Pleiadês, the children of Atlas and the Oceanid Pleionê, today the name of one of the most prominent constellations in the sky. Hermes was a messenger of the gods (along with Iris) and presided over boundaries, including the boundary between life and death (Hermes Psychopompos, “soul guide”). Kadmos, the founder of Thebes, killed a dragon who was a son of Ares, then married Ares’ daughter, Harmonia. Semelê was a lover of Zeus and the mother of Dionysos; she was struck by lightning, but Zeus saved the unborn Dionysos from her burning body.

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theogony

Ares ≈ Aphrodite

Fear (Phobos)

Terror (Deimos)

Harmonia ≈ Kadmos Semelê ≈ Zeus Dionysos ≈ Ariadnê

Genealogical Chart 15. The descendants of Ares and Aphrodite.

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and ageless for him. Herakles, the brave son of Alkmenê, whose ankles are beautiful, made Hebê his graceful bride in snowy Olympos, the child of great Zeus and Hera of the golden sandals, after completing his dangerous contests. Blessed is he who having accomplished a great deed lives among the deathless ones without pain and ageless for all his days! ° Famous Perseïs, the daughter of Ocean, bore Circe to untiring Helios, and Aietês the king. Aietês, son of Helios, who shines for men, married Eiduia with the beautiful cheeks, the daughter of Ocean, the circling river, following the gods’ will. And Eiduia, submitting in love through the arts of Aphrodite, gave birth to Medea with beautiful ankles. And now, farewell to you who have your homes on Olympos, and you islands and the mainland and all within the bitter sea. Now sing of the tribe of goddesses, sweet-voiced Muses who live on Olympos, the daughters of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, those deathless ones who slept with mortal men and begot children like the gods! The bright goddess Demeter gave birth to Ploutos, having lain in love with the hero Iasion in sweet love in a thrice-plowed field in the rich land of Crete, a noble man who goes everywhere on the earth and the broad back of the sea. He makes rich the man who finds him, into whose arms he comes, granting him much wealth.° Harmonia, the daughter of golden Aphrodite, bore to Kadmos Ino and Semelê and Agavê with the beautiful cheeks and Autonoê, whom Aristaios with thick, long hair married, and Polydoros in well-girt Thebes.° And Kallirrhoê, the daughter of Ocean, mixed in the love of golden

750. . . . all his days: Zeus extended the night on which Herakles was conceived, making it three times its normal length, thus explaining Herakles’ great strength. In the Iliad (18.362) Hephaistos is married to Charis, another of the Graces. In the usual version, Ariadnê, daughter of Minos, king of Crete, helped Theseus to defeat the Minotaur but was then abandoned on the island of Naxos, where Dionysos found her, married her, and conceived by her many children. Herakles’ marriage to Hebê, “youth,” is another way of saying that he achieved eternal life as the reward for his labors.

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theogony

Ocean ≈ Tethys

Helios ≈ Perseïs

Circe

Aietês ≈ Eiduia Medea

Genealogical Chart 16. The descendants of Helios and Perseïs.

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Aphrodite with bold-hearted Chrysaor and bore the strongest child of all mortals, Geryon, whom mighty Herakles killed in Erytheia in the midst of the water, for the sake of his shamble-footed cattle. Dawn bore to Tithonos Memnon with helmet of bronze, king of the Ethiopians, and King Emathion. And she bore to Kephalos a bold son, powerful Phaëthon, a man like the gods. Laughter-loving Aphrodite snatched him up when he was young, in the tender flower of glorious youth, having childish thoughts, and she made him a keeper of her sacred shrine in the night, a shining spirit.° Jason, the son of Aison, led away the daughter of Aietês , the god-reared king, through the will of the everlasting gods, after he had accomplished the many dangerous contests that the great boastful king, violent and foolish Pelias, the doer

764. . . . much wealth: Homer mentions Demeter’s union with Iasion in “a thrice-plowed field” (Odyssey 5.125–28), evidently a reference to a ritual to enhance the fertility of the fields. Ploutos means “wealth”: that is, the wealth of agriculture. He is often identified with Hades. 766. well-girt Thebes: Kadmos is the founder of Thebes. Ino was the wicked stepmother of Phrixos and Hellê, who flew away on a golden ram. Ino was transformed into the goddess Leukothea, the “white goddess,” who saved Odysseus from drowning (Odyssey 5.333–53). Agavê was the mother of Pentheus, torn to pieces by the followers of Dionysos. The obscure Polydoros ruled Thebes after the death of Pentheus. Autonoê was the mother of Aktaion by Aristaios; Aktaion was torn to pieces by his own hounds after he saw Artemis naked. 775. . . . shining spirit: Dawn was famous for her lust. Her son by Tithonos, Memnon, was king of the Ethiopians, who came to Troy as an ally against the Greeks. Achilles killed him in a celebrated duel. Herakles killed the obscure Emathion, also an Ethiopian king. Zeus granted Dawn’s wish that Tithonos, a Trojan prince, be made immortal, but she forgot to ask for eternal youth to accompany his immortality; he shriveled up into a cicada, babbling in a back room of Dawn’s house. Kephalos (“head”) was an Athenian prince who accidentally killed his wife, Prokris, while hunting. (She thought that he had gone out to meet Dawn.) Here Phaëthon is snatched up by Aphrodite, but in a better-known story his father was the Sun (Helios), and he was burned up when he drove his father’s chariot across the sky.

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theogony

Aphrodite ≈ Ares Harmonia ≈ Kadmos

Ino

Semelê

Agavê

Polydoros

Autonoê ≈ Aristaios Aktaion

Genealogical Chart 17. Other children of Kadmos and Harmonia.

Figure 12. The winged Dawn (Eos) pursues the Trojan prince Tithonos, who holds a lyre. Their son will be the great Ethiopian fighter Memnon, famous in the Trojan Cycle. Dawn requested from Zeus eternal life for Tithonos but forgot to ask for eternal youth: He shriveled up like a cicada. Athenian red-figure vase, ca. 470 b.c. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen; https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tithonus#/media/File:Tithonos_Eos_Louvre_G438_detail.jpg)

Tithonos ≈ Dawn (Eos) ≈ Kephalos

Memnon

Emathion Phaëthon

Genealogical Chart 18. The children of Dawn (Eos).

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of violent deeds, placed upon him. When the son of Aison had accomplished them, after long suffering, he arrived at Iolkos, carrying the glancing-eyed daughter of Aietês on his swift ship, and he made her his blooming bride. And she bore a son, Medeos, to Jason, shepherd of the people, submitting to him in love, whom Cheiron, the son of Philyra, raised in the mountains.° So was the plan of great Zeus brought to pass. Of the daughters of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, the shining goddess Psamathê gave birth to Phokos, uniting with Aiakos in the love of golden Aphrodite. And the silver-sandaled goddess Thetis, submitting to Peleus, gave birth to Achilles, the breaker of men, with a heart like a lion.° And nicely crowned Aphrodite gave birth to Aeneas, having mixed in sweet love with Anchisês on the peaks of Ida, wooded, with many gullies.° Circe, the daughter of Helios, son of Hyperion, mixing in love with steadfast Odysseus, gave birth to Agrios and Latinos, blameless and powerful. She also gave birth to Telegonos, through the agency of golden Aphrodite. And they ruled over all the famous Tyrsenians,

783. in the mountains: Pelias was Jason’s evil uncle who compelled him to lead the Argonauts to seek the Golden Fleece in Colchis, at the eastern end of the Black Sea. Medea, the daughter of Aietês, who controlled the fleece, betrayed her father and ran off with Jason. She tricked Pelias’ daughters into killing their father when she and Jason returned from Colchis. Medeos is eponym of the Medes: that is, the Persians, who famously attacked Greece in the fifth century b.c. The good centaur Cheiron, who raised Medeos, also raised Jason and Achilles. 788. . . . like a lion: Aiakos was king of Aegina, the island just off Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. His son by the Nereid Psamathê, Phokos, was murdered by his half-brothers Telamon, the father of Ajax in the Iliad, and Peleus, the father of Achilles, because they were jealous of his athletic prowess. Thetis, mother of Achilles, is a major figure in Homer’s Iliad. Zeus fancied her but learned of a prophecy that the son would be greater than his father; thus he arranged that she marry Peleus. The son, Achilles, did become greater than the father. 790. many gullies: The union of goddesses with mortal men is rare, but the offspring of this union, the great hero Aeneas, founded the Roman race, as told in Vergil’s Aeneid (ca. 19 b.c.).

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Hyperion ≈ Theia Helios ≈ Perseïs

Kalypso ≈ Odysseus ≈ Circe

Aietês≈Eiduia Aison Pelias

Nausithoös Nausinoös Telegonos Agrios Latinos Medea

≈ Jason Medeos

Genealogical Chart 19. The descendants of Kalypso, Circe, and Aietês.

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very far off in a recess of the holy islands.° The shining goddess Kalypso was joined to Odysseus in sweet love and begot Nausithoös and Nausinoös.° These are the goddesses who slept with mortal men and gave birth to children like the gods. And now, O sweet-voiced Muses of Olympos, daughters of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, sing of the tribe of women!°

794. . . . holy islands: In the Odyssey Circe does not bear children to Odysseus. Agrios may be the same as the Faunus of Roman myth. Latinos is king of Latium when Aeneas arrives in Italy, according to the account in Vergil’s Aeneid (7.45). According to the tradition that Circe also bore Telegonos, Telegonos was said to have traveled to Ithaca in search of his father, Odysseus, but killed him accidentally. The Tyrsenians are the Etruscans, who lived north of Rome. By saying that they lived in “a recess of the holy islands,” Hesiod betrays his ignorance of western geography. 795. . . . Nausinoös: Kalypso, “concealer,” was probably an invention of Homer. In the Odyssey she keeps Odysseus imprisoned on her island, Ogygia, “the navel of the sea,” for seven years (Odyssey 7.259). In the Odyssey Nausithoös was the first king of the Phaiakians on Scheria, the never-never land that Odysseus visits after escaping from Kalypso (Odyssey 6.4–5, 7.56–66, 8.564). Nausinoös is otherwise unknown. 798. of women: Here begins the lost Catalogue of Women.

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Introduction to the Works and Days

The first two hundred lines of the Works and Days consist of a proem and the telling of three myths: the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Five Races. The myths of Prometheus and Pandora are connected, as in the Theogony, but the Myth of the Five Races is independent. All three myths, however, refer to an earlier time, the Golden Age, when humans were spared the need to work. The purpose of these myths is to establish the central doctrine that Zeus has established justice in human life on the basis of working for a livelihood.

The Necessity of Labor and the Myth of the Five Races After an invocation to the Muses, who celebrate the power of Zeus, and the mention of a quarrel with his brother, Persês, over the division of their inheritance, Hesiod goes on to say that the gods concealed from humans the means to a livelihood because of Zeus’s anger at being deceived, presumably at the division of the sacrificial meat at Mekonê (see Theogony lines 419–42). Before then, one needed to work but a single day to produce enough for an entire year. When Zeus took away fire in punishment for the deception, Prometheus, the Titan advocating for the interests of mankind, stole fire from heaven. Zeus punished men for his new crime by creating Pandora, who brought the curse of greedy women to the race of men. (Hesiod does not seem bothered by the problem of reproduction without women before this time.) Since Pandora opened the jar of evils, humans have had to work for a living. Certainly the punishment was just, and we must accept it. The myths of Prometheus and Pandora assume a continuity, then, between an earlier, workless age and the present age, in which work is a necessity. There was no gap between the two eras. At first man lived in a paradise, without the need to work; then Prometheus deceived Zeus, causing his anger and his removal of fire; then Prometheus recovered fire; then

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Zeus retaliated by having Pandora created, thus bringing into being the malevolent tribe of women, their attendant evils, and the need to work for a living. First there was sin, then punishment. It is a continuum from a life of grace to an accursed existence. In the Myth of the Five Races, by contrast, each age comes to a complete end before the next begins. First was the Golden Race, but it disappeared beneath the earth and was gone. Then came the Silver Race, not a descendant of the Golden one but of a separate origin; it too disappeared. Then came the Bronze Race, Heroic Race, and Iron Race, which all came into being independently. The notion that once humankind lived carefree in a paradise and subsequently fell into the horror of the modern world through sinful behavior is widespread, as, for example, in the biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. The Myth of the Five Races, wherein these races are named after different metals (except for the Race of Heroes), is not Greek in origin, but it has clear antecedents in the myths of Persia and India. For example, in the Persian (Zoroastrian) tradition the creator god, Ahura Mazda, sent Zarathustra a dream in which he saw a tree with four branches—of gold, silver, steel, and iron. The branches foretell the four ages to come. In the Golden Age, a true religion prevails, and all demons are expelled. True religion is strong in the Silver and the Steel Age too, but in the Iron Age demons will master the world, and as in Hesiod’s account, evil will prevail. Men will lie, cheat, and steal; fathers will hate their sons; brothers will hate brothers; and humans will live in poverty. The righteous will receive no respect. Similarly, in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar interpreted by Daniel (Daniel 2.31–43), there was a man made of four metals: his head of gold, his breast and arms of silver, his waist and hips of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet of iron and clay. Daniel explains that the metals refer to a succession of kingdoms. Hesiod has adapted this Eastern story, or one like it, to his own purposes, but he has inserted the Age of Heroes into the metallic sequence to account for the time in which the Theban and Trojan wars took place. These wars were the principal topics of Greek epic. The sequence does not reflect a progressive degeneration, except for the contrast between the Golden Race and subsequent races: The Silver, Bronze, and Iron races all show distinctive faults. In many ways the Heroic Race is better than the Bronze, which pre98

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cedes it. Introduced as an alternative to the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, the Myth of the Ages underlines Hesiod’s warning to Persês that Zeus has ordained work as a necessity for humankind. Once humans lived without the necessity for labor, when Kronos and the Titans ruled the world, in the days of the Golden Race. Then the earth produced abundant food by itself. When Zeus and his Olympians came to power, the Golden Race came to an end; the Silver Race arose, and Zeus decreed that men must work. Men of the Silver Race lived to be one hundred years old in the houses of their mothers, like childish simpletons. Their mothers cared for them as for children. When they reached maturity at age one hundred, they did not live much longer, because they could not refrain from violent behavior. In their few years as adults, they suffered many afflictions because of their folly and pugnacity. They did not sacrifice to the gods because they had nothing to sacrifice, neither growing crops nor tending animals. An angry Zeus sent them beneath the earth, where they function as underworld protective spirits, but of a secondary rank when compared with the spirits of the Golden Race. Next Zeus created the Bronze Race from ash trees, not inferior or superior to the Silver Race but merely different. Unlike the idle and childish Silver Race, the Bronze Race was vigorous and active. Apparently Zeus imposed on them the same need to work for a living, but instead of working they turned to rapine and war. They ate no bread but only meat, no doubt from herds that they had plundered. They met the same fate as the Silver Race. They destroyed one another through violence and went down to the House of Hades. Now Zeus made the Heroic Race, interrupting the sequence of metals, a race “more just, more righteous, the godly race of Heroes, who are called half-gods, the race before our own upon the boundless earth” (137–38). These were the men who fought at Troy and Thebes. To Hesiod and other Greeks these men had in fact existed several generations before their own time. They were superior to men of the Bronze Race or the Iron one, those of Hesiod’s own time. They tilled the fields and tended flocks, as Zeus’s ordinance required. So Odysseus plowed the fields of Ithaca; his father, Laertês, tended his vineyard, and Anchisês, the Trojan father of Aeneas, introduction to the works and days

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kept his flocks on Ida. The Heroic Race even continued their labors when some were translated to the Isles of the Blest, where the rich land bore three crops a year. Yet the heroes perished at Troy and Thebes, fighting for Helen and the flocks of Oedipus. In this sense the heroes were like the Bronze Race. Both are in fact remembrances of an actual historical period that we still call the Bronze Age, roughly between 1400 and 1000 b.c., when Mycenae, Thebes, and Troy were ascendant. The Race of Heroes was different from the other races, however, in that not all who lived at this time were heroes, but only the kings and great warriors. Although at death some men went to the Isles of the Blest, the majority of common men and women survived into the days of the Iron Race. Descendants of the heroes were alive in Hesiod’s day, when prominent families claimed the Trojan and Theban fighters as their ancestors, as Hesiod knew perfectly well. Nor did the Race of Heroes end in total destruction, as had the earlier races. The Race of Heroes represents Hesiod’s attempt to fit the world of Greek legend, familiar to him and his contemporaries, into a metallic scheme that he inherited from Eastern culture. The time of the Race of Heroes is not so much a separate age as the beginning of the Iron Race. Thus Hesiod does not tell us that the Iron Race was a creation of the gods on Olympos (as were the Gold and Silver races) or of Zeus (as were the Bronze Race and the Race of Heroes). He has divided the fourth and final age into two parts: an earlier and better, and a later and worse. Zeus laid the same injunction, to work, on the Iron Race as he had on the Silver and Bronze races, but humans again refused to obey, avoiding work and turning to crime and fraud to obtain their livelihoods. This is what Persês has done in the unequal division of his and Hesiod’s inheritance. The Age of the Iron Race is Hesiod’s own. Honest men of integrity still exist, but conditions will soon deteriorate. One day Zeus will destroy this race too, as he has destroyed earlier ones. The Bronze Race engaged in communal violence, with tribes and communities locked in bloody war, but the Iron Race is characterized by crimes of dishonesty. Brother betrays brother; sons betray parents; men lie, steal, cheat, and swear false oaths (lines 165–70): 100

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Nor will there be any thanks for one who keeps his oath, or is just or good, but men will celebrate more the doer of evil deeds and violence. Justice will be what you can get away with, and there will be no shame. The evil man will harm the better, slandering him with crooked words and swearing an oath upon it.

