PART
ONE
Strange clouded fragments of an ancient glory,
Late lingerers of the company divine,
They breathe of that far world wherefrom they come,
Lost halls of heaven and Olympian air.
The Greeks did not believe that the gods created the
universe. It was the other way about: the universe created the gods. Before
there were gods heaven and earth had been formed. They were the first parents.
The Titans were their children, and the gods were their grandchildren.
The Titans, often called the Elder Gods, were for untold ages
supreme in the universe. They were of enormous size and
of incredible strength. There were many of them, but only a few appear in the
stories of mythology. The most important was CRONUS, in Latin SATURN. He ruled
over the other Titans until his son Zeus dethroned him and seized the power for
himself. The Romans said that when Jupiter, their name for Zeus, ascended the
throne, Saturn fled to Italy and brought in the Golden Age, a time of perfect
peace and happiness, which lasted as long as he reigned.
The other notable Titans were OCEAN, the river that was
supposed to encircle the earth; his wife TETHYS; HYPERION, the father of the
sun, the moon and the dawn; MNEMOSYNE, which means Memory; THEMIS, usually
translated by Justice; and IAPETUS, important because of his sons, ATLAS, who
bore the world on his shoulders, and PROMETHEUS, who was the savior of mankind.
These alone among the older gods were not banished with the coming of Zeus, but
they took a lower place.
The twelve great Olympians were supreme among the gods who
succeeded to the Titans. They were called the Olympians because Olympus was
their home. What Olympus was, however, is not easy to say. There is no doubt
that at first it was held to be a mountain top, and generally identified with
Greece’s highest mountain, Mt. Olympus in Thessaly, in the northeast of Greece.
But even in the earliest Greek poem, the Iliad, this
idea is beginning to give way to the idea of an Olympus in some mysterious
region far above all the mountains of the earth. In one passage of the Iliad Zeus talks to the gods from “the topmost peak of
many-ridged Olympus,” clearly a mountain. But only a little further on he says
that if he willed he could hang earth and sea from a pinnacle of Olympus, clearly no longer a mountain. Even so,
it is not heaven. Homer makes Poseidon say that he rules the sea, Hades the
dead, Zeus the heavens, but Olympus is common to all three.
Wherever it was, the entrance to it was a great gate of clouds
kept by the Seasons. Within were the gods’ dwellings, where they lived and slept
and feasted on ambrosia and nectar and listened to Apollo’s lyre. It was an
abode of perfect blessedness. No wind, Homer says, ever shakes the untroubled
peace of Olympus; no rain ever falls there or snow; but the cloudless firmament
stretches around it on all sides and the white glory of sunshine is diffused
upon its walls.
The twelve Olympians made up a divine family:—
(1) ZEUS (JUPITER), the chief; his two brothers next, (2)
POSEIDON (NEPTUNE), and (3) HADES, also called PLUTO; (4) HESTIA (VESTA), their
sister; (5) HERA (JUNO), Zeus’s wife, and (6) ARES (MARS), their son; Zeus’s
children: (7) ATHENA (MINERVA), (8) APOLLO, (9) APHRODITE (VENUS), (10) HERMES
(MERCURY), and (11) ARTEMIS (DIANA); and Hera’s son (12) HEPHAESTUS (VULCAN),
sometimes said to be the son of Zeus too.
There were other divinities in heaven besides the twelve
great Olympians. The most important of them was the God of Love, EROS (Cupid in
Latin). Homer knows nothing of him, but to Hesiod he is
Fairest of the deathless gods.
In the early stories, he is oftenest a beautiful serious
youth who gives good gifts to men. This idea the Greeks had of him is best
summed up not by a poet, but by a philosopher, Plato: “Love—Eros—makes his home
in men’s hearts, but not in every heart, for where there is hardness he departs.
His greatest glory is that he cannot do wrong nor allow
it; force never comes near him. For all men serve him of their own free will.
And he whom Love touches not walks in darkness.”
In the early accounts Eros was not Aphrodite’s son, but merely
her occasional companion. In the later poets he was her son and almost
invariably a mischievous, naughty boy, or worse.
Evil his heart, but honey-sweet his tongue,
No truth in him, the rogue. He is cruel in his play.
Small are his hands, yet his arrows fly far as death.
Tiny his shaft, but it carries heaven-high.
Touch not his treacherous gifts, they are dipped in fire.
He was often represented as blindfolded, because love is
often blind. In attendance upon him was ANTEROS, said sometimes to be the
avenger of slighted love, sometimes the one who opposes love; also HIMEROS or
Longing, and HYMEN, the God of the Wedding Feast.
