From Chaos to Order
Theogony by Hesiod
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT AN ANCIENT GREEK SCHOLAR. FOR THE FULL DISCLAIMER, READ HERE
“For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all; but the gifts of the goddesses soon turn him away from these.”
Introduction
Theogony – an account of the origin of the gods
Theogony by Hesiod can be overwhelming, and perhaps dry, to read. So many names are given (it is a genealogical account after all) which can leave the reader confused—if their eyes don’t glaze over first. If all you read was the Theogony, without reading the Iliad, the Odyssey, or other famous ancient Greek works, you wouldn’t be aware of how many important gods, goddesses, and mortals are mentioned because most of them either get one or two lines or are only mentioned in passing.
There are also major differences in the accounts of some of the gods and heroes between Hesiod and others, like Homer, which introduces one of the major difficulties with ancient Greek stories: conflicting accounts. We saw this with the Iliad. Was Helen, the wife of Menelaus, abducted or was she seduced by the Trojan prince Paris? The Iliad and the Odyssey appear to take the position that she was seduced and left with Paris willingly. Herodotus, in his Histories, takes the position that she was abducted. Euripides, in his play Helen, provides a third account of what happened.
Another, more minor example, concerns Hephaestus’, the god of the forge’s, wife. In the Iliad (and the Theogony), he is married to Aglaea, one of the Graces. In the Odyssey, however, he is married to Aphrodite.
On top of the main story, which is basically about how Zeus came to power, you’ll also learn little tidbits like:
How deep Tartarus is
Why the gods swear by the River Styx
The creation of woman
A little bit about Heracles/Hercules and some of the other famous heroes
A little bit on the famous monsters of Greek mythology
The great honoring of the goddess Hecate, who hasn’t been mentioned in anything else I’ve covered for this blog so far
All quotes from the Theogony are taken from the Hugh G. Evelyn-White translation which is in the public domain. If you want a modern translation, the only other one I have experience with is by Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Athanassakis translated the three major works of Hesiod which appear in one volume. He also translated the Homeric Hymns, another valuable, though lesser known, source for ancient Greek mythology.
Summary
Note 1: Theogony is a difficult work to summarize. There is a main story within it, but there are also a lot of tangential stories, a lot of praises to various gods (primarily the Muses and Zeus), a lot of genealogical data, and a lot of pontifications. My summary will be sticking as strictly to the main story as possible. If you want to see the full genealogy of the gods, go here.
Note 2: While I use the name “Hecatoncheires” to refer to the monsters with one hundred arms and fifty heads, the name does not appear in the Theogony.1 I use the name in the Summary for the sake of convenience.
The Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, anoint Hesiod and command him to sing of the Muses, of their father Zeus, and of the other immortal gods.
After praising the Muses and recounting their origins and the gifts they have given mankind, Hesiod begins to give an account of the generations of the gods.
Chaos came into existence first, followed by Earth (Gaia), Tartarus (the underworld), and Eros (love). Earth gave birth to Heaven (Ouranos) and Sea (Pontus). In the union of Earth and Heaven, several children were born (later called Titans (strainers)). As each child was born, Heaven hid them inside Earth. He also hid and bound within Earth the Cyclopes, one-eyed immortals, and the Hecatoncheires, immortals with one hundred arms and fifty heads, because he despised them.
Earth groaned in pain. She formed a sickle out of flint and asked her children to punish their father for the outrage he had brought on her. Only Cronos, the youngest, was courageous enough to accept this task and took the sickle. When Heaven went to lie with Earth, Cronos sprung up and cut off Heaven’s member. The member fell into the surging sea, and, mixing with sea foam, formed Aphrodite.
After this, more gods came into existence. The sun, the moon, thousands of rivers, terrible monsters like the Hydra and Cerberus, the river Styx, and the greatly honored goddess Hecate. During this time, Cronos and Rhea (a fellow Titan and his wife) had children. Cronos, however, learned that he would be overthrown by his son, and decided to swallow up his children as they were born. Distressed, Rhea sought the help of her parents Earth and Heaven, and they advised her to give birth to her youngest son, Zeus, in hiding, and give Cronos a stone wrapped in swaddling cloth instead. Cronos swallowed the stone without a second thought, unaware that he had been deceived.