The Iron Race makes war, and in some respects shares the vices of the Silver and Bronze races. They did not respect the gods. The Silver Race seized one another’s property and treated their kinsmen like strangers; and for the Bronze Race, might made right. The Iron Race will end when babies are born with gray hair at the temples, reversing the circumstances of the Silver Race, when humans lived for a hundred years and then grew quickly old, acting violently against one another. When Zeus will act to destroy the depraved men of the Iron Race, they will become at birth as the Silver Race was in old age. Whereas the myths of Prometheus and Pandora describe the origin of the necessity for work, the Myth of the Races explains the consequences of failure to obey this ordinance. Work is the foundation of Justice, under whose protection come happiness, prosperity, and wealth. Those who live without work and turn to violence, injustice, and impiety will incur Zeus’s anger and come to an end. Thus were the Silver and Bronze races destroyed, and so will the Iron Race one day suffer a similar fate.

Good and Bad Strife Such is the central thesis of Works and Days: A refusal to work will lead to the injustice that rouses Zeus’s destructive anger. The principle has been effective from the time of Zeus’s ascendancy. But in leading one’s life, one meets with two kinds of Strife (Eris): the good Strife and the bad. Good Strife leads to a peaceful competition in labor that is beneficial (lines 20–24): She rouses even the shiftless to accomplishment. For when a man who is not working sees another who has grown rich, who is eager to plow introduction to the works and days

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and to plant and to place his house in order, this neighbor works to rival his neighbor who hastens to wealth.

Good Strife arouses even the lazy man to compete with a neighbor who earns his riches by plowing and harvesting crops. Zeus has placed good Strife in the roots of the earth. But the bad Strife drives men to war and to pursue fraudulent lawsuits presided over by gift-devouring elders, such as those pursued by Persês, Hesiod’s own brother. It is this very bad Strife that characterizes the Iron Race. Work is the foundation of Justice. The just city flourishes. Its crops are rich, and hunger and catastrophe never come; but the unjust city suffers famine and disease. In the just city, men plant crops and tend their flocks. They stay away from violence and unjust deeds. In the unjust city, men do not work the fields and therefore must commit crimes to increase their wealth. This is the wrong kind of work, hated by Zeus. In nature there are no laws, and there is no Justice. Thus the hawk may seize the nightingale and devour it, because the nightingale is weak and the hawk is strong, but in the world of men Justice will prevail. Men must work the fields to generate wealth, not simply take what they can from others. It is the responsibility of the elders in the community to enforce this morality. Hesiod turns to his brother, Persês. There are two kinds of roads, Persês, he tells him: the rough road and the smooth. At first the road to excellence is rough, steep, long, and filled with sweat—that is the road of work. The road to evil, on the other hand, is short and smooth. If he cannot himself find the true road, Hesiod tells his brother, he should at least follow one who can (lines 257–60):

But you, Persês, of a divine lineage, labor ever-mindful of my advice, so that Hunger will hate you, and the reverend well-crowned Demeter will love you and fill your barn with things to eat.

Work provides not merely a livelihood but actual wealth (lines 265–68): Men’s flocks become abundant, and they become rich through labor, and by working men become much dearer 102

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to the deathless ones. Work is not at all a disgrace, but not working is a disgrace.

Work brings the respect and envy of other men; not working brings shame and poverty. Persês must turn away from enriching himself at others’ expense and follow Hesiod’s example. He must not seize another’s property: “Grab is a bad girl” (line 304). Hesiod reviews how wealth is obtained unjustly, in a manner typical of the bad behavior of the Iron Race: robbery, lies, ill treatment of guests and suppliants, disrespect for elders, adultery, abuse of orphans. There is a right form of work and a wrong, just as there are two kinds of Strife. Right work leads to honest wealth; wrong work seeks to deprive others of their goods. The culmination of right work is sacrifice to the gods, which implies that one has enough wealth to support this sacred act. In return the gods will reward one with still more wealth, so that the man who works can buy a neighbor’s estate, not sell his own. In the first half of Works and Days, Hesiod explains why work is the foundation for Justice under the rule of Zeus. In the remainder of the poem he gives instruction on how Zeus has made it possible for men to work successfully. Nature is like a book filled with signs of appropriate activity so that one’s labor will be successful—the rising of stars and constellations, the behavior of various animals—if only one can learn to read this book. Hesiod teaches us how to read the book of nature in his farmers’ and sailors’ calendars and in his listing of lucky and unlucky days, with which the poem ends. In the religious sphere, too, he alerts us to appropriate responses. In the social world, he advises on morally correct forms of competition and association. He ends the poem by proclaiming (lines 696–98): That man is happy and rich who knows all these things and does his work without offense to the deathless ones, observing the omens of birds and avoiding transgression.

Wisdom Literature Hesiod’s poems were in origin oral deliveries, taken down by dictation in the eighth or ninth centuries b.c. on the island of Euboea or in nearby introduction to the works and days

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Boeotia. Though composed in Greek hexameters, they owe their origin to Eastern literatures. The stories of the origins of the present world order as told in the Theogony, and the advice for living according to Justice as given in the Works and Days, are of Eastern origin. Works and Days belongs to an Eastern literary genre that modern scholars call Wisdom Literature, a genre well represented in Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Aramaic, and Hebrew documents. From the Egyptian Middle and New Kingdoms, about 2200 b.c. to 1500 b.c., we can count fifty or sixty such books, though many survive only in fragments, including the famous Teachings of Amenemopê of around 1200 b.c. The purpose of these books was to train scribes and officials in correct behavior. The biblical book Proverbs was much influenced by such books; it is in part a translation of the Egyptian Teachings of Amenemopê. This form of literature consists mostly of gnomes and proverbs: short, pithy expressions of general truths that teach proper behavior in the realm of ethics, interpersonal relationships, and etiquette, promising divine favor and professional success to those who follow these truths. Often a wisdom book is set in the mouth of a wise father or other person of authority instructing a son in proper behavior, much as Hesiod’s poem is directed to his brother, Persês. Many scholars have wondered about the historicity of Persês—was he a real person with whom Hesiod had a conflict? We cannot finally answer this question, but the form of a wiser relative instructing a duller one is certainly traditional and inherited. In Egypt, wisdom literature is much preoccupied with the concept of Maat, “truth” or “justice,” but also implying balance, order, and universal law. Maat was personified as a goddess, represented as a woman wearing a feather. Similarly, Hesiod’s poems proclaim the need for Justice in human life. Typical sentiments in Egyptian wisdom literature are as follows:1 When you go down to the sea of Maat [ Justice], and sail on it with a fair wind, no squall shall strip away your sail, nor will your boat be idle. 1. Based on M. V. Fox, “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric,” Rhetorica 1 (1983): 20.

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Figure 13. Maat. Relief in the inner shrine of the Hathor Temple, Deir el-Medina (“monastery of the city”), called in ancient Egyptian “the place of Maat,” near Luxor, in Upper Egypt. Deir el-Medina was the workman’s village where laborers on the royal tombs lived. The temple to Hathor was converted to a Christian church and has survived intact. Here on the right the goddess, wearing the Maat feather, offers a lotus staff to Ptolemy IV (reigned 221–201 b.c.). She holds an ankh, “life,” in her left hand. Ptolemy raises his hand in adoration. He wears a linen skirt and holds a Maat feather in his left hand. Above are registers with various gods, all wearing the Maat feather. Above the goddess the inscriptions read “Words to be spoken by Maat, mistress of the West [that is, the Underworld] who governs the motions of the scale.” Below, the words read “There is no end of it [that is, Maat] for the great lord [that is, Ptolemy.”] (Photo: Olaf Tausch; https://upload.wikimeia.org/wikipeia/commons/6/6c/Temple _of_Deir_el-Medina_13.JPG)

No accident will affect your mast, your yards will not break. You will not founder when you touch land; no flood will carry you away. You will not taste the river’s evils; you will not see a frightened face. Fish will come darting to you; fatted foul, surround you. For you are a father to the orphan, husband to the widow, brother to the rejected woman, apron to the motherless. He who lessens falsehood fosters truth; he who fosters the good reduces evil, as satiety’s coming removes hunger, and clothing removes nakedness; as the sky is serene after a storm, warming all who shiver; as fire cooks what is raw, as water quenches thirst. Now see for yourself: the arbitrator is a robber; the peacemaker makes grief. He who should soothe makes sore, but he who cheats diminishes Maat! Rightly filled, Maat neither falls short nor brims over. Speak Maat; do Maat, for it is mighty; it is great; it endures. Its worth is tried. It leads one to reveredness.

Hesiod’s preoccupation with the avoidance of evil deeds and with work as the foundation of Justice owes much to these ancient Eastern teachings, but it is important to remember that Eastern wisdom literature was never oral. 106

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It was always couched in writing, used by scribes in training to hone their moral nature while they learned the difficult art of writing in the complex Eastern systems of writing. Yet such moral teachings, and the very form of wisdom literature as something taught by one family member to another, reached somehow into the realm of oral tradition and was transmitted to Greece, as exemplified in Hesiod’s Works and Days.

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Works and Days

Come here, you Muses of Pieria,° who give glory through your song. Sing a hymn to Zeus, who is our father, great Zeus, through whom men become either famous or unknown, celebrated or decried. For easily Zeus, who thunders on high, who lives in high mansions, makes men strong, or easily brings strong men down; easily he lessens the distinguished and enhances the obscure; easily he straightens the crooked and dries up the proud. Hear me now, watching and seeing, and make true judgments that abide by justice, and I will speak truth to Persês. For not only one kind of Strife is on the earth, but there are two:° The one you may praise, once you encountered her; the other is worthy of blame. In nature they are entirely different. The one encourages war and evil battle, wretched; no man loves her, but by necessity, through the will of the deathless ones, they honor the oppressive Strife. But the other Strife dark Night begot first, and Zeus, the son of Kronos, who sits on high, dwelling in the upper sky, placed her in the roots of earth: She is far better for men. She rouses even the shiftless to accomplishment. For when a man who is not working sees another who has grown rich, who is eager to plow

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1. Pieria: A region of southeastern Macedonia, north of Mount Olympos, named after a primordial tribe who once lived there. There seems to have been a shrine to the Muses in Pieria. 12. are two: In Theogony line 183, Hesiod refers to a single Strife (Eris), the child of Night (Nyx).

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and to plant and to place his house in order, this neighbor works to rival his neighbor who hastens to wealth. This Strife is good for mortals. So the ceramicist is angered by the ceramicist, and the carpenter by the carpenter, and the beggar envies the beggar; and the singer, the singer. O Persês, lay these things up in your heart, so that the evil Strife does not hold your heart back from labor as you gawk and obsess with quarrels in the agora. For he has little concern with quarrels and things that take place in the agora, he who holds in his house the abundant and ripe sustenance of the things that the earth bears, the grain of Demeter.° When you have plenty of that, you can engage in quarrels and conflict for the sake of another’s possessions—you will have no second chance to do this.° But without further ado let us settle our dispute with straight judgments that come from Zeus, the best ones. For we have already divided our estate, but you carried off much more, greatly feeding the pride of the bribe-devouring elders, who wish to make this their judgment—the fools! Nor do they know how much more the half is than the whole, nor how great an advantage is in mallow and the asphodel.° For the gods have hidden sustenance from men, or you might easily work enough in one day to provide you for an entire year even without working. Quickly you would put up your rudder in the smoke,° and the work of oxen and the tireless mules would come to an end. 32. Demeter: The goddess of the wheat harvest. 35. to do this: Apparently to act without the quarrel between Hesiod and Persês being settled, but the Greek is obscure. 41. . . . asphodel: “Better the half than the whole” is a proverb meaning that it is better to have little gained justly than much gained unjustly. Mallow and asphodel are flowering plants that grow in the Mediterranean, traditionally the cheap food of the poor. 44. . . . in the smoke: A part of the annual cycle was the marketing of grain across the sea. Tools not being used were stored above the fireplace, so the rudder is put “up in the smoke” once the need for overseas travel is suspended.

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For Zeus hid it when he was angered in his heart because wily Prometheus deceived him. For this reason he devised painful sorrows for mankind—he hid away fire. Then the noble son of Iapetos stole it again for humankind from Zeus the Counselor, hiding it from Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, in a hollow fennel stalk. In anger Zeus the cloud-gatherer spoke to him: “O son of Iapetos, who surpass all in cunning, you rejoice because you have stolen fire, because you have deceived my mind, but you have contrived for yourself and for men to come a gigantic evil. I will give them in retribution for the fire an evil in which all will take delight in their spirit while embracing their own evil.” So he spoke. And the father of men and gods laughed out loud. He ordered the famed Hephaistos immediately to mix earth with water and to place inside the voice and strength of a human being, and to make the lovely desirable shape of a young girl with a face like the immortal goddesses. And he commanded Athena to teach her crafts, how to weave elaborately embroidered cloth, and he ordered golden Aphrodite to pour out on her head charm that inspires cruel desire, and care that devours the limbs. And he urged Hermes the messenger, the killer of Argos,° to put in her the mind of a bitch and a scheming nature. So he spoke. And they obeyed King Zeus, the son of Kronos. Straightaway the clever Lame God made her from earth in the image of a modest young girl, following the plans of the son of Kronos. And the goddess glancing-eyed Athena gave her a girdle and ornaments, and the goddess Graces and queenly Persuasion placed on her skin golden necklaces, and the Hours

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with beautiful locks crowned her with spring flowers.° Pallas Athena fitted all the ornaments to her body. And in her breast the messenger, the killer of Argos, fashioned lies and wheedling words and a thievish nature through the will of loud-thundering Zeus. And the messenger of the gods placed in her a voice, and he named the woman Pandora, because all who live on Olympos had given her a gift, an evil for men who devour grain.° When he had accomplished his savage and desperate deception, the father sent the famous killer of Argos, the swift messenger of the gods, to take it to Epimetheus as a gift. And Epimetheus did not remember how Prometheus had told him never to accept a gift from Olympian Zeus but to send it back, unless some evil befall humankind. But only after he had taken it, when he already had the evil, did he understand. Before this the tribes of men lived on the earth separate and apart from evil and apart from harsh labor and grievous sickness, which brings death upon men; for in misery men soon grow old. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered its contents abroad, and she devised terrible pains for humankind. Hope alone remained within in the unbreakable house beneath the lip of the jar, and did not fly out the door.° Before that she stopped the lid of the jar through the will of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, the gatherer of clouds. But ten thousand woes roam through humankind; for the earth is filled

71. . . . spring flowers: The “Lame God” is Hephaistos. The Graces (Charites) are spirits that bestow beauty and feminine charm. Persuasion (Peitho) is a personification of the power to persuade a lover. The Hours (Horai) bring to fulfillment the fruits of the earth and the beauty of women. All often accompany the great goddess Aphrodite. 77. . . . grain: Hesiod takes Pandora as meaning “all-gifted,” but probably it is an early name for the Earth mother meaning “she who gives all.” 89. . . . out the door: The Greek for “jar” is pithos, a large storage jar, but through a mistranslation by the Dutch scholar Erasmus (1466–1536) it has popularly been called a box. The story is odd because evils have been let out into the world, but Hope remains confined in the jar. Still, Hesiod’s meaning must be that in the midst of misfortune there is hope that evil can be overcome.

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Figure 14. Pandora born from the earth, crowned and veiled, with hands upraised. Above her flies an Eros indicating her power of sexual attraction. The figure beside her is either Hephaistos with his sculptor’s hammer or Epimetheus, who receives her as a bride as he tills the earth, smashing the clods with a hammer. Zeus stands to the far left, holding a royal scepter and wearing an olive wreath, and beside him is Hermes with the herald’s wand of snakes entwined on a staff, winged helmet, and winged boots. Athenian red-figure painting, ca. 450 b.c. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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with evil things, and the sea is filled. Sickness afflicts humans in the day, and at night sickness courses through mortals, of their own accord bringing evils in silence, because Zeus the Counselor took away their voice. Thus there is no way at all to escape the mind of Zeus. If you wish, I will tell another story, correctly and with skill, and you should lay it up in your heart—how gods and mortal humans have a common origin. First of all, the deathless ones, who have their homes on Mount Olympos, fashioned a Golden Race of mortal humans.° These lived in the time of Kronos, when he was king in the sky. They lived like gods, without a care in their hearts, far away from pain and suffering. Nor was there terrible old age, but always they were the same in their feet and their hands, delighting in festivities away from every evil. They died as if overcome by sleep. All things noble were with them. The rich earth bore them its fruit abundantly and unstinting all by itself. They lived off their fields as they pleased, in peace, with many good things, rich in flocks, friends to the blessed gods. But after the earth covered over this race, they are called noble spirits upon the earth through the will of great Zeus, defenders from evil, guardians of mortal humans, who watch over judgments and wicked deeds, coursing everywhere over the earth, clothed in a mist, giving out wealth; for they received this kingly honor as well. Then after this those who have their homes on Olympos made a second race, of silver, far worse, not like the Golden Race in appearance or mind. A child was raised by his doting mother for one hundred years—a complete fool, gamboling in his own house! But when they came to maturity and reached the full measure of youth, they lived for just a short while, suffering pains through their foolishness. For the Silver Race were not able to keep away from stupid violence against one another, nor did they wish to cherish the deathless gods, nor perform sacrifice on the sacred altars of the blessed ones, as is right for human beings in every community. 99. . . . humans: The “deathless ones” here are the Titans, not the later Olympian gods: Olympos is the throne of divine sovereignty.