HEBE was the Goddess of Youth, the daughter of Zeus and Hera.
Sometimes she appears as cupbearer to the gods; sometimes that office is held by
Ganymede, a beautiful young Trojan prince who was seized and carried up to
Olympus by Zeus’s eagle. There are no stories about Hebe except that of her
marriage to Hercules.
IRIS was the Goddess of the Rainbow and a messenger of the
gods, in the Iliad the only messenger. Hermes appears
first in that capacity in the Odyssey, but he does not
take Iris’ place. Now the one, now the other is called upon by the gods.
There were also in Olympus two bands of lovely sisters, the
Muses and the Graces.
THE GRACES were three: Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth)
and Thalia (Good Cheer). They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child
of the Titan, Ocean. Except in a story Homer and Hesiod tell, that Aglaia
married Hephaestus, they are not treated as separate personalities, but always
together, a triple incarnation of grace and beauty. The gods delighted in them
when they danced enchantingly to Apollo’s lyre, and the man they visited was
happy. They “give life its bloom.” Together with their companions, the Muses,
they were “queens of song,” and no banquet without them could please.
THE MUSES were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and
Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from
each other. “They are all,” Hesiod says, “of one mind, their hearts are set upon
song and their spirit is free from care. He is happy whom the Muses love. For
though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses
sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such
is the holy gift of the Muses to men.”
In later times each had her own special field. Clio was Muse
of history, Urania of astronomy, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy,
Terpsichore of the dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love-poetry,
Polyhymnia of songs to the gods, Euterpe of lyric poetry.
Hesiod lived near Helicon, one of the Muses’ mountains—the
others were Pierus in Pieria, where they were born, Parnassus and, of course,
Olympus. One day the Nine appeared to him and they told him, “We know how to
speak false things that seem true, but we know, when we will, to utter true
things.” They were companions of Apollo, the God of Truth, as well as of the
Graces. Pindar calls the lyre theirs as well as Apollo’s, “the golden lyre to
which the step, the dancer’s step, listens, owned alike by Apollo and the
violet-wreathed Muses.” The man they inspired was sacred far beyond any
priest.
As the idea of Zeus became loftier, two august forms sat
beside him in Olympus. THEMIS, which means the Right, or Divine Justice, and
DIKE, which is Human Justice. But they never became real personalities. The same
was true of two personified emotions esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer
and Hesiod: NEMESIS, usually translated as Righteous Anger, and AIDOS, a
difficult word to translate, but in common use among the Greeks. It means
reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means
the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunnate—not
compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches
is not deserved.
It does not seem, however, that either Nemesis or Aidos had
their home with the gods. Hesiod says that only when men have finally become
completely wicked will Nemesis and Aidos, their beautiful faces veiled in white
raiment, leave the wide-wayed earth and depart to the company of the
immortals.
From time to time a few mortals were translated to Olympus,
but once they had been brought to heaven they vanished from literature. Their
stories will be told later.
POSEIDON (Neptune), was the Lord and Ruler of the Sea (the
Mediterranean) and the Friendly Sea (the Euxine, now the Black Sea). Underground
rivers, too, were his.
OCEAN, a Titan, was Lord of the river Ocean, a great river
encircling the earth. His wife, also a Titan, was Tethys. The Oceanids, the
nymphs of this great river, were their daughters. The gods of all the rivers on
earth were their sons.
PONTUS, which means the Deep Sea, was a son of Mother Earth
and the father of NEREUS, a sea-god far more important than he himself was.
NEREUS was called the Old Man of the Sea (the
Mediterranean)—“A trusty god and gentle,” Hesiod says, “who thinks just and
kindly thoughts and never lies.” His wife was Doris, a daughter of Ocean. They
had fifty lovely daughters, the nymphs of the Sea, called NEREIDS from their
father’s name, one of whom, THETIS, was the mother of Achilles. Poseidon’s wife,
AMPHITRITE, was another.
TRITON was the trumpeter of the Sea. His trumpet was a great
shell. He was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite.
PROTEUS was sometimes said to be Poseidon’s son, sometimes
his attendant. He had the power both of foretelling the future and of changing
his shape at will.
THE NAIADS were also water nymphs. They dwelt in brooks and
springs and fountains.
LEUCOTHEA and her son PALAEMON, once mortals, became
divinities of the sea, as did also GLAUCUS, but all three were unimportant.
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