Greece is rugged, barren and dry, unlike other ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, which had rich soil generated by huge rivers (Tigris and Euphrates, and the Nile). Greece is mountainous (75%), and farming plains (for wheat and barley) are few and far between. Olives could grow along the hills, and could resist the hot summer sun. People kept goats, sheep, and pigs, but cattle were few, since there was not much to graze on. The Aegean sea was good for fishing, and it allowed them to travel beyond the mountains that enclosed their city-states.
Greece was inhabited before this, but our evidence is very slim, and the people lived a very rudimentary, farming life. Inhabitants of mainland Greece in the Bronze Age were not the same people, not proper Greeks. The island of CRETE is much better known. The Cretans built wealthy palaces from 2200-1450 BC. We do not know anything about their race or their language (Linear A), they may have been a powerful sea power. King Minos. The bull was an important element in their religion. The people who eventually became the classical Greeks are of so-called Indo-European descent. Beginning in the fourth millennium BC, these Indo-Europeans started out in central Asia and migrated in all directions. Scholars hypothesize that they arrived in Greece around 2100 BC (archaeological evidence: destruction of several existing towns, and the first signs of the domesticated horse, a typically Indo-European animal). Almost everything scholars know about these people comes from the reconstruction of proto-Indo-European language.
The Greeks were ruled by powerful kings, each of whom controlled an area of land. They built heavily fortified palaces and accumulated wealth through a tightly controlled central government. Wrote in so-called Linear B, but only for palace accounting. Were quite wealthy. Scholars think many legends began in this time: Agamemnon is from Mycenae, and other central Greek legends, like Oedipus in Thebes, refer to the most powerful cities in this age.
The city of Troy was supposedly destroyed about 1250 BC, and many of the Mycenaean palaces on mainland Greece were destroyed by fire around 1200 BC. The later Greeks claimed invaders from the north (ÎDoriansâ) were responsible; modern archaeological data is insufficient to prove or disprove this claim. Poverty rises, writing disappears, and the great monarchs give way to petty rulers with limited, local influence. Life centers upon the family and village, instead of a bureaucratic kingdom.
Around 800, a Greek invents the Greek alphabet, drawing on the neighboring Phoenician alphabet (which was syllabic and lacked vowels). Literacy spreads quickly. At the same time, Greeks start colonies in the West (Italy and Sicily). The polis emerges, and with it the concept of citizenship÷belonging to a social group defined by geography instead of family. Business picks up again, helped especially by the invention of money (in the form of coins). Many who were not noble aristocrats by birth began to accumulate wealth, and with it power and control; the aristocrats resented these ãbad men,ä whose only goal was money and only virtue wealth. From 650-500BC, many Greek cities were ruled by tyrants, who were often sympathetic to the new commercial class. But the old-money aristocracy maintained cultural and artistic dominance. Most philosophy, literature, and art was created or sponsored by the aristocrats. We do not have much writing from the commercial class.
In 508, Athens became the first recorded democracy. To the East, Persia had built up a huge empire under the tyrant Xerxes. In 490 and later in 480, Persia launched unsuccessful attacks on Greece. The Athenians turned them away at sea, and the Spartans on the land. There was no overarching ãGreek nation,ä rather, each polis maintained its independence from the others. There was religious and linguistic unity, but no political unity. It is in the classical period that philosophy and history overtake myth and legend.
In 338, Philip II of Macedon conquered the Greek city-states. Macedonia was a feudal monarchy, and crushed the polis-structure. When Philip II died, his son Alexander took over as king. Alexander then conquered the Persian empire, and even captured territory as far East as India. He died in 323 at age 32. But Alexander loved Greek culture (Aristotle was his teacher). And Greek culture took over much of the world. In 31 BC, Alexandria (the capital of Alexanderâs empire) was captured by Romans.
~ The Theogony was composed between 750-650 B.C. It is the earliest document we have that systematically arranges all the Greek gods into a genealogy.
~ Hesiod himself was a shepherd who became a reciting poet (like Homer).