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Then Zeus the son of Kronos hid them in anger because they did not respect the blessed gods who inhabit Olympos. But when the earth hid this race too —they are called the holy ones beneath the earth by mortals, in second place,° but honor is nevertheless owed to these as well—father Zeus made a third race of mortal men, of bronze, not at all like the Silver Race, begotten by the ash-tree nymphs, fearsome and powerful. They were concerned only with the groans and violence of Ares. Nor did they eat bread, but they had a mighty spirit made of adamant, unbendable. Their strength was great, and unconquerable arms grew from their shoulders upon their powerful limbs. Their armor was of bronze, bronze their houses, and they worked with bronze tools. They did not have black iron. And overcome by their own hands, they went into the dank house of chilly Hades, nameless. Black death took them, though they were mighty, and they left the brilliant light of the sun. But when the earth covered over this race too, Zeus the son of Kronos made still a fourth one upon the all-nourishing earth, more just, more righteous, the godly Race of Heroes, who are called half-gods, the race before our own upon the boundless earth. And of these some perished from evil war and the dread battle cry, fighting around Thebes of the seven gates, the Kadmeian land, on account of the flocks of Oedipus, and others were destroyed going to Troy in ships across the great gulf of the sea for the sake of Helen of the beautiful tresses. There the end of death shrouded some of them, but to others father Zeus, the son of Kronos, gave a living and a place to live apart from humans, settling them at the ends of the earth. And they dwell without a care in the Isles of the Blest, beside deep-swirling Ocean, happy heroes, for whom the rich fields bear sweet fruit that ripens three times a year, far from the deathless ones. Kronos is king among them. The father of men and gods released him from his bonds, and he has appropriate honor and glory among them. Zeus made another race of mortal human beings who have come 124. second place: That is, after the spirits of the Golden Race.

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into being upon the rich earth. Would that I did not live among this fifth race of men, but that I died before, or that I lived after! For now the race is of iron, nor do men ever cease from suffering and sorrow by day, nor from being ruined by destruction at night. The gods will give them grievous care, but nevertheless even these people will have some good mixed with bad. Zeus will destroy this Iron Race of mortal men too, when they turn out to be born with gray hair on their temples. Father will not be of like mind with his sons, nor sons with their fathers, nor the guest with his host, nor the companion with his companion. Nor will the brother be loved as he was before. They will dishonor their parents as quickly they grow old. Wretched, knowing nothing of the gods’ wrath, they will blame them, attacking them with vile words. Nor will they repay their aging parents for the cost of their own upbringing, and might will determine right. One man will storm the city of another. Nor will there be any thanks for one who keeps his oath, or is just, or good, but men will celebrate more the doer of evil deeds and violence. Justice will be what you can get away with, and there will be no shame. The evil man will harm the better, slandering him with crooked words and swearing an oath upon it. And Envy will accompany every wretched human being—shrieking, delighting in evil, foul-faced! And then Shame and Retribution will cover their beautiful skin in white robes and go to Olympos from the earth with its broad paths to the tribe of deathless ones, forsaking humans. Sad pains will be left for mortal humans,° and there will be no defense against evil. And now I will tell a fable for elders who themselves have understanding. Thus the hawk said to the nightingale with fancy plumage as he carried her high among the clouds, seizing her in his claws. And she, pierced in his crooked claws, wailed pitifully. He spoke to her forcefully: “Strange bird, why do you cry out? One much stronger now holds you. 174. . . . humans: Shame (Aidos) and Retribution (Nemesis) are the forces that oppose wickedness, one from within, the other from without.

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Figure 15. The Cretan princess Ariadnê, daughter of King Minos, sits weeping on the shore as her lover Theseus, whom she helped defeat the Minotaur, sails away in the distance. Behind Ariadnê a winged personification of Retribution (Nemesis) points toward Theseus’ ship. A sorrowing winged Eros stands to the left. Fresco from Pompeii, ca. 70 a.d. from the House of Meleager, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen; https://commons .wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ariadne_revenge_MAN_Napoli_Inv9051.jpg)

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You must go wherever I take you, although you are a singer. I will make a meal of you if I wish, or I will let you go. He is a fool who wishes to go against those who are stronger. He cannot win, and he suffers pain in addition to shame.” So spoke the swift-flying hawk, the long-winged bird. O Persês, now hearken to Justice! Do not give in to violence. For violence is bad for a miserable mortal. Even a fine man cannot easily endure her, but he falls victim to delusion and sinks beneath it. Better is to go on the other side of the road toward just acts: Justice is stronger than violence when she comes to the end. A fool knows this only after he has suffered.° For at once Oath runs along with crooked judgments, and there is tumult when Justice is dragged along where the bribe-devouring men take her, and they approve verdicts with crooked judgments.° But she, weeping, follows to the city and the places where the people live, wrapped in a mist, bringing evil to the humans who drive her out and do not follow the straight path.° And those who give straight judgments to foreigners and to local peoples, and do not turn aside from justice—their city flourishes, and the people blossom. Peace that nourishes the young is spread over the earth for them, nor does far-seeing Zeus ever send harsh war upon them. Nor does 190. . . . has suffered: The Greek for “Justice” is Dikê, and for “violence,” hybris. These concepts are not really translatable. Dikê comes from a root meaning “to point out”: that is, Justice is “the way things are normally done.” Hybris refers both to violent acts and to the mental attitude that produces them, when one has no respect for the rights of others. By calling the nightingale a “singer” (aoidos) Hesiod associates her with himself. The hawk would be the “bribe-devouring elders.” Thus it is in nature, where violence rules, but in the world of men other laws must apply. Justice must rule over violence, Hesiod says to Persês: Don’t be like the hawk in the fable. 194. . . . judgments: Crooked-counseled, bribe-devouring elders falsely swear that their judgments are just. Justice is personified as a woman running along a road; but she can be dragged off—raped—by evil men who lie in wait. 196. . . . path: Here Hesiod changes the picture of Justice from a woman raped to that of a vengeful spirit coursing over the earth.

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famine ever fall upon men who give straight judgments, nor disaster, but at good dinners they eat the produce from their fields. The earth bears for them the means of life in abundance, and in the mountains the oaks bear acorns on the outer surface° and nourish bees in their trunk. The wooly sheep are weighed down with fleece. The women bear children who are just like their parents.° They bloom continuously with good things. Nor do they sail on ships, for the rich fields bear them crops. But for those who engage in evil violence and despicable deeds, for them far-seeing Zeus, the son of Kronos, decrees justice. Often even the whole city suffers because of one evil man who transgresses and commits reckless acts. For them the son of Kronos imposes from the sky great calamity, famine and plague together, and the people perish. And the women do not give birth, and the households are lessened through the devising of Olympian Zeus. And again at another time the son of Kronos destroys their broad army or their wall, or he sinks their ships on the sea. O princes, please take into consideration this justice: For the deathless ones, who are nearby among humans, notice who oppresses others with crooked judgments, not heeding punishment from the gods. For thrice ten thousand are Zeus’s deathless guardians of mortal humans upon the bountiful earth. They watch over judgments and wretched deeds, clothed in a mist, wandering everywhere upon the earth. There is a virgin, Justice, the child of Zeus, renowned and respected by the gods who inhabit Olympos. And whenever someone does her harm, scorning her with lies, at once she sits down beside her father Zeus, the son of Kronos, and declares the unjust mind of human beings so that the people pay the price for the insane folly of their elders,

204. surface: Acorns were a primitive food, a food for the poor that grows without cultivation. (They were a staple of the Indians of northern California.) 206. parents: That is, they are legitimate, not products of adultery.

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who with evil intent bend judgments to the side and pronounce them crookedly. Keep this in mind, O elders, and pronounce straight judgments, you takers of bribes! Wholly abandon crooked judgments! A man contrives evil for himself when he does evil to another, and evil planned harms the planner most. The eye of Zeus sees all things and knows all things, and looks upon this too if he wishes, and he does not fail to see what sort of justice a city keeps within it. Right now I would not myself be a just man in my dealings with humans, neither I nor a son of mine—because it would be a bad thing to be just if the unjust will have a greater justice. But I do not think that Zeus the Counselor will let things end up this way. O Persês, do lay up these things in your mind, and hearken to Justice: Abandon violence! For the son of Kronos has set up this rule for humans: that fishes and wild animals and winged birds devour one another, for there is no Justice among them. But for humans he has given Justice, which is by far the best thing. For if one should wish to speak publicly in full knowledge of just things, far-seeing Zeus gives him wealth; but whoever deliberately lies, swearing false oaths in his testimony, he is incurably hurt while harming Justice. That man’s generation will in the future be darker, but the generation of the man who swears justly is better in aftertimes. I shall tell you something with good intention, you great fool, Persês. For the crowds, wickedness is there to grab easily —the road is smooth; she lives quite near us. But in front of excellence the deathless gods have placed sweat. Long and steep is the road that leads to her, and harsh at first. When a man reaches the peak, then she is easy, although before she was hard. This man is best of all, who understands all things himself, who takes into account which things will be better in the end. That man is a fine man who is persuaded by a good adviser. He who lacks understanding himself and does not take account when he hears another speak, that man is good for nothing. But you, Persês,

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of a divine lineage,° labor ever-mindful of my advice, so that Hunger will hate you, and the reverend well-crowned Demeter will love you and fill your barn with things to eat. For Hunger is misfortune for the man who never works. Gods and men hate him who lives without working, like the stingless drones in character, who without working devour the labor of bees, eating without working. As for you, may you be glad to organize your work properly, so that your barns be filled with things to eat at the time of harvest. Men’s flocks become abundant, and they become rich through labor, and by working men become dearer to the deathless ones and to men; for they greatly hate the idle. Work is not at all a disgrace, but not working is a disgrace. If you work, the idle man will quickly come to envy your wealth. Excellence and fame attend wealth! Whoever you are by luck, it is better to be through labor, if you turn away your witless mind from the possessions of others toward work, as I advise you. Shame is not good to provide for a needy man—shame, which greatly harms men or helps them.° Shame accompanies poverty, but courage goes along with wealth. Riches are not to be seized; it is much better when they are god-given. For if one takes hold of great wealth by force of hands, or seizes it by the cleverness of speech—as often happens when profit deceives the human mind, and shamelessness tramples on shame—the gods easily blot him out, and they diminish the household of that man, and wealth attends him but a short time. It is equally harsh for him who does evil to a suppliant or a guest, or who goes up to the bed of his brother and sleeps with his brother’s wife, acting against what is right, or who abuses orphaned children in his folly, or who wrangles with his aged father on the evil threshold of old age, 258. divine lineage: What exactly Hesiod means by this is unclear, because Persês does not seem to be of high social status. Perhaps through work Persês can improve his status. 273. . . . helps them: That is, if one is in need, it is not helpful to hold back from requesting assistance because of the shame of poverty; but shame is helpful in keeping one from falling into poverty in the first place through a disinclination to work.

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attacking him with wicked words: With him, truly, Zeus himself is furious and in the end lays on a harsh recompense for his evil acts. Do you put your witless mind wholly apart from such things! As far as it is in your power, perform holy and pure sacrifice to the deathless gods —burn the shining thigh pieces on the altar. At other times appease them with libations and burnt offerings, both when you go to bed and when the holy light returns, so that they have a kindly heart and mind toward you, so that you may barter for another’s lot, and not another barter for your own. Call your friend to a feast, but let your enemy go. Especially call him who lives near you. For if something should happen on your estate, your neighbors come without girding up, while your in-laws gird themselves.° A bad neighbor is as much a pain as a good neighbor is a great blessing. He who has a share in a fine neighbor has an excellent value. Not even an ox would be lost if the neighbors weren’t bad. Take a fair measure from your neighbor, and pay him back fairly with the same measure, or better, if you can, so that in the future, if you need something, you can rely on him. Don’t seek evil profits: Evil profits are like losses. Be a friend to him who is a friend you, and visit those who visit you. And give to him who gives, and don’t give to him who does not give: One gives to a giver; no one gives to one who gives not. Give is good; Grab is a bad girl, a giver of death! For the man who gives willingly, even if he gives abundantly, this man rejoices in his gift and takes delight in his heart. But he who gives in to shamelessness and takes something, even if he takes a little, that gives the heart a chill. He who adds to what he has, he will fend off fiery famine. For if you add a little to a little, and do this often, quickly that little will become great. What one has laid up in the house does not trouble a man. It is better to have 295. themselves: That is, your neighbors come at once, whereas your in-laws, if living far away, must prepare themselves and so come later.

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things at home, because what is out of doors is at risk. It is a good thing to take from what you have, but a pain to need something you don’t have. I urge you to consider this. Take your fill when the cask is first opened, and when it is running out, but be sparing in the middle. Thrift in the lees is pointless. Let the wages for a friend be fixed when you start out. Smile on your brother, but get a witness. Trust and mistrust alike ruin a man. And do not let a woman with a nice butt coax and wheedle and trick your mind! She only wants to poke around in your barn. Trust a woman, and you trust a thief. There should be only one son to nourish his father’s house, so that wealth may increase in the halls. And may he die an old man, leaving behind a grandson. Still, Zeus may easily leave abundant wealth for even more: more hands, more work, and more profit. But if you wish in your heart for wealth, do this, and heap labor on labor. Begin your harvest when the Pleiadês, daughters of Atlas, are rising, and your plowing when they are about to set.° They are hidden for forty days and nights, but when the year rolls around, they appear when you first sharpen the iron.° This is the rule of the plains, for those who live near the water, and for those who live far from the swelling sea, in the wooded valleys, in the rich land: Sow naked, plow naked, harvest naked, if you wish to reap all the works of Demeter at harvest time, so that every crop may ripen at the right time, and that you may not

326. . . . to set: The Pleiadês are a group of six (or seven) bright stars in the constellation Taurus that appear just before sunrise in May (the heliacal rising) and disappear in November (the cosmical setting). In myth they were said to be daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleionê. The hunter Orion pursued them until Zeus changed them into stars. The meaning of the word is unknown but was early equated with Peleiadês, “doves.” 328. . . . the iron: The Pleiadês disappear in the brightness of the sun from the end of March until the beginning of May, when the scythe (“the iron”) is sharpened in preparation for the harvest.

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Figure 16. A naked plowman. He holds a flail in his left hand and the plow handle in his right hand while a yoke of oxen drags the plow. Sometimes plowmen are represented naked; sometimes they are shown clothed. Perhaps there is a magical basis to naked plowing, or it could refer simply to the weather. Athenian blackfigure wine cup, ca. 530 b.c. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Ploughman_Louvre _F77.jpg)

afterward lack and have to beg in vain from your neighbors—just as now you have come to me! But I shall not give you anything more, nor measure out anything extra. Work, you little fool, Persês! Do what the gods have assigned for human beings, so that in anguish of spirit you do not ever have to seek, along with your children and your wife, the means of life from your neighbors, who do not care about you. You might succeed twice, or even three times, but if you bother them again, you will accomplish nothing. All your speech will be in vain, and the range of your words will be for nothing. But I urge you to take consideration for how you will pay your debts and avoid famine. First of all, get a house and a woman and an ox for plowing —a slave woman who might follow the oxen, not a wife—and put everything in your house in order, so that you do not have to ask another who might refuse you while you are in want, and the season come and go and your labor be for nothing. Do not put your work off until tomorrow or the day after. For the sluggard does not fill his barn, nor does one who postpones his labor. Industry makes work go easier. He who is always putting off his work is flirting with disaster. When the strength of the piercing sun lets up from its sweaty heat, and powerful Zeus brings the autumnal rains, and the skin of mortal men is much relieved; when the star Sirius goes over the head of humans, born to misery, a little by day, but takes up more of the night—at that time° wood cut with the iron is most resistant to worms, when trees shed their leaves to the ground and cease to send out shoots. At this time, remember to cut your wood: It is the appropriate season. Cut a mortar three feet 354. at that time: In late September and early October. Sirius (“scorcher”), called the Dog Star because of its prominence in the constellation of Orion’s dog (Canis Major, “Greater Dog”), is the brightest star in the sky. It rises along with the sun in July (its heliacal rising) and introduces the Dog Days, the time of the most intense heat and accompanying fevers and other ailments in the Mediterranean, when plants wilted, men weakened or became ill, and women were aroused.

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long, and a pestle four and a half feet long, and an axle seven feet long: This way things will fit together very well. But if you make the axle eight feet long, you can cut a mallet head from it. Cut a two-foot wheel for a four-foot cart.° There are many timbers bent at an angle. Bring home a plow tree of wood when you find it, looking out for one of oak in the mountains or the plowed fields. For this is the strongest for cattle to plow with when one of Athena’s servants has drawn it near and fixed it to the pole, fastening it with pegs to the stock.° Get two plows ready, working on them in your house, one with a natural plow tree branching from the stock; the other with the plow tree fixed with pegs. This is by far the better way, for if you break one, you can attach the other to the oxen. Poles made of laurel or elm are most resistant to worms. The stock should be made of oak, and the plow tree of holm oak.°

361. . . . four-foot cart: The mortar and pestle are for grinding wheat. The axle is for a cart. It is so long because presumably the axle projected on either side from the wheel and rotated with it. The mallet is for pounding and breaking up clods of dirt (see fig. 14). The cart wheel is probably made of solid wood, but the Greek is obscure. 366. . . . the stock: The yoke Hesiod describes looks like the figure shown here (a modification of the drawing in M. L. West, ed., Hesiod: Works and Days [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978], 276; see also fig. 16 here): pole

handle plow-tree peg

iron share

stock

The pole attaches to the yoke of the oxen; the plowman guides the plow by the handle; the peg holds (or else pegs hold) the plow-tree to the stock; the iron share is affixed to front of the stock. “One of Athena’s servants” (lines 364–65) is the craftsman, because Athena sponsors craft.