Zeus grew up to be strong and powerful. With the help of his grandmother Earth, he forced Cronos to vomit up his brothers and sister. Zeus then freed the Cyclopes, who gave him the lightning bolt as thanks. Zeus also freed the Hecatoncheires because Earth prophesied that Zeus could not win against the Titans without them. The Titans and Olympians then warred with each other for ten years causing untold destruction. In the end, the Olympians were victorious and most of the Titans were imprisoned within Tartarus where Night and her children Sleep and Death, the river Styx, and Hades reside.
After the war with the Titans, Earth bore Typhoeus in her union with Tartarus. Typhoeus was a terrible, one hundred headed monster that breathed fire and uttered unspeakable sounds. Zeus clashed with Typhoeus and destroyed it with his lightning bolt and its husk was thrown into Tartarus. However, Typhoeus is still able to affect the world with its breath—sending evil winds that destroy ships and ruin crops.
Zeus was made king over all and he assigned roles to all of the gods who were loyal to him during the war with the Titans. He made his home on Mt. Olympus which is how him, his brothers and sisters, and his children with some of the goddesses became known as Olympians. The first Olympians, born from Cronos and Rhea, were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus. Aphrodite already existed. Athena was born out of Zeus’ head after he impregnated, then swallowed, Metis, and she gave birth inside him. Apollo and Artemis were born to Zeus from Leto. Ares was born to Zeus from Hera. Hera conceived and bore Hephaestus on her own after quarreling with Zeus. Hermes was born to Zeus from Maia. And lastly, Dionysus was born to Zeus from the mortal woman Semele and was later made a god.2
Can We Trust the Muses?
Hesiod opens his account by saying he was simply shepherding his sheep one day when the Muses visited him. They anointed him and directed him to sing songs about the gods and themselves. The Theogony is a record of those songs.
What’s interesting is the first words they tell Hesiod before anointing him:
“we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.”
For me, this statement leaves room for doubt as to whether what the Muses directed Hesiod to sing is true or not. All the stories of the Theogony could be false. But, they could also all be true. Or, some may be true, but some may be false.
Maybe what Hesiod is trying to communicate is that he is conveying divine knowledge to mortals. As he himself is a mortal, the divine knowledge he conveys may not be fully accurate because he can’t fully comprehend it or describe it.
Gush Fest for Zeus
Hesiod has a very obvious bias toward Zeus.3 Zeus can do no wrong. He is the ultimate, benevolent, wise ruler. If someone does something against Zeus, they’re the bad ones. Even when Zeus does some of the same things as his predecessors, which were seen as wrong or evil, Zeus is not condemned.
It’s quite the contrast to, say, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, where Zeus is clearly a tyrant and a bully. In fact, the story of Prometheus is told here in the Theogony, though some of the details are different. Prometheus tricks Zeus into accepting as his portion of the animal sacrifice the bones and the fat, while the mortals get the meat. Hesiod keeps on insisting that Zeus knew that Prometheus was tricking him the whole time… and yet Prometheus managed to trick him anyway. Then Zeus withheld fire from mortals. Then Prometheus stole the fire and gave it to the mortals. Then Zeus had woman created and given to man in revenge and then had Prometheus bound to a rock and his liver eaten everyday by a giant eagle.
At the end of the story, Hesiod hilariously writes:
It is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus
Well, no, it is, as Prometheus clearly showed. However, what is also clear is that if someone tries, successfully or not, to deceive Zeus or go beyond his will, he will punish them.
I have to wonder if Hesiod’s account of Prometheus, plus his statements about it, are what inspired Aeschylus to write Prometheus Bound.
How to do Rulership Right?
As we saw in the summary, the basic premise of the Theogony, aside from giving an account of the genealogy of the gods, is to explain how Zeus got into power and managed to maintain it. When you look at the whole thing, it’s actually quite clever and shows that Zeus learned from the mistakes of his predecessors.
First, we have Heaven and Earth. Heaven forced all of his children to remain inside Earth, though it’s not really explained why. Cronos, the youngest son, castrates Heaven and becomes the new ruler. However, Cronos heard that one of his sons was going to overthrow him, so he swallowed his children as they were born. His wife, Rhea, tricks Cronos into swallowing a rock rather than the baby Zeus. Zeus grows up, leads a rebellion, overthrows Cronos, and becomes the next ruler. While Zeus’ rule gets threatened at one point, he manages to maintain it.
I noticed multiple differences between how Zeus became a ruler and maintained his rule, versus Heaven and Cronos.
