 Chaos
 Uranos
 Geia
 Eros
 Cyclopes
 Hecatoncheires
 Titans
• Ocean: Oceanus [and a few offspring]
• Sun: Hyperion [ >> Helios, Apollo, Phaethon]
• Moon: Selene [>> Artemis, Diana, Endymion]
• Dawn: Eos [>> Aurora, Tithonus]
 Relationship
of Father and Child
 Cronus as Hero
• …as Castrator
• …as Successor
 In
destruction, creation
• Order within the heavens
• Order within the family
• Birth of Aphrodite
The agricultural cycles
 Again,
the father – child relationship
 The revenge cycle, again
 Zeus
as a ‘hidden child’ who will later
return to kill/overthrow his father
• Hidden how?
• Where?
• Adulthood: He’s the New Father
 The
revenge cycle: can it end? How?
 War between Zeus and Titans
• “Zeus was victorious, the Titans were imprisoned in
Tartarus, guarded by the Hecatoncheires; and Atlas
was punished with the task of holding up the sky.”
 Conquest.
 Family.
• Respect for elders and children
• Zeus as the rule and exception
War with the giants

“Go now, you gods, test me that you all may know.
Fasten you a rope of gold from heaven, and all
you gods lay hold thereof and all goddesses; yet
you could not drag from heaven to earth Zeus,
counsellor supreme, not though you used all your
strength. But once I likewise were minded to pull
upwards with all my heart, then I would draw you
up along with the very earth and sea. Thereafter
would I bind the rope about a pinnacle of
Olympus, and so should all those things be hung
in air. By so much am I beyond gods and beyond
men."
 From
Uranos to Cronos to Zeus:
• Law and Justice
• Family as stability [with hiccups…]
 Hera
 Twelve Olympians
 The physical world
 Nature of mortal man
 The social world
 Gold
• Men are obedient, live at ease
 Silver
• Childhood lasts 100 yrs; men are quarrelsome
 Bronze
• Violence, lawlessness and an anonymous death
 Heroes
• Valiant, lawful and remembered with honor
 Iron
• Men work for food and shelter, live lives of disease,
pain and aging. Shame haunts us all.
 “I
will probably never win the World
Series of Poker.”
 “I
will probably never be more
handsome than Jude Law /prettier than
Natalie Portman.”
 “There
will be serious difficulty at some
point[s] in my life.”


“Even rhetorical habits… show affinities with the binary thought
characteristic of Greek language and expression with the familiar
oscillation between "on the one hand' , and' , on the other. ' There
is the insistence on a triadic form of argument with a beginning, a
middle, and an end, or the division of a problem into three
component parts, and the high value placed on the achievement of
an aesthetic style of form and balance. “
“This fondness for balance also reveals itself in the desire to
station oneself in a position neither too remote nor too close to the
object in question. Both an intellectual and an aesthetic stance, the
concept of a' 'bonne distance," reflected in the thought of Pascal
and evident too in structuralist ideas about mediation between
opposites through a middle term, owes not a little to Aristotle's
notion of the mean, and fits more generally with Greek concerns
about geometrically defined limits and boundaries.”
 A Titan
who did not initially oppose Zeus
 Gives man fire
 Negotiates ritual requirements for man
• Barley cakes vs. the hecatomb
• “Do ut des” in Roman religion
• Suffers for his efforts
• Law prevails
• [Cf. the ending of Faust]
 Created
by Zeus as a punishment
 Given to Epimetheus [‘Afterthought’]
 Carried the box of all evils
 Elpis only remains
 Lycaion
• Disrespect for the god and for man’s taboos
• Result: beast becomes a beast
Deucalion and Pyrrah
 Survivors of ‘the flood’ sent from Zeus
 Repopulate the world