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Get two oxen nine years old, bulls, for their strength is not easily exhausted, being in their prime. They are the best for work. They will not quarrel in the furrow, break the plow, and so leave the labor there unfinished. Let a vigorous chap of forty years follow them after eating a four-piece eight-part loaf,° who takes care with the work and drives a straight furrow, someone who no longer gapes after his fellows but keeps his mind on the task. And another man beside him, no younger than he, is better for scattering the seed and avoiding oversowing;° for a younger man is all aflutter for his fellows. Take note when you hear the voice of the crane that each year cries high from the clouds: She gives the sign for plowing and indicates the rainy season of winter° but bites the heart of the man without oxen. Then fatten your curving-horned oxen who are inside, for it is easy to say, “Give me a couple of oxen and a wagon,” ° and it is easy to refuse: “I have work enough for my own oxen.” The man with a rich imagination thinks that he will just assemble a wagon—the fool! He does not know that there are a hundred boards to a wagon. Take care to store these up beforehand in your house. Whenever the time for plowing first becomes clear for mortals, then hasten, your slaves and you yourself, to plow in season, in rain and in good weather, and get out early in the morning,

371. holm oak: Also called “holly oak,” because the leaves are spiny and resemble holly leaves. Holm oak is a large evergreen native to the Mediterranean. A similar tree growing in California is called “live oak.” 376. . . . eight-part loaf: It is not clear what the Greek means. 379. oversowing: The plowman needs both hands for the plow and flail, and so a second man is required to follow behind and scatter the seed. 383. winter: In mid-November. 385. wagon: For taking the seed to the field.

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so that your fields will be filled. Turn your soil in the spring: Land plowed after lying fallow in the summer will not disappoint you.° Sow the fallow land while the field is still friable.° Fallow land is an averter of ruin, a soother of children.° Pray to Zeus who is beneath the earth° and to holy Demeter when first you begin to plow to make the sacred grain of Demeter heavy and ripe—while holding in your hand the end of the handle, you bring your goad down on the back of the oxen as they draw on the plow by means of a leather strap. Let a slave follow you a little behind, holding a hoe to make trouble for the birds by hiding the seed. Good management is best for mortal men; bad management is the worst. Thus may your ears of wheat bend to the ground at maturity if the Olympian himself grants you a noble fulfillment, and you may drive out the spider webs from your storage vessels. And I think that you will rejoice as you take hold of your sustenance kept indoors. You will come to the bright spring with plenty in store, nor will you gape at others. Rather, another man will be in need of you. But if you plow the shining ground at the solstice, you will reap sitting down, covered in dust, grasping only a little with your hand, tying the bundle with the stalks at both ends, not at all happy, and you will carry it off in a basket.° Few will admire you. Yet the mind of Zeus,

393. disappoint you: Crops were ordinarily sown in a given field in alternate years. During the fallow year the land was plowed two, three, or even four times during the spring and midsummer. 394. still friable: That is, before winter rains have turned it to mud. 395. . . . of children: Apparently a proverb, but the meaning of the Greek is unclear. 396. the earth: Either Hades or the sky god Zeus functioning as a fructifying power beneath the earth. 411. in a basket: The winter solstice is around December 20, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Ordinarily one harvests standing up, taking hold of the stalks with the left hand and cutting with the right. If the crop is poor, it is necessary to sit while harvesting. The ties will not hold if the stalks are too short unless they are turned so that the ears are at both ends of the sheath, the situation Hesiod describes. Usually the crops are placed in a cart, but with a poor crop a basket will do.

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who holds the goatskin fetish, is different at different times, and it is hard for mortal men to recognize it. If you do plow late, you may try this remedy: When the cuckoo first cries in the leaves of the oak and delights mortals on the unbounded earth, if Zeus rains on the third day ° and does not let up until the depth of rain neither exceeds the imprint of an ox’s foot nor falls short of it—then the late plower can compete with the early plower. Bear all this firmly in your mind, and do not fail to note when the bright spring comes, and the rainy season.° Pass by the bronzeworker’s bench and his comfy couch in the winter time, when the cold holds back a man from work, when the industrious man can greatly profit his household, so that the idleness of a bad winter doesn’t catch you in poverty, and you must rub a swollen foot with a thin hand.° An idle man waiting on empty hope, lacking the means of life, speaks many an evil thought to his mind. But no good hope provides for a man in need who sits on his couch, to whom the means of life are lacking. While it is still midsummer, point out to your slaves: It will not always be summer, build barns! Avoid the month of Lenaion,° evil days, ox flayers all, and the frosts deadly on the earth when North Wind blows, who stirs upon the broad sea when he blows over horse-nourishing Thrace, and the earth and forests roar. Falling on the many high-leafed oaks and thick pines in the groves of the mountain, he brings them down to the bountiful earth, and all the immense forest groans. The animals shudder and tuck their tails beneath their genitals, even those whose flesh is shadowed with fur. Being chill, he blows right through them, although they are shaggy-breasted. And he goes through the hide of the ox, which cannot 415–16. . . . third day: Evidently two days after the first cuckoo is heard, in March. 419. season: . . . That is, the best time for plowing is at the beginning of the rainy season, in the fall, and when it starts to rain again in the spring. 424. thin hand: Malnutrition causes the feet to swell. 429. Lenaion: The second half of January and early February.

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Figure 17. A winged, aggressive North Wind (Boreas) rapes Oreithyia, an Athenian princess, a famous myth; Aeschylus wrote a lost play about the mythical event. Detail from a South Italian red-figure wine pitcher, ca. 360 b.c. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14 /Boreas_Oreithyia_Louvre_K35.jpg)

stop him. And he blows through the shaggy goat, but the strength of North Wind does not blow through the fleece of sheep, which is abundant, though he makes the old man roll swiftly along like a wheel.° But he does not penetrate through the tender skin of young girls, who abide with their dear mother inside the house, not yet knowing the works of golden Aphrodite, who washes well her soft skin, and anoints it with oil, and lies down in the innermost chamber of the house on a winter’s day, when the boneless one° gnaws his foot in his fireless house and dismal home. The sun shows no pastures to which he can set out, but goes back and forth over the people and city of the dark-skinned men, and shines late over all the Hellenes.° Then the horned and hornless forest dwellers, woefully gnashing their teeth, flee through the wooded thickets, caring in their hearts only that they may find shelter in a secure hiding place and a rocky cavern. Then, like a three-footed mortal whose back is broken, who bends his head to the ground °—like him they wander, trying to avoid the white snow. At this time put on a soft cloak and a shirt that reaches to your feet as a protection for the body, as I urge you. And weave plenty of weft on a puny warp,° and wrap this around you so that your hair may not tremble

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441. like a wheel: The image is of an old man bent far over struggling against the fierce wind. 445. . . . boneless one: All ancient commentators take this odd expression as a kenning for the octopus, which does in fact occasionally eat its tentacles. A kenning is a circumlocution in the form of a compound that uses figurative language instead of a single noun, notably common in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry. Hesiod is fond of them. 449. Hellenes: According to Greek thought the sun spent more time in Africa than in Greece during the winter. 454. . . . to the ground: That is, an old man who uses a walking stick (the third foot) as, bent over, he walks along. 458. . . . warp: The farmer makes his own clothes. On the Greek vertical loom the warp threads dangle down and the weft threads are woven horizontally across. Evidently Hesiod means that the warp threads should be far apart so that the weft threads can be closely packed, but his meaning is not clear.

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and stand up straight, shivering all around your body. On your feet bind close-fitting boots made from a slaughtered ox, thickly lined with felt inside. When the cold season comes, stitch together skins of newborn kids with the sinew of an ox, so that you can put it around your back and keep off the rain. On your head, place a well-made felt cap so that your ears don’t get wet; for the dawn is cold when North Wind comes. At dawn a mist is spread over the wheat-bearing earth from the starry sky on the works of blessed men—a mist that arises from the ever-flowing rivers, raised high over the earth by the blast of the wind. Sometimes it turns to rain toward evening, sometimes to wind, when the Thracian North Wind tumbles the thick clouds. Finish your work, and go home ahead of him. Don’t let a dark cloud from the sky wrap around you, and make your skin wet, and soak your clothes, but avoid it. For this is the harshest month, wintry, bad for livestock, bad for human beings. Let your cattle have half-rations, but give your man more: for the long nights are a help.° Observe these rules until the year is complete, weighing the length of the nights and days against each other until earth, the mother of all, again bears her various fruit. When Zeus has finished the sixtieth winter day after the solstice, then the star Arcturus leaves the sacred flow of Ocean and shines first brilliantly at dusk.° After him the dawn-bewailing daughter of Pandion,° the swallow, rises into the light for human beings at the beginning of spring. 475. a help: That is, give your slaves more than half-rations, not more than full rations. The long nights justify a reduction in rations because the shorter work days put fewer demands on the need for nutrition. 480. . . . at dusk: The river Ocean is a bath surrounding the world into which the stars plunge, to emerge more brightly than before. Arcturus, “guardian of the bear,” is the brightest star in the constellation Boötês, “herdsman,” in the northern sky, the fourthbrightest star in the night sky. The spring solstice falls in the second half of February. 481. Pandion: A legendary king of Athens, father of Proknê and Philomela, who were transformed into a hoopoe (a colorful, crested European bird) and a swallow, respectively.

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Before she comes, prune the vines: This is best. But when the house carrier climbs up from the earth through the leaves, fleeing the Pleiades,° then it is no longer time to dig around the vines. Sharpen your sickles, and rouse up your slaves. Avoid shady seats and sleeping until dawn in the harvest season, when the sun dries up your skin. Then hasten and bring home your crops, rising early, so that you may have enough to eat. For morning removes a third part of your work: Morning furthers one in his journey, and furthers one in his work too—morning, which appears and sets many on their way and places the yoke on many oxen. When the golden thistle appears, and the chirping cicada sits in a tree and pours forth his shrill song continually from beneath his wings in the season of exhausting heat,° then goats are fattest, and wine is the best. Women are most filled with lust, but men are weakest, for Sirius dries up the head and knees,° and the skin is parched from the heat. At that time let there be a shady rock and Bibline wine,° and bread made with milk, and cheese made from goats just going off their milk, and the flesh of a cow that has grazed in the woods,° that has never calved, and the flesh of newborn kids. Drink shining wine sitting in the shade when you have eaten to your heart’s content. Turn your face toward the cooling West Wind, and pour out three portions from the ever-flowing spring, running and pure, and add a fourth portion of wine.° Order your slaves to winnow the sacred grain of Demeter 485. . . . Pleiadês: “House-carrier” is a kenning for a snail. Hesiod now jumps from the spring solstice to harvest time in mid-May. 495. heat: In mid-July. 497. . . . knees: The head and knees were thought to be places of procreative power. 499. Bibline wine: A fine wine from Thrace. 501. woods: That is, she is not stall-fed. 505. wine: Evidently not a reference to libations, but to mixing the wine with water in a weak but refreshing drink.

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in an airy place on a well-rolled threshing-floor when powerful Orion first appears.° Then measure out the grain, and store it in jars. But when you have placed all the means of life under lock inside your house, I urge you to turn your hired man out of the house and seek out a serving girl who has no children: A serving girl with a child at the breast is a problem. And tend your dog with jagged teeth —don’t spare the food, so that a day sleeper does not at some time latch onto your possessions.° Bring in fodder and sweepings, so that there be ample provision for your cattle and mules. And then let your slaves refresh their poor knees, and unyoke your pair of oxen. When Orion and Sirius come into the middle of the sky, and Dawn with her fingers of rose sees Arcturus,° O Persês, then cut off all the grape clusters, and bring them home. Expose them to the sun for ten days and ten nights; then cover them with shade for five, and on the sixth day draw off the gifts of delightful Dionysos into vessels. But when the Pleiadês and the Hyadês and powerful Orion set,° then remember that this is the season for plowing: May the seed lodge firmly in the earth.° If the desire for stormy seafaring takes hold of you when the Pleiadês fall into the misty sea, fleeing the mighty strength of Orion,° then the blasts of all sorts of winds rage. Then no longer keep your boats on the wine-dark sea, but remember to work the earth, as I advise you. Drag your boat up on the land and support it with stones all around, so that it can resist the strength 508. first appears: About June 20, a month before the rising of Sirius. The grain is strewn on the threshing-floor, and yoked oxen are driven round and round until the hulls fall away from the grain. 514. . . . possessions: “Day sleeper” is a kenning for a thief. 518. . . . Arcturus: In the “middle of the sky”: that is, due south, in mid-September. 522. set: In October. The constellation of the Hyadês, the “rainy ones,” sisters of the Pleiadês, lies between the Pleiadês and Orion and sets soon after them. Orion’s feet set at the same time, but his head is still visible until the second half of November. 524. . . . earth: But usually the meaning of pleion, here translated as “seed,” is “year,” so that the meaning of this line is much debated. 526. of Orion: In November.

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of the winds blowing wet, and draw out the plug in the bilge so the rains of Zeus do not rot it. Put away all the tackle under lock in your house after you have neatly stored the wings of the sea-crossing boat.° Hang your well-made steering oar over the smoke.° You yourself wait until the season for sailing has come, and then drag your swift boat to the sea, and load up your well-ordered cargo so that you may bring home your profit, just as your father and mine—O great fool, Persês! —used to sail in ships, because he lacked a decent living. And one day he came even here, crossing a great sea, leaving behind Aiolian Kymê in a black ship, fleeing not wealth or riches and prosperity but evil poverty that Zeus gives to men. He settled near Helikon in a miserable village, Askra, evil in winter, insufferable in summer, never nice.° But you, O Persês, remember to do your work in the right season, especially your seafaring. Admire a small ship, but put your cargo in a big one. For the larger your cargo, the larger your profit will be, profit piled on profit—if only the winds hold off their evil blasts. If ever you turn your silly mind to trade and wish to flee debt and nasty hunger, I will show you the rules of the much-resounding sea, though I know little about seafaring or about boats. For I have never yet sailed the broad sea

532–533. . . . wings of the sea-crossing boat: Probably the sails are meant. Ancient ships are often compared to birds. 533. smoke: See line 44. 541. . . . never nice: Aiolian Kymê (Latin Cumae) was located north of the Hermos River, in Asia Minor on the coast, one of the most important of the twelve cities of Aiolis, in northern Asia Minor, apparently founded by settlers from Thessaly and Boeotia after the breakup of the Bronze Age civilization in mainland Greece around the eleventh century b.c. The Aiolians were a northern Greek tribe who spoke a unique dialect. Kymê (Cumae) was also the name of the earliest Greek colony in Italy, founded ca. 750 b.c. by settlers from the island of Euboea, where Hesiod’s poems may have been recorded. There is today a town called Kymê on the east coast of Euboea. The poor village of Askra (see map 3) was on the slopes of Helikon and was abandoned by the fifth century B.C.

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Figure 18. A satyr presents a tripod with handles to Dionysos, presumably the prize in a poetic contest over which Dionysos presided. The bearded and balding satyr has an erect phallus and a horse’s tail. Dionysos carries a wine cup in his right hand and wears a long gown and a leopard skin. He holds a vine in his left hand and wears ivy leaves in his hair. Such tripods were often made of bronze and were of great value, often being offered as prizes in athletic and poetic competitions. Fragments of many have been found at the athletic center of Olympia in the Peloponnesus. Athenian red-figure water jar, ca. 450 b.c. Paestum Museum, Paestum, Italy (Photo: Dave & Margie Hill / Kleerup; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/9/90/Paestum_Museum_%286120765128%29.jpg)

in a ship, except to Euboea from Aulis,° where once the Achaeans, waiting through the winter, assembled a great host from sacred Hellas, heading to Troy, the land of beautiful women. There I crossed over to Chalcis to the games for the warrior Amphidamas. The sons of the great-hearted man had put up and proclaimed many prizes, and there I say that I won a victory with a poem,° earning a tripod with handles. And I dedicated it to the Helikonian Muses, where they first set me on the road to sweet song. That is the extent of my knowledge about many-nailed ships. But I will speak the mind of Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish, for the Muses taught me how to sing wondrous song. For around fifty days after the solstice, when the work-filled season of heat comes to an end, is for men the season for sailing.° Then you will not wreck your ship, and the sea will not drown your men—if on purpose Poseidon, shaker of the earth, or Zeus, king of the deathless ones, does not wish to destroy them: for in them is the fulfillment both of good things and of bad. Then the winds are well defined, and the sea is gentle. Then without care trust your swift ship to the winds: Drag it into the sea, and put all your cargo in it, but make haste to return as swiftly as possible back to your home. Do not wait for the new wine, and the autumn rain, and the oncoming storms with the terrible blasts of South Wind, who accompanies the heavy rain of Zeus and stirs up the sea and makes the sea dangerous.° Another time for men to go sailing is in the spring when first you see on the topmost of a fig tree leaves

549. . . . from Aulis: A distance of about 200 feet across the Euripos Channel, which separates Boeotia from Euboea! Aulis, on the Boeotian side, was the port from which the Trojan expedition set out. 554. a poem: Thought by many to be a version of the Theogony. 561. for sailing: From the end of June until August. 571. sea dangerous: In late September. “South Wind” in Greek is Notos.

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as large as the footprint that a crow makes as it goes along—then first is the sea safe to travel on.° This is spring sailing. I do not recommend it, for it is not pleasing to my heart. Such a sailing is snatched, and only with difficulty will you escape evil. But men act ignorantly, for wealth is like life for wretched mankind. It is a dreadful thing to die on the waves.° But I urge you to consider these matters in your heart, just as I declare. Don’t place all your means of life in your hollow ships, but leave the greater part behind, and put the lesser part on board. It is a terrible thing to meet with disaster on the waves of the sea, just as it is terrible if you lift an excess weight on your wagon and break the axle, and your load is ruined. Observe due measure: The right moment is best in all things. In the proper season take a wife to your house, being not much younger than thirty years, nor much older. This is the right time for marriage. The woman should have reached puberty four years earlier and marry in the fifth. Marry a virgin, so that you may teach her modest ways. Marry one especially who lives close to you, after you have looked around in all directions, so that your marriage does not become a joke to your neighbors. For a man gets nothing better than a good wife, but nothing is more shivery than a bad one, a glutton who scorches her husband without a torch, though he is strong, and gives him to a raw old age! Be careful to avoid the anger of the deathless, blessed ones. Do not make a companion equal to a brother. If you do so, do not be the first to wrong him, or give him a false favor with your tongue.° If he is first to wrong you, or says something contrary to your spirit, or does some such thing, remember to punish him twice over. But if he wants once again to be your friend and is willing to offer you satisfaction,

574. to travel on: In the latter part of April. 578. on the waves: Because the drowned man received no honorable burial. 596. tongue: That is, don’t speak lies just to please him.