Cronos overthrew his father by himself. Zeus, however, got the help of not only his siblings, but other gods as well.
Zeus freed the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, who then became loyal to Zeus. Zeus not only got powerful allies, but a powerful weapon as well: the lightning bolt.
Zeus promises that all the gods who help him overthrow Cronos will be rewarded with positions and functions in the universe… and then he makes good on that promise. All those gods are now indebted to him.
Zeus also punishes his enemies for going against him. This not only gets rid of his enemies, but sends a clear signal to everyone else.
Zeus gathered talented, powerful, and wise gods, into his inner circle.
Unlike Heaven and Cronos, Zeus had multiple mates which produced gods who would be loyal to him.
The Curious Aphrodite
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sex and beauty, is quite the curious goddess. In the Iliad, she’s more comic relief than anything else. In the Theogony, though, she’s much more mysterious… and dangerous.
Rather than being a daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite is born after Heaven is castrated and his member falls into the sea and mixes with sea foam.4 There may be something symbolic about Aphrodite’s birth, but it’s above my head. All I can do is point out the details:
The goddess of love, sex, and beauty from born from severed male genitalia. Not only that, that genitalia belonged to Heaven.
So, in a sense, Heaven is her father?
Also, with Heaven’s genitalia being severed, it marked the end of his rule. Aphrodite is the product of the act which marked Heaven’s dethronement. Specifically, she is the product of the thing which, when it was separated from Heaven, marked the end of his rule.
The severed genitalia was mixed with sea foam. So, Aphrodite was born from the products of Heaven and the Sea (both of which are male).
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sex, and beauty, came into existence unnaturally.
After Aphrodite is born, Eros and Desire, both more ancient than her, begin following her. It’s interesting that it’s not the other way around. Aphrodite is so… powerful? alluring? that these more ancient gods, personifications of emotions (instincts?), subordinate themselves to her.
Aphrodite is also the product of violence, though at first it doesn’t seem to mean much to her compared to what else was born after Heaven was castrated. The blood of Heaven spawned the Erinyes (the Furies; the avenging spirits) and giants decked out with armor and weapons. His blood also spawned the Meliae, ash tree nymphs. Ash trees were typically used to make the shafts of spears.5
However, we find out later on that maybe Aphrodite’s origins did mean something because she ended up mating with Ares, the god of war. The one who was the product of violence and a succession war ended up becoming the mate of the incarnation of violence and war. Their children? Panic, Fear, and Harmony. I wonder if there’s a deeper meaning to that?
The most curious thing about Aphrodite though is that she just pops up throughout the Theogony, in the background, assisting with the conception of different gods and mortals. The most notable is Typhoeus, a monster that almost overthrew Zeus. Here’s the full statement:
But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite.
Aphrodite aided Earth in producing a monster that almost overthrew Zeus and who’s corpse creates evils for mortals. And yet, Aphrodite suffers no consequences for it. She doesn’t suffer a fate similar to Prometheus, for example.
Lastly, it’s briefly mentioned that Aphrodite once abducted a young boy and made him a keeper of her shrine.
Put all these details together, and you understand why I said Aphrodite is rather mysterious and dangerous. She is pretty unique among all the gods mentioned in the Theogony.
That’s all for the Theogony. The next paid post will be on Hesiod’s Works and Days.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
Thumbnail: Clio, Muse of History, Charles Meynier, 1800. Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art.
1The name “Hecatoncheires” comes from Apollodorus, a second century AD Greek who compiled Greek mythology into what is commonly known as the Bibliotheca or The Library of Apollodorus. Before this, Homer used the adjective “hundred-handed” to describe one of the Hecatons in the Iliad, Book 1.
2Hades, son of Cronos and Rhea, was not considered one of the Olympians, as he resided, and rarely left, the underworld. Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was not considered an Olympian either. Hecate and Iris were also not considered Olympians either. Lastly, either Hestia or Dionysus were considered part of the Olympians depending on the time and place—but not both at the same time for some reason. It’s for all of these reasons that we get “The Twelve Olympian Gods” rather than thirteen (or more).
3And the Muses as well, but we’ll stay focused on Zeus for the sake of this section.
4This was the inspiration for the famous painting The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli.
5Fun fact: according to another ancient writer, the Meliae were also the ones who nursed Zeus as an infant. That means Heaven spawned the nymphs who would nurture the one who would overthrow Cronos. Talk about the cycle of revenge.