These things then the Muses sang, having their home on Olympus, the nine daughters
begotten by great Zeus: Clio and Euterpe and Thalia and Melpomene and Terpsichore
and Erato and Polyhymnia and Urania and Calliope. Calliope is the most important of
them all because she attends upon revered kings. They pour honeyed dew on the tongue
of anyone of the kings cherished by Zeus, whom they, the daughters of great Zeus, honor
and look upon favorably at his birth; and from his mouth words flow as sweet as honey.
All the people look up to him as he dispenses justice with fair impartiality; and soon
speaking with confidence and knowledge he would end even the greatest of disputes.
For this very purpose there are wise kings to settle quarrels easily among people who
wrong each other in their dealings, by prevailing in the achievement of just retribution
with gentle persuasion. As he passes through the city, they greet him with honeyed
respect, like a god, and he is conspicuous in any assembly. Such is the nature of the holy
gift that the Muses bestow among mortals. (74–93)
From the Muses and Apollo come singers and lyre-players on this earth but kings
come from Zeus. Blessed is the [king] whom the Muses love. Sweet is the sound of the
words which flow from his lips. For if anyone has a fresh grief in his soul and his troubled
heart is parched with sorrow and then a bard, servant of the Muses, sings a hymn about
the glorious accomplishments done by men of old and the blessed gods who have their
homes on Olympus, soon the one in distress forgets his woes and does not remember
any of his troubles, which have been dispelled so quickly by this gift of song bestowed
by the goddesses. (Hesiod, 94–103)


The birth of Aphrodite:
When first he had cut off the genitals with the adamant and cast them
from the land on the swelling sea, they were carried for a long time on the
deep. And white foam arose about from the immortal flesh and in it a
maiden grew. First she was brought to holy Cythera, and then from there
she came to sea-girt Cyprus. And she emerged a dread and beautiful
goddess and grass rose under her slender feet. (188–195)
Gods and human beings call her Aphrodite, and the foam-born
goddess because she grew amid the foam (aphros), and Cytherea of the
beautiful crown because she came to Cythera, and Cyprogenes because
she arose in Cyprus washed by the waves. She is called too Philommedes
(genital-loving) because she arose from the genitals. Eros attended her
and beautiful desire followed her when she was born and when she first
went into the company of the gods. From the beginning she has this
honor, and among human beings and the immortal gods she wins as her
due the whispers of girls, smiles, deceits, sweet pleasure, and the gentle
delicacy of love. (Hesiod 195–206)

When Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, vast Gaea brought forth the youngest of her children through the love of
Tartarus and the agency of golden Aphrodite. The hands of the mighty god were strong in any undertaking and his feet
were weariless. From the shoulders of this frightening dragon a hundred snake heads grew, flickering their dark
tongues; fire blazed from the eyes under the brows of all the dreadful heads, and the flames burned as he glared. In all
the terrible heads voices emitted all kinds of amazing sounds; for at one time he spoke so that the gods understood, at
another his cries were those of a proud bull bellowing in his invincible might; sometimes he produced the pitiless roars
of a courageous lion, or again his yelps were like those of puppies, wondrous to hear, or at another time he would hiss;
and the great mountains resounded in echo. (820–835)
Now on that day of his birth an irremediable deed would have been accomplished and he would have become the
ruler of mortals and immortals, if the father of gods and men had not taken swift notice and thundered loudly and
fiercely; the earth resounded terribly on all sides and as well the wide heaven above, the sea, the streams of Ocean, and
the depths of Tartarus. Great Olympus shook under the immortal feet of the lord as he rose up and earth gave a groan.
The burning heat from them both, with the thunder and lightning, scorching winds, and flaming bolts reached down to
seize the dark-colored sea. The whole land was aboil and heaven and the deep; and the huge waves surged around and
about the shores at the onslaught of the immortals, and a quake began its tremors without ceasing. Hades who rules over
the dead below shook, as did the Titans, the allies of Cronus, in the bottom of Tartarus, from the endless din and
terrifying struggle. (836–852)
When Zeus had lifted up the weapons of his might, thunder and lightning and the blazing bolts, he leaped down from
Olympus and struck, and blasted on all sides the marvelous heads of the terrible monster. When he had flogged him
with blows, he hurled him down, maimed, and vast earth gave a groan. A flame flared up from the god as he was hit by
the bolts in the glens of the dark craggy mountain where he was struck down. A great part of vast earth was burned by
the immense conflagration and melted like tin heated by the craft of artisans in open crucibles, or like iron which
although the hardest of all is softened by blazing fire and melts in the divine earth through the craft of Hephaestus. Thus
the earth melted in the flame of the blazing fire. And Zeus in the rage of his anger hurled him into broad Tartarus. (853–
868)