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take it. He is a worthless man who makes now one friend, now another. As for you, do not let your disposition put to shame your outward appearance!° Don’t earn a reputation as one who has many guests, nor as one who has none, nor be a friend to evil men, nor a reviler of excellent men. And do not ever dare to reproach a man with destructive poverty that eats out the heart, a gift of the blessed ones who are forever. The best treasure for a man is to have a sparing tongue, and the most pleasure comes from a tongue that speaks according to measure. If you speak ill, then quickly even worse will be said about you. And don’t be storm-tossed in the midst of a meal with many guests. When a meal is shared in common, the pleasure is greatest; the expense is least.° At dawn never pour a libation of gleaming wine to Zeus with unwashed hands, or to the other deathless ones; for they do not hear you, and they spurn your prayers. Do not take a piss standing upright and turned toward the sun, but remember to do this after it sets and before it rises. And do not piss on the road, nor off the road as you are walking, and do not piss while naked: Nights belong to the blessed ones.° A god-fearing man, wise at heart, sits down, or he goes against the wall of a well-built court. And inside your house do not expose your genitals befouled with intercourse beside the hearth, but avoid this.° Do not beget offspring when you come back from an ill-omened burial but after a banquet to the deathless ones. Do not piss in the streams of water that run into the sea,

602. appearance: That is, “Handsome is as handsome does.” 611. is least: Hesiod refers to a potluck, a no-host dinner called an eranos. 617–18. blessed ones: Apparently such behavior will offend the gods. 621. avoid this: Because the fire, a sacred element, would be polluted.

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nor in springs, but be careful to avoid this. And do not shit in them either, for that is no better. Don’t cross the beautiful water of ever-flowing rivers by foot before you have prayed, gazing into the beautiful stream, after washing your hands in the lovely white water.° He who crosses a river without washing the filth from his hands—the gods will be angry with him and cause him to suffer in aftertimes. From the five-brancher, at the joyous festival of the gods, do not cut the dry from the living with the shining iron.° Don’t ever place the wine ladle above the wine bowl while people are drinking: A deadly fate is assigned for this.° When you are building a house, do not leave it unfinished or a screaming crow may settle on it and croak.° Do not take from undedicated cauldrons with legs anything to eat or wash with, because for this too there is punishment.° Do not let a twelve-dayold boy sit on things that cannot be moved, which is not better —it makes a man unmanly—nor a child of twelve months, which has the same effect.° Nor should a man cleanse his skin 628. . . . water: The prayer would be to the river itself. 632. . . . shining iron: “five-brancher” is a kenning for “hand.” He means don’t pare your fingernails at a feast. 633. for this: The reason for this prohibition is not clear. 635. croak: This would be a bad omen; if the house is already finished, then the evil cannot befall it. 637. . . . punishment: The meaning is unclear; perhaps pots can be polluted by being used by an unclean person. 640. . . . effect: Apparently “things unmoved” means tombs. One might place a male child on a tomb to absorb the manly qualities of whoever was buried there, but according to Hesiod this would be deleterious to his reproductive powers.

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with water that has washed a woman: for there is grievous punishment for a time for that too. Do not carp at what is consumed at fiery sacrifices: The god concerned is angry at this too.° Act in this way: Avoid the wretched speech of men, for speech is evil, and light to raise up quite easily, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Speech is not ever completely got rid of, which many people speak: This too is some sort of god. Pay good attention to the days that come from Zeus, and tell your slaves of them all in order. The thirtieth day of the month is best to review the work and to distribute rations: for the days are from Zeus the Counselor, when the people celebrate it, deciding the truth.° To begin, the first, the fourth, and the seventh —when Leto gave birth to Apollo of the golden sword—are holy days, as are the eighth and the ninth. Two days of the waxing month are outstanding for doing a mortal’s labor: the eleventh and the twelfth, both excellent days for shearing sheep and for gathering in the gladdening wheat; but the twelfth is much better than the eleventh. On this day the high-soaring spider weaves its web in the full of the day, when the Wise One° heaps her pile. On that day the woman should set up her loom and get on with her work. On the thirteenth day of the waxing moon, avoid beginning to sow, but it is the best day to set out plants. The sixth day

643. . . . this too: That is, a casual observer may complain that either too much meat or too little is being offered to the gods. 651. . . . the truth: That is, deciding what is the correct thirtieth day, always a problem when working with a lunar calendar. The lunar calendar governs the rest of Hesiod’s discussion of the days. 658. Wise One: A kenning for the ant, famous for its wisdom and its ability to prognosticate the weather.

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of the midmonth is very poor for plants,° but it is good for the birth of males, though unfavorable for females either to be born in the first place or to marry. Nor is the first sixth day suited for begetting a female, but it is a good time for castrating kids and rams, and for building a pen for the flocks. It is good for the birth of a man, but he will love mocking speech, and lies, and clever words, and secret conversation. On the eighth day of the month castrate the boar and roaring bull, and on the twelfth the hardworking mules. On the great twentieth, in the fullness of the day, a wise man is born, for his mind is very shrewd. The tenth day is good for begetting a man; the fourth of the midmonth, good for a girl: On that day place your hand on sheep and rolling-gaited, curved-horn cattle and the dog with jagged teeth, and tame them. Be careful to avoid troubles that eat out the heart on the fourth day of the waning and the waxing month; it is a day established by the gods. On the fourth day of the month, take your bride home, having chosen the bird omens that are best for this business. Avoid the fifth days, for they are hard and terrible; they say that the Erinyes helped in the birth of Oath, whom Strife bore as an affliction for the perjurer.° On the seventh of the midmonth, inspect the sacred grain of Demeter, and winnow it very well on the well-rolled threshing floor. Let the woodcutter cut beams for the bedroom and many planks for a boat, ones suitable for boats. On the fourth, begin to build slender boats. The ninth day of midmonth is better toward evening, but the first ninth is wholly harmless for human beings: good both

661. . . . for plants: The month is divided into three periods, the waxing month, the midmonth, and the waning month, corresponding to the phases of the moon. So counting from the beginning, the sixth day of the midmonth would be the sixteenth day. 679. . . . perjurer: Perjurers are punished by the deified Oath (Horkos), the child of Strife (Eris), or by the Erinyes, the Furies, born from the drops of blood from the severed genitals of Sky.

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for man and woman to be conceived or to be born. It is never an entirely bad day. Few know that the thrice-ninth day of the month is best for opening the storage jar and for placing a yoke on the neck of oxen and mules and swift-footed horses, and for hauling a swift ship with many benches into the wine-dark sea—few call things truthfully! On the fourth day of the midmonth, open the storage jar. Above all others it is a holy day. And again, few know that the twenty-first day of the month is best when it is morning; toward evening it is the worst. These days are a great advantage for men on earth, but the others are indifferent, without advantage, and bring nothing. One man praises one day; another praises another; but few really know. Sometimes a day is a stepmother; sometimes, a mother.° That man is happy and rich who knows all these things and does his work without offense to the deathless ones, observing the omens of birds and avoiding transgression.°

696. . . . a mother: Stepmothers were traditionally malignant. 698. . . . transgression: Many think that from here Hesiod went on to discuss divination by birds, but if so the lines have been lost.

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Introduction to The Shield of Herakles

Tradition has assigned The Shield of Herakles to Hesiod, but the main part of the poem is not his composition. The poem seems to be a pastiche originating in the sixth century b.c. Probably the first fifty-six lines are in fact by Hesiod, or at least by the composer of The Catalogue of Women, because papyrus finds prove these lines to be from The Catalogue; they are the longest surviving portion of The Catalogue. But the rest of the Shield must have been composed by someone else, probably someone from Thebes, in Boeotia, involved in the politics surrounding the famous so-called First Sacred War (595–591 b.c.), in which a league of Greek tribes defeated those who controlled the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The portion of the Shield taken from The Catalogue of Women tells the story of Zeus’s attraction to Alkmenê, the wife of Amphitryon, the son of Alkaios. Amphitryon was the king of Tiryns, near Mycenae in the plain of Argos. The story is rather complicated (see Chart 20). After Amphitryon accidentally killed his father-in-law Elektryon, king of Mycenae, in a dispute over some cattle, Amphitryon fled Tiryns with Alkmenê, Elektryon’s daughter. The couple went north across the Isthmus of Corinth to seven-gated Thebes in Boeotia. But Alkmenê would not sleep with her husband until he had avenged the death of her brothers, killed in a battle with the Taphians and Teleboans, peoples from an island probably in northwestern Greece. After defeating the Taphians and Teleboans in company with peoples from Locris and Phocis, territories west of Boeotia, Amphitryon returned to Thebes, but on the same night Zeus came to Alkmenê’s bed in the guise of Amphitryon, displaying the spoils he had supposedly taken in battle against the Teleboans and Taphians. Then, soon after, Amphitryon presented himself to her, also displaying spoils, to Alkmenê’s great consternation. In this way Alkmenê became pregnant in the same night with twin sons: Iphiklês, the son of Amphitryon, and Herakles, the son of Zeus.

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The story, with all its comic potential, is well known from the Amphitruo, a play by the Roman comic playwright Plautus (ca. 254–ca. 184 b.c.), and it was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages. It was the first Plautine play to be translated into English. In France, Jean Giraudoux produced in 1929 an Amphitryon 38, supposedly referring to the number of times that the story had been rewritten for the stage. Since then there have been several adaptations for stage and screen. After the excerpt from The Catalogue of Women describing the birth of Herakles, the Shield tells the story of Herakles’ encounter with the Thessalian bandit Kyknos, who waylaid pilgrims traveling to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. Kyknos means “swan,” reminding us of Herakles’ contest with the Stymphalian Birds, one of his legendary twelve labors. Herakles is traveling south in his chariot (not his usual mode of transport) with his nephew Iolaos, the son of Iphiklês, to Trachis just west of the westernmost tip of the island of Euboea, on the mainland. The purpose of his trip is never stated. Trachis was the home of Kyknos’ wife, Themistonoê, and her family: her father, Keux, and his wife, Alcyonê. Trachis lay at the foot of Mount Oeta, where Herakles was later to end his life. On their way south, the heroic pair stop at Pagasai, the port of Thessaly near the city of Iolkos, from where Jason set out in his search for the Golden Fleece. There, at a shrine to Apollo, the god of Delphi, they encounter Kyknos, a son of Ares. Herakles asks Kyknos to let his chariot pass, but the brigand refuses, and a fight breaks out. Athena appears and instructs Herakles not to take Kyknos’ armor as spoils and to strike Ares, present at the battle, with his spear if he should attack. Herakles needs first, however, to put on his own armor, providing the poem its main theme, a poetic “digression” (ekphrasis) on the fantastic shield of Herakles. Herakles now slays Kyknos, but his father, Ares, casts his spear. Athena, Herakles’ divine protector, intervenes, stopping the spear. Herakles then stabs Ares in the thigh. While Ares’ sons Fear (Phobos) and Terror (Deimos) carry the wounded war god to Olympos, Herakles and Iolaos strip Kyknos of his armor (despite Athena’s instructions). Herakles and Iolaos then continue their journey to Trachis, where Kyknos’ father-in-law, Keux, celebrates 146

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magnificent funeral games in honor of the slain Kyknos. Apollo, still angry at Kyknos for his depredations, causes the river Anauros, near Trachis, to overflow its banks and wash away Kyknos’ grave. The poem ends. The main body of The Shield of Herakles is the ekphrasis on Herakles’ shield, a dramatic description of a visual work of art. It is either based on, or in the same oral tradition, as Homer’s elaborate description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (18.478–608). The shield of Herakles is the work of the craftsman god Hephaistos, in gold, silver, bronze, iron, and lapis lazuli (a dark blue stone from Afghanistan), portraying such allegorical and horrifying figures as Fear, Strife, and dreadful Fate; savage wild animals like lions and boars; famous bloody battles like that between the Thessalian tribe of Lapiths and the furry centaurs; and pictures of the gods—Ares, the father of Kyknos, and Athena, both of whom take part in the fight to come, and Apollo, god of song, and the Muses. There is also a pastoral scene with a fisherman, a picture of Perseus and the Gorgons, and a fight around a sevengated city, which can only be Thebes. In the city is revelry, dance, song, and a merry wedding. There are also scenes of farming, harvesting, winemaking, and a contest for a tripod: These are the activities of peace, which stand in contrast with the preceding phantasmagorical visions. Around the whole runs the river Ocean. Elaborate shields with representations of allegorical beings and wild animals did actually exist in ancient Greece, but nothing so elaborate as is described in The Shield of Herakles, a martial poem reminiscent of the Iliad. The ghastly beings on the shield are like the demons of death that Herakles overcame in his career, and the city at peace stands for the benefits that he brought to humankind through his valor. Some critics have found fault with the Shield’s extravagance, its exaggerated and baroque descriptions, but it is an exciting description by a poet with a fine imagination, a stirring tribute to Greece’s mightiest hero. Around 565 b.c. the battle between Herakles and the brigand Kyknos becomes extremely popular on Athenian pottery (see fig. 23), with about 120 surviving representations dated between 565 and 480 b.c. The First Sacred War, to which the poem seems to refer obliquely, was fought between the Amphictyonic League—that is, the “league of neighbors”—and the introduction to the shield of herakles

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fortified city of Kirrha (or Crisa), on the Gulf of Corinth, where pilgrims landed who came by sea to consult the Oracle. The strategic location of Kirrha allowed the city to rob pilgrims, to extort high taxes from them, and even to take possession of lands belonging to the Oracle high on the slopes of Mount Parnassos. Many tribes participated in the Amphictyonic League, but the Thessalians were dominant. The league besieged Kirrha between 595 b.c. and 591 b.c. (according to traditional dating), utterly destroyed it and its inhabitants, and dedicated its lands to Apollo, Leto, and Artemis. Henceforward these lands could not be cultivated or used for pasture. The first Pythian Games were organized in 582 b.c. to celebrate victory in the war (fig. 19). The political organization within the Amphictyonic League was loose. Antagonism arose between the Theban and Thessalian contingents about who would control Delphi after the war, a hostility evidently reflected in the poem by the conflict between the Theban hero Herakles and the Thessalian brigand Kyknos, each a rival for Apollo’s sponsorship. Although Kyknos prays to Apollo for success against Herakles, the god rejects him. After all, Herakles, the son of Zeus, is brother to Apollo, who sent Herakles against Kyknos. Poseidon, too, the father of Herakles’ fabulous steed, Arion, favors Thebes and supports Herakles. Kyknos, adversary of the Theban Herakles, had been robbing pilgrims to Delphi, just as did the citizens of Kirrha. Kyknos is an intruder, a marauder, who preys on the pilgrims to Delphi, and so is condemned to destruction. If this reconstruction of the background of the poem is correct, the poem may have been composed (except for the preexisting portion from The Catalogue of Women) around 590 b.c. by a Theban or pro-Theban singer and performed at Thebes. Thebes had an important shrine to Herakles and Iolaos, around which were celebrated Thebes’ most famous athletic games, the Iolaia, making sense of the description on Herakles’ shield of scenes of boxing, wrestling, and chariot racing outside the walls of a seven- gated city. The Shield is evidently an oral poem, like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Someone must have taken it down by dictation; then, later—say around 565 b.c.—someone combined it with a portion excerpted from The Catalogue of 148

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Figure 19. The theater and some reconstructed columns of the Temple of Apollo, Delphi. The oracle was located on the precipitous slopes of Mount Parnassos. The theater dates from the fourth century b.c., though it was many times remodeled in later years. Above it was located the running track and the site of the famous Pythian Games. At the top of the photograph can be seen the valley that leads, to the right and out of the picture, to the Corinthian Gulf. Kirrha must have been near the gulf, although its exact location has never been determined. (Photo: Runner1928; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /commons/3/31/Delphi_Greece_%2815%29.jpg)

Women, also originally an oral poem, and used this portion as a proem to a song about Herakles. Once the poem existed as a text, it was circulated, memorized, and reperformed in Athenian symposia, inspiring the many pots on its theme. At least that is our best conjecture about the poem’s origin and early history.

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The Shield of Herakles

Or like her° who left her house and the land of her fathers and went to Thebes, following the warrior Amphitryon —Alkmenê, the daughter of Elektryon,° rouser of the host. She surpassed the tribe of tender women in appearance and stature. No one outshone her in mind of those whom mortal women had borne after bedding with mortal men. From her head and from her dark eyebrows breathed such charm as comes from golden Aphrodite. And she honored her husband in her heart as no other tender woman ever did. True, he had murdered her noble father, attacking him with violence, angry because of some cattle. Leaving the land of his fathers, he had come to Thebes as suppliant to the shield-bearing Kadmeians.° There he lived in a mansion with his modest wife, but abstaining from joyous lovemaking; for he was not allowed to go into the bed of the fine-ankled daughter of Elektryon before he avenged the murder of his wife’s brave brothers, and burned with raging fire the villages of the heroic Taphians and the Teleboans.°

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1. like her: The Shield of Herakles begins with an excerpt from The Catalogue of Women, sometimes called the Ehoiai after the Greek formula ê hoiê, “or such as,” words that begin each section of the Catalogue devoted to a specific heroine. 3. . . . Elektryon: Amphitryon was the son of Alkaios, the king of Tiryns, a citadel just a few miles from the great fortress Mycenae. Alkaios was a son of Andromeda and the great hero Perseus and brother to Elektryon, the king of Mycenae, which Perseus founded. Amphitryon was married to his niece Alkmenê, the daughter of Elektryon, but he accidentally killed his father-in-law, Elektryon. 12. Kadmeians: The Thebans, because Kadmos from Phoenicia had founded the city. 16. Taphians and Teleboans: The Taphians and Teleboans lived on an island (it is not clear which) in the Ionian Sea, off the northwest coast of Greece. They were famous pirates and slave traders who killed Alkmenê’s brothers in a raid on Mycenae. Alkmenê would not sleep with her new husband before he exacted vengeance for these murders.

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Perseus ≈ Andromeda

Sthenelos

Alkaios

Eurystheus

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Elektryon ≈

Alkmenê

Iphikles Iolaos

Genealogical Chart 20. The Descendants of Perseus and Andromeda

≈ Zeus

Herakles

This was how it was settled for him, and the gods were witness. He feared their wrath, and he hastened to accomplish this great task as soon as possible, which Zeus had ordained upon him. With him went the horse-driving Boeotians, longing for war and the battle cry, panting over their shields, and the Locrians who fight hand-to-hand, and the great-hearted Phocians followed along.° The noble son of Alkaios commanded them, exulting in his host. But the father of men and gods wove another design in his mind, how he might fashion for gods and wheat-eating men a protector against disaster. He arose from Olympos by night, pondering a deception in his spirit, longing for sex with a fine-waisted woman. Quickly he came to Typhaonion, and from there Zeus the Counselor trod the peak of Mount Phikion. Taking his seat, he planned wondrous deeds in his heart. On that very night he slept with the slender-ankled daughter of Elektryon; he fulfilled his desire. In the same night Amphitryon, rouser of the host, the shining hero, having accomplished his great task,° came to his house. Nor did he rush to visit his slaves and his rustic shepherds before going up to the bed of his wife—so great a desire took hold of the heart of the shepherd of the people! As when a man has joyfully escaped evil, either a grievous disease or strong bondage, so did Amphitryon, having accomplished his hard task, eagerly and happily arrive at his house. All night long he bedded his respected wife, taking delight

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23. . . . followed along: For Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris, areas in central Greece, see Map 3. 30. . . . Phikion: Typhaonion seems to have been a village near Thebes, for some reason named after the monster Typhon. The nearby Mount Phikion was named after the Sphinx that persecuted Thebes. (The Sphinx is called Phiks in the Greek of the Theogony line 261.) 34. task: That is, taking vengeance on the Taphians and the Teleboans.

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in the gifts of golden Aphrodite. And she, overpowered both by a god and a man who was by far the best in Thebes of the seven gates, gave birth to twin boys, not at all alike in their minds, although they were brothers. One was worse, and the other was by far the better man, terrible and strong, the mighty Herakles. She bore him by submitting to the son of Kronos, lord of the dark clouds; and the other, Iphiklês, by submitting to spear-shaking Amphitryon—distinct offspring, the one by mingling with a mortal man, the other with Zeus, the son of Kronos, commander of all the gods. Herakles killed Kyknos, the great-spirited son of Ares. For he found him in the precinct of the far-darter, Apollo, him and his father, Ares, insatiate for war. Their armor shone like a flame of blazing fire as they stood in their chariot. Their swift horses struck the ground, pawing it with their hooves, and the dust blazed up around them, pounded by the plaited chariots and the feet of the horses. The well-made chariot and its railings rattled around them as the horses reared. The noble Kyknos was glad, hoping to kill with the bronze the warlike son of Zeus and his charioteer, and strip their famous armor. But Phoibos Apollo did not listen to his boasting, for he himself had roused up the mighty Herakles against him. The entire woods and the altar of Pagasaian° Apollo shone from the terrible god’s armor and from the god himself, and his eyes flashed like fire. What mortal would have dared to go against Kyknos except Herakles and brave Iolaos?° For great was their strength, 64. Pagasaian: Pagasai was a coastal harbor town in Thessaly, near Iolkos that had a shrine to Apollo. It was the starting point for Jason’s expedition to obtain the Golden Fleece. 67. Iolaos: Iolaos is Herakles’ nephew, the son of Herakles’ half-brother, Iphiklês (see Geneaolgical Chart 20). Iolaos sometimes accompanies Herakles on his adventures.

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and invincible the arms that grew from their shoulders on their mighty limbs. Then Herakles spoke to his charioteer, the powerful Iolaos: “O Iolaos, hero, by far the most beloved of all mortals, surely Amphitryon offended the blessed immortals, who live on Olympos, when he came to well-fortified Thebes, leaving Tiryns, that well-founded city, after killing Elektryon because of some wide-browed cattle. And he came to Kreon and long-robed Heniochê,° who welcomed him and offered him all kinds of things, as is right for suppliants, and they honored him in their hearts even more. He lived rejoicing in the fine-ankled daughter of Elektryon, his wife. “Presently, as the years rolled along, we were born, unlike in body and mind, I and your father. Zeus took away his good sense and he went off, leaving behind his house and our parents, to do honor to the wicked Eurystheus —cruel man!° Surely he groaned bitterly later on, enduring his mad folly, but it cannot be taken back. But for me some god has ordained harsh contests. “Come, my friend, quickly take the scarlet reins of the swift-footed horses! Magnify greatly the boldness in your heart, and guide straight the fast chariot and the strong, swift-footed horses. Do not fear at all the din of mankilling Ares, who now rages, shouting around the sacred woods of Phoibos Apollo, the far-darting king. Though he is strong, he shall have his fill of war!” Then the faultless Iolaos answered him: “My friend,

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75. Heniochê: Heniochê (“female charioteer”) is the wife of Kreon. Kreon and his sister, Jocasta, were descendants of Kadmos. In the story of Oedipus, Jocasta is the mother and wife of Oedipus. Kreon is the father of Megara, the first wife of Herakles. 82. cruel man: Eurystheus is a grandson of Perseus (as Herakles is Perseus’ great-grandson), a king of Mycenae who had power over Herakles and sent him on his labors.

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surely the father of men and gods does you great honor, and so does the bull-like Shaker of the Earth° as well, who holds the battlements of Thebes and protects the city— so strong and powerful is this man whom they bring into your hands so that you may win great glory. But come, put on your armor of war so that we can wage battle, as quickly as possible bringing together the chariot of Ares and our own. For Kyknos shall not frighten the fearless son of Zeus, nor the son of Iphiklês, but I think that he will flee the two descendants of blameless Alkidês° who are near to him, longing to raise up the cry of war, which they love more than a feast.” So he spoke, and the powerful Herakles smiled, taking pleasure in his heart; for he had spoken to him words most pleasing. And he spoke words in reply that went like an arrow: “O Iolaos, hero, nurtured of Zeus, the savage fight is not far off ! Even as you were valorous before, so now wheel about in every direction the great horse, dark-maned Arion,° and help me as much as you are able.” So speaking, he placed his shinguards of shining mountain-bronze, a famous gift of Hephaistos, around his shins. Then he put his breastplate around his chest—beautiful, golden, fancily wrought, which Pallas Athena, the daughter of Zeus, had given him when he was first about to set out on his trying contests. Around his shoulders the terrible man placed the iron 92. Shaker of the Earth: Poseidon. 100. Alkidês: “son of Alkaios,” but usually “Alkidês” refers to the grandson of Alkaios, Herakles; here, however, it refers to Amphitryon, the son of Alkaios. Although Herakles is really the son of Zeus, his mortal father is Amphitryon, who is the father of Iphiklês, who is the father of Iolaos. 108. Arion: A fabulous swift horse, the offspring of Poseidon and Demeter. Poseidon desired Demeter, but she changed into a mare to escape his attentions. Poseidon changed himself into a stallion and covered her; so Arion was conceived.

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that defends against ruin. Across his chest he cast behind him a hollow quiver. There were many arrows in it, shivery, the givers of speechless destruction. In front they held death, trickling with tears. The shafts were smooth and very long, and at their ends they were covered by the feathers of a reddish-brown eagle. He took up his mighty spear, sharpened with a shining bronze point, and he placed a well-made helmet on his powerful head, cunningly made of steel,° that guarded the head of godlike Herakles. He took up in his hands his shield, all glittering, nor could anyone break through it or crush it by a blow—a marvel to see! The whole thing shone in a circle with alabaster and white ivory and electrum. It was brilliant with shining gold and there were plates of lapis lazuli set into it. In the middle was unspeakable Fear, made of steel, glaring backwards with eyes shining with fire. His mouth was filled with teeth glowing white —terrible, monstrous!—and over his shaggy brow flew terrible Strife,° marshaling the throng of men, savage, who takes away the mind and the senses of men who wage war against the son of Zeus. Their breath-souls pass away beneath the earth, and their bones, when the skin around them is rotted, decay on the black earth beneath parching Sirius.° Upon it were also embossed Pursuit and Rally, and Din, and Murder, and Mankilling blazed forth. Strife also, and Clamor were dashing about. Through the fight Deadly Fate, holding them by the feet, dragged this one alive, though recently wounded, and that one without any wounds, and another dead. Around her shoulders she wore a cloak dark with the blood

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122. steel: The Greek word is adamas, an “unconquerable substance.” Probably this was some kind of steel, made of iron with an admixture of carbon. 130. . . . Strife: Fear (Phobos) is the child of Aphrodite and Ares. He accompanied Ares into battle along with Strife (Eris), a sister of Ares, and Phobos’ twin brother, Terror (Deimos). 135. Sirius: See note on line 25 to Works and Days.

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of men, glaring terribly and roaring with a rasping sound. There were the heads of savage snakes, unspeakable, twelve of them that put to flight the tribes of men upon the earth, whoever made war face-to-face against the son of Zeus. There was a gnashing of teeth whenever the son of Amphitryon made war, and these wondrous deeds shone brightly forth. Something like spots appeared on the terrible serpents, blue along the backs, and their jaws were black. There were hordes of wild boars, and lions staring one at another, angry and aggressive. The boars were arranged in rows, and neither side trembled, but both bristled on their necks. Already a great lion lay between them, and there were two boars on either side deprived of life, and from them dark blood dripped down to the ground. They lay with their necks outstretched, killed by the shaggy lions. Both sides were roused still more to fight in anger, the wild boars and the bright-eyed lions. There was the battle of the Lapith spearmen gathered around King Kaineus, and Dryas and Peirithoös and Hopleus and Exadios and Phaleros and Prolochos and Mopsos son of Ampykê of Titaros, the offspring of Ares, and Theseus the son of Aegeus, like unto the gods.° They 160. . . . gods: These names belong to prominent Lapiths, a Thessalian tribe who battled with the monstrous centaurs. Kaineus was born a woman, but when Poseidon raped her, she begged him to be changed into a man so that she should never have to undergo such indignity again. As a man Kaineus was invulnerable to weapons, so the centaurs destroyed him by pounding him into the ground with their staves (fig. 20). Dryas, “oak,” was a leader in the war, numbered by Nestor in the Iliad (1.265–68) among “the strongest men that the earth has bred, the strongest men against the strongest enemies, a savage mountain-dwelling tribe [the centaurs] whom they destroyed completely.” The war began at the wedding of the Lapith king, Peirithoös, when the centaurs became drunk and attempted to rape the bride, Hippodameia, and her attendants (see fig. 21). Peirithoös was a good friend of the Athenian hero Theseus, son of Aegeus, who also fought in the war. Hopleus is a son of Poseidon, otherwise unknown, as are Exakios, Phaleros, and Prolochos. Mopsos lived near the Thessalian river Titaressos, a tributary of the Peneios River, which flows through central Thessaly. He was a famous seer who was also an Argonaut.

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Figure 20. The Lapith Kaineus being destroyed by a centaur. On the left the centaur, half horse and half man, long-haired, and bearded, attacks with a tree branch, the centaur’s standard weapon. Kaineus, whose name is written above him, holds an inverted shield decorated with a snake(?) to parry the blow. He wears a helmet and breastplate and is armed with a sword. The ground line runs through his knees because the centaur is pounding him into the ground. Athenian oil jar, ca. 500–490 b.c. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol; 15https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaineus_Kentauros_Louvre_CA2494_n1.jpg)

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were made of silver, with golden armor protecting their bodies. On the other side, opposite them, were gathered the centaurs around great Petraios and Asbolos, the bird-seer, and Arktos, and Oureos, and black-haired Mimas, and the two sons of Peukeus, Perimedes and Dryalos, made of silver, holding fir trees of gold in their hands.° They pressed against one another as if they were alive and stabbed in the hand-to-hand with spears and boughs of fir. And on the shield stood the swift horses of grim Ares, made of gold, and death-dealing Ares himself, who wears the spoils, holding a spear in his hands and urging on the fighters, red with blood as if he were killing living men, standing in his chariot. Next to him stood Fear and Panic, longing to plunge into the war of men. There too stood Tritogeneia,° leader of the host, the daughter of Zeus, looking like one who is eager to prepare for battle, holding a spear in her hands and a golden helmet, with the goatskin fetish wrapped around her shoulders. She was heading toward the dread conflict. And there was the sacred company of the deathless ones. In the middle, the son of Zeus and Leto played pleasantly on his golden lyre. And there was the holy seat of the gods, Olympos, and their assembly, and boundless riches were spread around in the gathering of the deathless ones. Goddesses began the song, the divine Muses of Pieria, like singers of pure voice. And on it was a harbor, safe haven from the resistless sea, made of refined tin in a circle, seemingly with turbulent waves. There were many dolphins in its middle, rushing here and there, 166. . . . in their hands: The centaurs (“bullkillers”) were originally a wild race that lived in the mountains of Thessaly, rough, covered with hair, given to rape and rapine. Later they were thought of as being part horse and part human. They carried boughs as weapons. Their names seem made up here to agree with their bestiality: Petraios, “rocky”; Asbolos, “sooty”; Arktos, “like a bear”; Oureios, “of the mountain”; Mimas, “imitator”(?); Peukeus, “of the pine forest”; Perimedes, “planner”(?); Dryalos, “like an oak.” 173. Tritogeneia: An obscure epithet of Athena.

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Figure 21. A centaur tries to carry off Hippodameia (here called Laodameia) at her wedding to the Lapith king Peirithoös. On the left, Peirithoös, in “heroic nudity,” a cloak over his shoulders, draws his sword. Laodameia/Hippodameia, dressed in a wedding gown with necklace and tiara, looks for help to the groom, Peirithoös, while the centaur, holding his tree-branch weapon, holds her by the arm and shoulder. The centaur wears a leopard skin around his shoulders and a crown of ivy leaves in his hair. To the far right, the Athenian hero Theseus raises his club against the beast. To the far left, a bridesmaid flees. The figures are labeled. South Italian red-figure wine-mixing bowl, ca. 350–340 b.c. British Museum, London (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb /Perithoos_Hippodameia_BM_VaseF272.jpg)

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fishing, as if they were swimming. Two dolphins made of silver were spouting and eating the scaly fish. Beneath, fish made of bronze fled in fear from them, but on the shore sat a fisherman, watching. He had a net for fish in his hands, seeming as if he were about to cast it out. There too was the son of Danaê of the beautiful hair, the horseman Perseus, nor did his feet touch the shield, though they were not far from it, a great marvel to relate, because he was nowhere supported. For thus did the famous Lame One° make him of gold with his hands. On his feet he had winged sandals. Around his shoulder he wore a black-sheathed sword suspended from a bronze strap. He flew like a thought. The head of a terrible monster covered all of his back, the Gorgon. A pouch ran around it, a marvel to see, made of silver. Bright tassels of gold hung down from it. The fearful helmet of Hades covered the temples of the king, having the dread darkness of night.° Perseus himself, the son of Danaê, was stretched out, looking like one who hastens and shudders. The Gorgons rushed on after him, not to be approached, unspeakable, longing to take hold of him. And as they ran on the pale steel, the shield rang out with a great clanging, sharp and clear. Two snakes hung down from their girdles, their heads arched forward. They flickered with their tongues, and their teeth gnashed with strength, and their eyes glared fiercely. On the terrible heads of the Gorgons great Fear was quaking.° Above them, men were fighting in their warlike armor, some warding off destruction on behalf of their city and their parents, others anxious to sack the city. Many lay on the ground, but more, 195. Lame One: Hephaistos. 202. night: The helmet of Hades made the wearer invisible. 210. . . . quaking: The great hero Perseus was the founder of Mycenae and the great-grandfather of Herakles. The son of the princess Danaê and Zeus, he beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and saved Andromeda from a sea monster.

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Figure 22. In one of the earliest representations of myth in Greek pottery, a Gorgon pursues Perseus after his murder of her sister, Medusa. (The beheaded Medusa and another Gorgon are on the other side of the pot, followed by Hermes and Athena; in front of Perseus is a yoked chariot in a disconnected scene of two hoplites fighting.) The Gorgon wears magic sandals, is winged, and has a wideopen mouth, a pug nose, staring deadly eyes, and snakes for hair. Perseus too wears magic sandals and a cap perhaps meant to represent the helmet of Hades. He carries a sword slung from his shoulder. Usually in such representations Medusa’s head is shown in a pouch, but not here. Black-figure wine-mixing bowl from Etruria, ca. 580 b.c.; Musée du Louvre, Paris (Photo: Bibi Saint-Pol; https:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Dinos_Gorgon_Painter_Louvre_E874.jpg)

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still engaged in the conflict, fought on. The women on the well-built towers, made of bronze, were crying shrilly, and they tore at their cheeks like living beings—the work of famous Hephaistos! The men who were elders, on whom old age had taken its grip, were gathered in groups outside the gates. They held up their hands to the blessed gods in fear for their sons, who were engaged in battle. The black Fates were with them—grinding their white teeth, with ferocious eyes, awful, reeking of blood, unapproachable —and they were struggling for those who were falling, for they all desired to drink their black blood. When they first caught a man lying on the ground, or falling freshly wounded, one of them clasped her huge claws around him, and his breath-soul would go down to Hades, to cold Tartaros. When they had satisfied their hearts with a man’s blood, and they threw him behind them, they would rush again into the tumult and the fray. Klotho and Lachesis stood over them. Atropos was of a smaller size, not a large god, but nonetheless she was superior to the others, and the oldest. All of them made a fierce fight over one man, glaring evilly at one another with angry eyes, and they equaled one another with their claws and their vicious hands. Beside them stood Death Mist°—gloomy and dread, pale, dried up, collapsed from hunger, with fat knees. Long nails grew from her hands, snot ran from her nose, and blood dripped from her cheeks to the ground. She stood there with a monstrous grin. Mounds of dust soaked with tears were piled on her shoulders. Beside that was a city of men with fine towers. Seven towers made of gold, fitted to the lintels, guarded it.° The men took their pleasure in festivals and dances. Some brought a bride to her husband 233. Death Mist: The Greek is Achlys, first appearing here as a personification of the cloud that overcomes a man when he is dying. 239. guarded it: Only Thebes had seven towers in Greek tradition; the poet must be thinking of Thebes.

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in a wagon with fine wheels, and the bridal song rose high. From afar rolled the blaze of burning torches in the hands of female slaves, and they went ahead, taking delight in the revelry. After them came the chorus of dancers. The men sent forth their song from tender mouths accompanied by shrill panpipes, and an echo surrounded them, while the women danced a lovely dance to the accompaniment of lyres. Then, on the other side, youths led a revel to the sound of the flute, some sporting in dance and song; others went in front, laughing, every one, to the flute. The whole city was given to mirth and dance and festivity. In front of the city darted men mounted on horseback, and plowmen broke up the shining earth, clothed in shirts that they had girt up. There was a rich crop. Some men were reaping with sharp tools the curving stalks, heavy with the ears of wheat, as if it were the grain of Demeter. Others were binding the wheat with bands, and these were falling onto the threshing floor. Still others harvested the wine grapes with reaping hooks in their hands, and others took the grapes, white and black, from the reapers and loaded them into baskets from the long rows of vines, heavy with leaves and silver tendrils. Next to them was a row of vines in gold, the famous work of cunning Hephaistos, with shimmering leaves and stakes, made of silver, loaded with grapes that were turning black. Some men were treading the grapes; others were drawing off the juice. And some men were boxing and wrestling, while others, hunters, chased after swift hares, and a pair of sharp-toothed dogs ran before them, eager to catch the hares, but they longed to escape. Next to them horsemen labored hard: They worked and contended for a prize. Charioteers standing on plaited cars urged on their swift horses, giving slack to their reins. The jointed cars flew on, rattling, and the naves of the wheels shrieked. So they engaged in a labor for which there was no end, and a victory never appeared for them, and the prize remained unclaimed—a huge tripod set out for them within the racecourse, made of gold, the famous work the shield of herakles

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of cunning Hephaistos. And around the rim of the shield ran Ocean, looking as though it were in full flood, enclosing the whole of the fancy shield. Over it soared high-flying swans, crying loudly, and many others swam on the surface of the water. And beside them fish darted about wildly, a wonder to see even for deep-thundering Zeus, through whose counsels Hephaistos had made the shield, huge and strong, fitting it together with his hands. And the mighty son of Zeus shook it with power! Herakles leaped on his horse-chariot like the lightning of his father, Zeus, who carries the goatskin fetish, springing lightly. His charioteer, strong Iolaos, mounted the car too and guided the curved chariot. The goddess flashing-eyed Athena came close to them. She spoke encouraging words that went like arrows: “Greetings, offspring of far-famed Lynkeus! ° Now mighty Zeus, who rules over the blessed ones, grants that you kill Kyknos and strip from him his famous armor. But I will tell you something else, mightiest one of the people. When you have deprived Kyknos of his sweet life, then leave him there, and his armor. You yourself watch out for manslaying Ares as he comes on. There, where you see Ares naked beneath his beautiful shield, wound him with your sharp spear. Then fall back: It is not fated that you take his horses or his glorious armor.” So speaking, the shining goddess mounted eagerly into her chariot, holding victory and fame in her deathless hands. Then Zeus-born° Iolaos called loudly to his horses, and at his cry they swiftly bore the fast chariot, raising dust from the plain. By shaking the goatskin fetish, flashing-eyed 287. Lynkeus: One of the sons of Aigyptos, who founded the royal house of Argos. Perseus was descended from Aigyptos, and Perseus was the father of Alkaios, the father of Amphitryon, Herakles’ mortal father. 297. Zeus-born: That is, favored by the gods. (Iolaos is not related to Zeus.)

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Athena infused strength in them, and the earth groaned all around. They came on together, like fire or storm, horse-taming Kyknos and Ares, insatiate of the war cry. Then their horses whinnied sharply when they came face to face, and an echo crashed around them. Mighty Herakles addressed him first: “Whoa, Kyknos! Why do you set your swift horses against us, men who are experienced in pain and sorrow? But drive your well-polished chariot to the side! Yield, go outside the path! I am traveling to Trachis, to King Keux, who in Trachis excels in power and honor, which you yourself well know, for you are married to his daughter, dark-eyed Themistonoê.° “Fool! Ares will not ward off from you the end of death, if the two of us come together to fight. For I say that he made trial of my spear before, when he stood against me for the sake of sandy Pylos,° longing ravenously for battle. Struck three times by my spear, he leaned on the ground, his shield pierced. On the fourth time I drove it into his thigh, leaning on with all my strength, and I broke through deeply into his flesh. He fell face-down in the dust on the ground by the blast of my spear. Then truly he would have been disgraced among the deathless ones, leaving his bloody spoils at my hands!” So he spoke. But Kyknos of the strong ash spear had no desire to obey him and to pull up the horses that drew his chariot. Then they leaped down quickly from their well-plaited chariots to the ground, the son of great Zeus and the son of King Enyalios.° The charioteers drove their horses with beautiful manes nearby, and the broad earth rang beneath the pounding of their hooves as they rushed along. Even as when rocks leap forth from the high peak of a great mountain, and they fall on one another, and many towering 309. Themistonoê: Otherwise unknown. 312. Pylos: In the southwestern Peloponnesus, where Herakles fought Ares on an earlier occasion. 323. Enyalios: Another name for Ares.

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Figure 23. Zeus in the center, carrying a thunderbolt, parts Athena on the left from Ares on the right, while Kyknos on the far right, holding out his shield, flees Herakles, who approaches on the far left in his chariot (only his horses are visible). Athena carries a shield on her left arm, brandishes a spear, and wears the goatskin fetish (aigis). Ares appears as an ordinary Greek soldier (a hoplite), carries a shield, and brandishes a spear. Kyknos’ driver is steering his chariot. Athenian black-figure wine-mixing bowl, ca. 540–510 b.c. British Museum, London (Photo: Jastrow; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Herakles_Kyknos_BM _B364.jpg)

oaks and many firs and poplars with deep roots are broken beneath them as they roll swiftly down until they come onto the plain —even so did they fall on one another with loud shouts. All the town of the Myrmidons and famous Iolkos and Arnê and Helikê and grassy Antheia resounded loudly at their voices.° With a wondrous cry they came together. Zeus the Counselor thundered mightily and threw down from heaven bloody drops, giving a sign for battle to his bold son. Even as a boar with jutting tusks, angry to be seen up ahead in the woods of a mountain, decides in its spirit to fight with the huntsmen, and turning sideways he sharpens his white tusk, and foam drips around his gnashing mouth, and his eyes are like gleaming fire, and he bristles the hair on his mane and around his neck—even so the son of Zeus leaped from his horse-chariot. And when the shrill dark-winged cicada, sitting on a green branch, begins to sing of summer to humans, whose drink and food is the tender dew, and all day long, beginning at dawn, he pours forth his voice in the awful heat; when Sirius dries up the flesh —then the beards grow on the grain that men plant in summer, when the unripe grape changes color that Dionysos gave to men as a joy and a sorrow—that was the season in which they fought,° and a great clamor arose. Even as two lions rush against each other, raging around a killed stag, and a terrible roaring and gnashing comes from their teeth; or just as vultures with bent claws and hooked beaks battle on a high rock, screaming loudly over a mountain goat or a fat wild stag that a lusty man has shot and killed 331. . . . their voices: The Myrmidons are the followers of Achilles in the Iliad; their town is Phthia, someplace in southern Thessaly. Iolkos (modern Volo), whence Jason set out, is at the head of the Gulf of Pagasai. Arnê, Helikê, and Antheia are other towns in Thessaly, of unknown location. 345. fought: That is, in mid-July.

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with an arrow from the string of his bow, and he himself has wandered off someplace else, not knowing the place, but they knew it quickly and eagerly entered bitter combat over it—even so they rushed together, shouting, upon each other. Then Kyknos, eager to kill the son of almighty Zeus, struck his shield with his bronze spear, but the bronze did not break it. The gift of the god prevented it. But the son of Amphitryon, mighty Herakles, swiftly drove his long spear through Kyknos’ neck, with power, beneath his chin, where it was left naked between helmet and shield. The mankilling spear cut through both tendons, for the great strength of Herakles leaned upon it. Kyknos fell as when an oak or a lofty pine falls, struck by the smoky thunderbolt of Zeus —even so he fell, and his armor adorned with bronze crashed around him. Then the brave son of Zeus let him go, and staring savagely with his eyes—like a lion who has come on some animal and ravenously tears at its skin with his powerful claws, and as quickly as possible takes away its sweet life; his dark heart is filled with rage, and glancing fiercely with his eyes, and lashing furiously his sides and shoulders with his tail, he digs at the ground with his paws, nor does anyone dare to face him and go near to give battle—he watched for manslaying Ares, who came against him: even so the son of Amphitryon, insatiate of battle, stood eagerly before Ares, increasing courage in his heart. But Ares came up near, grieving in his heart. Both shouted and rushed at each other. Just as when a rock rushes out from a great cliff, and leaping forth it rolls down, and it comes on eagerly with a roar, and meets a high crag and runs up against it and is stopped in its tracks: With just such a roar did deadly Ares, who weighed down his chariot, rush with a shout at Herakles, who straightaway received the attack. But Athena, the daughter of Zeus who carries the goatskin fetish, came against Ares, holding 170

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the dark fetish, and with a frightening frown spoke words that went like arrows: “Ares, restrain your great strength and your indomitable hands. For it is not destined that you kill Herakles, the bold-hearted son of Zeus, and strip the glorious armor from him. Come, stop this fight, and do not stand against me.” So she spoke. But she did not persuade the great-hearted spirit of Ares. Shouting loudly, powerfully brandishing his spear like fire, he attacked mighty Herakles, yearning to kill him. And he quickly cast his bronze spear on the great shield, angry because of his dead son. But flashing-eyed Athena reached out from her chariot and turned aside the force of the spear. Then bitter grief took hold of Ares. Drawing his sharp sword, he rushed at brave Herakles. But the son of Amphitryon, insatiate of savage battle, met him as he came on and wounded him with power in his thigh where it was naked beneath his decorated shield. Guiding his spear, he drove it deeply into his flesh and threw him onto the ground between them. And Fear and Terror hastily drove their well-running chariot and horses near him, and they lifted him from the wide-wayed earth into the richly worked car. Quickly then the two sons whipped their horses, and they came to high Olympos. The son of Alkmenê and bold Iolaos stripped Kyknos’ handsome armor from his shoulders and went off. Then soon they came to the city of Trachis with their swift-hoofed horses. But flashing-eyed Athena went to great Olympos and the house of her father. Keux buried Kyknos together with the countless people who live near the city of the famous king, who dwell in Anthê and the famous city of the Myrmidons, and near Iolkos and Arnê and Helikê. Many people were gathered, honoring Keux, dear to the blessed gods. But the river Anauros, swollen with winter rain, obliterated the grave and tombstone. Apollo, the son of Leto, ordered it, because Kyknos used to waylay and rob with violence whoever brought famous sacrifices to Delphi. the shield of herakles

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Bibliography

editions Solmsen, F., R. Merkelbach, and M. L. West, eds. Hesiodi Theogonia Opera et Dies Scutum: Fragmenta Selecta. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. [2nd ed., 1983; 3rd ed., 1990.] West, M. L., ed., Hesiod: Theogony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. , ed. Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

studies of general interest Burn, A. R. The World of Hesiod: A Study of the Greek Middle Ages, c. 900–700 BC (New York, 1937). Barron, J. P., and P. E. Easterling. “Hesiod.” In P. E. Easterling and Bernard M. W. Knox, eds., The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. 1, Greek Literature, 92–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Becker, A. S. “Reading Poetry through a Distant Lens: Ecphrasis, Ancient Greek Rhetoricians, and the Pseudo-Hesiodic ‘Shield of Herakles.’ ” American Journal of Philology 113 (1992): 5–24. Burkert, W. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. Clay, D. “The World of Hesiod.” Ramus 21 (1992): 131–55. Clay, J. S. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Edwards, A. T. Hesiod’s Ascra. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. Edwards, G. P. The Language of Hesiod in Its Traditional Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

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Fontenrose, J. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959. . “Work, Justice, and Hesiod’s Five Ages.” Classical Philology 69 (1974): 1–16. Gagarin, M. “The Poetry of Justice: Hesiod and the Origins of Greek Law.” Ramus 21 (1992): 61–78. Griffin, J. “Greek Myth and Hesiod,” In J. Boardman and J. Griffin, eds., The Oxford History of the Classical World, 78–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Hamilton, R. The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1989. . Hesiod’s Theogony. Bryn Mawr: Department of Greek, Bryn Mawr College, 1990. Janko, R. Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. . “The Shield of Herakles and the Legend of Cycnus.” Classical Quarterly 36 (1986): 38–59. , “From Gabii and Gordion to Eretria and Methone: The Rise of the Greek Alphabet.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 58 (2015): 1–32. Lamberton, R., Hesiod. New Haven; Yale University Press, 1988. Lopez-Ruiz, C., When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. Powell, B. B., Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Montanari, F., A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis, eds., Brill’s Companion to Hesiod. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Solmsen, F. Hesiod and Aeschylus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949. Thalmann, W. G., Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1984. Verdenius, W. J. A Commentary on Hesiod: Works and Days, Leiden: Brill, 1985. Walcot, P. Hesiod and the Near East. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966. West, M. L. “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 433–50. . Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. . The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

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. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

some translations Athanassakis, A. N. Theogony; Works and Days; Shield. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Evelyn-White, H. G. Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914. Lattimore, R. Hesiod: The Works and Days, Theogony, The Shield of Herakles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Most, G. W. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. . Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue, Other Fragments. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. West, M. L. Theogony and Works and Days. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Glossary / Index

ACHILLES: Greek hero at Troy. 24, 47, 90, 94, 147, 169 aegina (ē-jīn-a): island just off the harbor of Athens. 94 aigis: means “goat”; the aigis was apparently a powerful fetish made of a goatskin, carried by Zeus and Athena. 33, 168 aeneas (ē-nē-as): son of Aphrodite, founder of the Roman race. 94, 96, 99 agavê (ga-vē): daughter of Kadmos and Harmonia, mother of Pentheus, king of Thebes. 47, 88, 90, 91 aietês (ē-e-tez): king of Colchis, keeper of the Golden Fleece. 58, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95 aison (ē-sōn): father of Jason. 90, 94, 95 alkmenê (alk-mē-nē): mother of Herakles, wife of Amphitryon. 68, 85, 86, 88, 145, 151, 152, 171 ambrosia: “undying,” the food of the gods. 25, 35, 74, 79 amphitritê (am-fi-trī-tē): a Nereid, consort of Poseidon. 47, 48, 50, 84, 86 amphitryon: husband of Alkmenê and mortal father of Herakles. 54, 145, 146, 151–156, 158, 166, 170, 171 anchisês (an-kī-sez): father of Aeneas by Aphrodite. 94, 99 aphrodite: “born of the foam,” the goddess of sexual love. apollo: son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis. 25, 31, 33, 36, 37, 39, 57, 62, 84, 85, 141, 145–149, 154, 155, 171 ares: god of war. 84–87, 91, 115, 146, 147, 154–158, 160, 166–168, 170, 171 argos: (1) city in the Peloponnesus; 31, 33, 145, 166 (2) a monster slain by Hermes. 111, 112 ariadnê: daughter of Minos. 86, 87, 88, 117 artemis: daughter of Zeus and Leto, sister of Apollo. 31, 33, 37, 62, 84, 85, 90, 148 ash nymphs (Meliai): ash-tree nymphs, sprung from the blood of castrated Sky. 41, 44 177

athena: daughter of Zeus, goddess of war and handicrafts. 26, 27, 31, 33, 54, 60, 72, 81, 83, 84, 85, 111, 112, 126, 146, 147, 156, 160, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171 atlas: Titan who holds the world on his shoulders, son of Iapetos. 13, 25, 49, 67, 68, 69, 70, 76, 80, 86, 123 atropos: “she who cannot be turned aside,” one of the Fates. 45, 46, 83, 164 bellerophon: hero who, riding on the winged horse Pegasos, killed the Chimaira. 54 boeotia (bē-o-sha): area whose capital was Thebes, northwest of Attica. 20, 31, 34, 104, 135, 137, 145, 153 briareos (brē-ar-e-os): “powerful,” one of the Hundred-Handers. 39, 73, 76, 79 BRIGHTNESS (Aither, ī-ther): child of Darkness and Night. 23, 27, 37, 38 bronze race: the third of the five races of humankind. 98–101 catalogue of women, THE: a poem surviving only in fragments, supposedly by Hesiod. 84, 96, 145, 150, 151, 174 chaos: “chasm,” whence everything comes. 16, 21, 22, 23, 27, 36, 37, 38, 79, 80 cheiron (kī-ron): the good centaur, tutor of Jason and Achilles. 94 chimaira (kī-mē-ra): “she-goat,” with a lion’s body, a serpent’s tail, and a goat’s head protruding from her back. 54–56 chrysaor: “he of the golden sword,” who appeared when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head. 49, 53, 90 circe: “hawk,” a witch, daughter of Helios. 88, 89, 94, 95, 96 colchis (kol-chis): home of Aietês, at the eastern end of the Black Sea. 94 corinth: city on the isthmus between the Peloponnesus and mainland Greece. 48, 54, 68, 145 corinth, gulf of: bay between the Peloponnesus and western Greece. 31, 68, 148, 149 cosmogony: “the begetting of the cosmos.” 21 crete: large island in the Aegean Sea. 24, 25, 28, 66, 88 cyclopês (si-klō-pēz): primordial beings who manufacture Zeus’s thunderbolt, children of Earth and Sky. 22, 24, 25, 29 cyprus: large island in the eastern Mediterranean. 42 cythera (si-ther-a): island south of the Peloponnesus, where Aphrodite was born, according to some accounts. 42, 86 cythereia (sith-er-ē-a): a name for Aphrodite, “she of the island of Cythera,” where Aphrodite was born, according to some accounts. 42, 86 darkness (Erebos): a god who emerged from Chaos. 22, 23, 27, 37, 38, 68 dawn (Eos): goddess, daughter of Hyperion. 23, 31, 33, 58, 60, 61, 64, 90, 92, 93, 134 day (Hemera, hē-mer-a): child of Darkness and Night. 23, 27, 37, 38, 77, 80 178

glossary /  i ndex

death (Thanatos): a god, brother of Sleep. 42, 45, 46, 77, 80 delphi: site of the Oracle of Apollo, in the territory called Phocis. 25, 31, 67, 145, 146, 148, 149, 171 demeter: goddess of the wheat harvest. 64, 65, 83, 84, 85, 88, 90, 102, 110, 121, 123, 128, 134, 142, 156, 165 desire (Himeros): a personification. 27, 35, 42 dionê (dī-ō-nē): feminine form of “Zeus,” a goddess. 31, 33, 57 dionysos: god of wine, son of Semelê. 85, 86, 87, 88, 90,134, 136, 169 doris: an Oceanid. 47, 50, 57 earth (Gaia, ghī-a): a primordial goddess. 13, 17, 21-29, 31, 33, 34, 36-41, 44, 47, 50, 62, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75, 80, 81, 83, 112, 156 echidna (e-kid-na): daughter of Keto, a woman above and a snake beneath. 24, 52, 54, 56 eileithyia (ē-lē-thui-a): goddess of childbirth. 84, 85 epimetheus: “afterthinker,” brother of Prometheus and husband of Pandora. 67–69, 112, 113 erinys (er-i-nis): spirit of a violated oath (in the plural, Erinyes, the Furies). 23, 41, 44, 66, 142 eris: “strife,” a personification. 46, 101, 109, 142, 157 eros: “sexual love,” a primordial being who emerged in the first days of creation. 21, 22, 27, 36, 37, 38, 42, 113, 117 eurybia (ū-rib-i-a): “of wide power,” a Titan. 47, 50, 58, 61 fates (Moirai, moi-rī): apportioners of one’s lot in life, daughters of Night. 23, 45, 46, 83, 85, 164 furies (Erinyes, er-in-i-ēz): spirits of blood vengeance, enforcers of oaths, born of the blood that fell from the wound of Kronos’ castration. 23, 66, 142 GAIA (ghī-a): Earth, a primordial godess. 21, 33, 34, 38, 40, 50 geryon (jer-yon): mythical enemy of Herakles who had three bodies fused at the waist. 24, 49, 52, 53, 54, 90 giants: “earthborn ones,” born of the blood from Kronos’ wound. 23, 34, 41, 44 GOLDEN FLEECE: sought by Jason. 94, 146, 154 golden race: the first of the five races of humankind. 98, 99, 114, 115 GORGONS: monstrous children of Keto. 41, 49, 51, 53, 147, 162, 163 graces (Charites, ka-ri-tes): personifications of feminine charm. 35, 83, 85, 86, 111, 112 gray old ladies (Graiai, grī-ī): mythical beings who had a single tooth and a single eye among them, which they shared. 24, 49, 53 glossary /  i ndex

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gygês (ghī-jēz): one of the Hundred-Handers. 73, 76, 79 hades: brother of Zeus and Poseidon, lord of the underworld. 24, 52, 64, 65, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 90, 99, 115, 128, 162, 163, 164 harmonia: daughter of Ares, wife of Kadmos, founding king of Thebes. 86, 87, 90, 91 harpies: “snatchers,” storm spirits. 49, 50 hebê (hē-bē): “youth,” goddess who married Herakles on Olympos. 31, 33, 84, 85, 88 hekatê (he-ka-tē): a powerful, beneficent goddess. 60, 62–64 helen of troy: wife of Menelaos and daughter of Zeus and Leda; her adulterous affair with Paris started the Trojan War. 45, 100, 115 helikon, mount: the mountain on which the Muses visited Hesiod. 1–3, 31–34, 135 helios: sun god, son of Hyperion. 23, 31, 33, 37, 58, 60, 61, 77, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95 hephaistos (he-fēs-tos): the craftsman god. 26, 68, 72, 81, 84, 86, 88, 111–113, 147, 156, 162, 164–166 hera: sister and wife of Zeus. 31, 33, 52, 54, 64, 65, 84, 85, 88 HERAKLES: son of Zeus. 1, 18, 19, 24, 41, 45, 52, 54, 57, 64, 68, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 145–148, 150, 152, 154–157, 162, 166-168, 170, 171, 178 hermes: child of Zeus and Maia, messenger of the gods. 64, 85, 86, 111, 113, 163 hesperidês (hes-per-i-dēz): “Nymphs of the West,” who guarded a magical tree that grew at the edge of the world. 19, 45, 46, 49, 54, 68 hestia: “hearth,” a virgin goddess. 64, 65 hours (Horai): the seasons. 83, 112 hundred-handers (Hekatoncheirês, he-ka-ton-kī-rēz): children of Earth and Sky, powerful beings who assisted Zeus in his battle with the Titans. 22, 24, 25, 29, 40, 73-75, 80 hyadês (hī-a-dêz): “rainy ones,” sisters of the Pleiadês, a constellation. 134 hydra: the seven-headed snake of Lerna, near Argos. 19, 24, 41, 52, 54, 56 hyperion (hī-per-i-on): “he who goes above,” a sun god. 23, 37, 58, 61, 94, 95 iapetos (ē-a-pe-tos): a Titan, father of Prometheus. 22, 25, 31, 33, 37, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 76, 111 iasion (ē-as-i-on): lover of Demeter and father of Ploutos by her. 88, 90 ino (ī-no): a daughter of Kadmos and Harmonia. 90, 91 iolkos: city at the head of the Gulf of Pagasai (pa-ga-sē), in Thessaly, home of Jason. 94, 146, 154, 169, 171 iris: “rainbow,” messenger of the gods. 49, 50, 77, 86 iron race: the 158, 159 last of the five races of humankind. 98–103, 116 180

glossary /  i ndex

isles of the blest: afterworld paradise near the river Ocean. 100, 115 jason: hero who recovered the Golden Fleece and married Medea. 94, 95, 146, 154, 169 kadmeians: the descendants of Kadmos; the Thebans. 54, 151 KADMOS: “man of the east,” founded Thebes. 4, 54, 86, 87, 90, 91, 151, 155 kaineus (kī-nūs): Lapith warrior. 158, 159 kalos inscriptions: inscriptions on pots celebrating the beauty of young men. 32 kalypso: “concealer,” nymph bedded by Odysseus. 57, 95, 96 kerberos: dog with fifty heads who protected the House of Hades. 24, 52, 54, 56, 77, 80 keto (kē-to): “sea monster.” 24, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56 kithairon, 57, 67, 69 mount (ki-thē-ron): a mountain near Mount Helikon. 34 klotho (klō-thō): “spinner,” one of the Fates. 45, 46, 83, 164 klymenê (klī-men-ē): an Oceanid, consort of Iapetos. 57, 67, 69 koios: a Titan, father of Leto. 22, 37, 62, 63 kottos: one of the Hundred-Handers. 39, 73, 74, 76, 79 kreios: a Titan. 37, 60, 61 kronos: son of Sky and father of Zeus 16, 17, 22–28, 31, 33–35, 37, 41, 60, 62, 64–68, 72–74, 81, 88, 99, 109, 111, 114, 115, 119, 120, 154 lachesis (la-ke-sis): “apportioner,” one of the Fates. 45, 46, 83, 164 LAPITHS: a Thessalian tribe, fought the centaurs. 158, 159, 161 leto: mother of Apollo and Artemis by Zeus. 31, 33, 37, 62, 63, 84, 85, 141, 148, 160, 171 medea: a witch, daughter of Aietês. 88, 89, 94, 95 medusa: the Gorgon slain by Perseus. 41, 49, 51, 53, 162, 163 mekonê (me-kōn-ē): an old name for Sikyon, where the division of the sacrifice took place between men and the Olympian gods. 68, 97 memnon: son of Tithonos and Dawn, king of the Ethiopians. 90, 92, 93 metis (mē-tis): “mind,” “cleverness,” an Oceanid, first consort of Zeus. 26, 57, 81, 83, 85 minos: legendary king of Crete, father of Ariadnê. 88, 117 mnemosynê (nē-mos-i-nē): “memory,” a Titan, mother of the Muses. 22, 34, 37, 84, 85 moon (Selenê, se-lēn-ē): a goddess, daughter of Hyperion. 23, 31, 33, 58, 60, 61 muses: inspirers of poetry. 1, 2, 22, 31, 33-36, 84, 85, 88, 96, 97, 109, 137, 147, 160 MYCENAE: bronze age site in the Argive plain. 54, 100, 145, 151, 153, 162 myth of the five races: 18, 97, 98 glossary /  i ndex

181

nectar: “what overcomes death,” the drink of the gods. 25, 74, 79 nemean lion: a lion of extraordinary power slain by Herakles. 54 nemesis: “she who gives what is due,” a daughter of Night. 23, 45, 46, 116, 117 nereids (nē-re-idz): daughters of Nereus, sea nymphs. 24, 94 nereus (nē-rūs): the Old Man of the Sea, a prophetic sea god. 24, 45, 47, 50, 94 night (Nyx): a god who emerged from Chaos. 22, 23, 27, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 42, 45, 46, 49, 76, 77, 80, 109 ocean: a Titan, the river that flows around the world. 22, 23, 31, 33, 37, 45, 47, 49, 52, 54, 58, 59, 60, 67, 75, 77, 79, 80, 83, 88, 89, 90, 115, 132, 147, 166 oceanids (o-sē-a-nids): the daughters of Ocean, spirits of the sea. 22, 24, 25, 26, 52, 58, 59, 60, 63, 83, 86, 123 oedipus: a famous Theban king. 100, 115, 155 olmeios: a spring of the Muses on Mount Helikon. 31 olympos, mount: the abode of the gods, in Thessaly. 25, 33, 34, 35, 36, 60, 62, 73, 75, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84, 88, 96, 100, 109, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 146, 153, 155, 160, 171 orion: a great hunter made into a constellation. 123, 125, 134 orthos: two-headed hound of Geryon, child of Echidna and Typhon. 24, 52, 54, 56 othrys, mount (o-thris): mountain in Thessaly from where the Titans fought the Olympians. 73 pallas: (1) an epithet of Athena; 60, 72, 112, 156 (2) a Titan, consort of Styx. 58, 60, 61, 63 pandora: “all-giver,” woman manufactured by Hephaistos to bring evils to mankind. 18, 26, 27, 68, 97–99, 101, 112, 113 PARIS: a prince of Troy. 11, 45, 48, 55, 78, 92, 124, 130, 159, 163 pegasos: magical winged horse born from the severed neck of Medusa. 31, 49, 53, 54 peirithoös (pē-rith-o-os): Lapith king, friend of Theseus. 158, 159, 161 pelias (pel-i-as): the wicked uncle of Jason who sent him after the Golden Fleece. 94, 95 permessos: a spring of the Muses on Mount Helikon. 31 perseïs: an Oceanid, mother of Circe. 57, 88, 89 persephone: daughter of Demeter and Zeus, wife of Hades, queen of the underworld. 64, 77, 78, 84, 85 persês: (1) brother of Hesiod; 1, 62, 97, 99–104, 109, 110, 118, 120, 121, 125, 134, 135 (2) a Titan, father of Hekatê. 58, 60–63 perseus: hero who slew the Gorgon Medusa. 41, 49, 147, 151, 152, 155, 162, 163, 166 182

glossary /  i ndex

phoibê (fē-bē): “shining goddess,” a Titan, mother of Leto. 37, 63 phoibos (fē-bos): see Apollo. phorkys (for-kis): a sea god. 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56 pieria: an area of southeastern Macedonia sacred to the Muses. 34, 109, 160 PLEIADÊS (plē-a-dēz): daughters of Atlas, a constellation in the constellation Taurus. 49, 86, 123, 133, 134 ploutos: “wealth,” son of Demeter and Iasion, often identified with Hades. 78, 88, 90 poseidon: son of Kronos and Rhea, lord of the sea, god of earthquakes and horses. 22, 25, 31, 33, 47, 48, 49, 53, 64, 65, 76, 137, 148, 156, 159 prometheus: “forethinker,” a Titan who deceives Zeus at Mekonê and steals fire in a fennel stalk. 18, 26, 27, 33, 37, 67–71, 73, 97, 99, 101, 111, 112 race of heroes: the fourth of the five races of humankind. 98–100, 115 retribution (Nemesis): a personification. 116, 117 rhea (rē-a): consort of Kronos, mother of the Olympians. 22, 24–28, 37, 64–66, 73 sea (Pontos): father with Earth of many monsters. 22, 24, 27, 36-38, 45, 47, 50, 57, 80, 94, 153 semelê (sem-e-lē): mother of Dionysos. 86, 87, 90, 91 shame (Aidos): a personification. 116, 121 silver race: the second of the five races of humankind. 98, 99, 101, 114, 115 sirius: the Dog Star, harbinger of the Dog Days. 125, 133, 134, 157, 169 sky (Ouranos, oo-ra-nos): a child of Earth. 12, 14, 16, 17, 21–28, 34, 36–42, 44, 62, 66, 67, 73–75, 80, 83, 84, 142 sleep (Hypnos): a god, brother of Death. 42, 46, 77, 80 sphinx: a winged, devouring female monster with a lion’s body, child of Chimaira. 24, 54, 56, 153 strife (Eris): a child of Night (Nyx). 45, 46, 101–103, 109, 110, 142, 147, 157 styx: “hateful,” an Oceanid and underworld river. 57, 60, 63, 77, 79, 80 succession myth: a mythic pattern wherein a generation overthrows the one preceding. 12, 13, 26, 27, 41, 66, 83 SUN (Helios): a child of Hyperion. 33, 37, 60, 61, 90, 92 tartaros: a dark place beneath Earth, later confused with the House of Hades. 21, 23, 25, 29, 36, 37, 38, 67, 73, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 164 telegonos (tel-e-gon-os): son of Circe and Odysseus. 95, 96 tethys (tē-this): a watery goddess, the consort of Ocean. 22, 37, 54, 58, 59 thebes: a major city, capital of Boeotia. 1, 4, 31, 86, 90, 99, 100, 115, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153–156, 164 glossary /  i ndex

183

theia (thē-a): “goddess,” a Titan, mother of Sun, Moon, and Dawn. 22, 23, 37, 58, 61 themis: “law,” a Titan. 22, 31, 33, 37, 83, 85 theogony: “the begetting of the gods.” 1, 2, 9, 13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 31, 33, 37, 84, 97, 104, 109, 111, 137, 153, 164, 173, 175, 178 theseus: Athenian hero, slayer of the Minotaur and son of Aegeus. 88, 117, 158, 159, 161 THESSALY: territory in northern Greece. 57, 73, 135, 146, 154, 159, 160, 169 thetis (thē-tis): a Nereid, mother of Achilles. 24, 47, 50, 94 tiryns: important citadel near Mycenae on the Argive Plain, home to Herakles. 52, 145, 151, 155 titanomachy (tī-tan-o-ma-kē): the battle between the Olympian gods and the Titans. 25, 73 titans: the children of Sky and Earth. 17, 22, 23–26, 29, 33, 37, 40, 42, 60, 62, 67, 73–76, 79–81, 83, 99, 97, 114, 123 tithonos (tith-ō-nos): a Trojan prince abducted by Dawn. 90, 92, 93 tritogeneia (trī-to-ghen-ē-a): an epithet of Athena. 83, 84, 160 triton (trī-ton): a sea god, son of Amphitritê and Poseidon. 86 troy: citadel in Asia Minor. 57, 92, 99, 100, 115, 137 typhon (tī-fon): a gigantic monster, enemy of Zeus. 9, 13, 17, 25, 26, 27, 29, 52, 54, 56, 70, 80-82, 153 tyrsenians: the Etruscans. 96 zeus: king of the Olympians and Greek storm god. 1, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 21-29, 31, 33–37, 39, 49, 51, 54, 57, 60, 62, 64–68, 71–77, 79-88, 92, 94, 96-103, 109–116, 118–120, 122, 123, 125, 128, 129, 132, 135, 137, 139, 141, 145, 148, 152–158, 160, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169

184

glossary /  i ndex