~ Hesiod did not invent the Greek pantheon of gods, nor their genealogy, nor the stories of their lives (for the most part). What, then, is Hesiodâs original contribution? He systematized several semi-independent, disconnected names, genealogies, and stories. He created unity and order where there was none before. He apparently took a bunch of fragmentary little stories and connected them together into one comprehensive big story, eliminating inconsistencies and filling in missing details.
~ Earth (Gaia) bears some children asexually. She then mates with one of these children, Heaven (Uranus), and produces the Titans (6 male and 6 female), 3 cyclopes, and 3 Îhundred-handers.â The last Titan is Cronus. Uranus hates his children and imprisons them inside Earth.
~ Cronus is willing to free the children by castrating his father Uranus. Cronus now comes to power. His mother (Earth) and father (Heaven) tell him that he will lose his power to one of his own children, so he eats them as they come out. Rhea (on advice from Earth and Heaven) saves the youngest child, Zeus, by giving Cronus a stone to swallow in place of him.
~ When Zeus grows up, he somehow overthrows Cronus and forces him to vomit up the other children. Then Zeus wishes to become supreme ruler of all the gods. But the older generation of Titans (save Themis) resents Zeusâs attempt to rule, and a gigantic battle ensues. Zeus can beat them only by freeing the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handers. With their help, he defeats the Titans. He then fathers many more gods, both with goddesses of his own generation, as well as with some of the Titans (Themis). His first consort, Metis (=wisdom), is pregnant with his first child; however, Zeus swallows Metis herself and gives birth to Athena through his head.
~ Hesiodâs universe is a product of growth, change, and development; not static. What sorts of progressions or changes can we identify in the Theogony?
~ Hesiodâs universe begins with basic, undifferentiated, simple stuffs, and progressively differentiates. So in terms of the physical entities, the first generation has broad, basic things like Earth, sky, and sea, but the details of the physical world, like sun, moon, and stars, come later.
~ Another progression: power goes from female to male, from Earth (and Earthâs influence over Cronus) to Zeus.
~ Gods progress from physical, natural (Heaven, Earth) to more anthropocentric deities like Zeus. The middle generation, the Titans, is mixed: sometimes they represent the raw untamed forces of nature (their offspring are rivers, stars, etc.), sometimes not (Themis is law). This same move from physical to human recurs in the descendants of Chasm: the first set is Darkness, night --> Light, Day, while the second set are particularly human concerns: Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, etc.
1. The universe is a social hierarchy of powers, not a purely spatial configuration of objects. Authority, not geometry, orders the universe. Political not mathematical.
2. The universe we see is not inevitable; rather, itâs the product of agents interacting with one another.
~ Why does Zeus escape the cycle of overthrow by the younger? Probable answer: he does not completely repress the opposing, violent powers in the universe. He gives them a place and a function.
~ Prometheus punished for crossing Zeus; Pandora as punishment, misogyny. Place of humans in the world.
~ First, a similarity to a different myth, this time a Hittite one, ãThe Kingship in Heaven.ä
Alalush begets Anush, the sky god, who is castrated by his son Kumarbi, who in turn begets Teshub, the storm god. This structure is similar to Hesiod. Earth begets Uranus, the sky god, who is castrated by his son Cronus, who in turn begets Zeus, the storm god.
~ Obvious point: both depict violent clashes of old with new.
~ Both begin with an almost completely undifferentiated mass
~Just as the Cyclopes gave Zeus his thunder and lightening, Marduk was given thunder by other gods.
~ In the Theogony, the second generation of gods is ãloathedä by ãtheir own fatherä (7), just as Apsu hated all the younger gods dancing around in Tiamatâs belly.
~ The second generation of gods is inside Earth, just like Tiamat, BUT Heaven puts them there, whereas Apsu does not.
~ The youngest child (Ea/ Cronus) attacks the father (Apsu/ Heaven), and in the second round, it is again the youngest existing god who takes on the older generation.
~ In the first round of action, Tiamat/ Earth sides with her children, not the father Apsu/ Uranus. And just as Earth later sides against Cronus by telling Rhea how to save Zeus, Tiamat sides against Ea. However, the analogy is not perfect, because Tiamat turns on ALL the younger gods; whereas Earth is helping the youngest generation, Zeus et al. (that is, Tiamat does not help Marduk).
~Differences (Norman Brown): the old Mesopotamian gods represent inertia and inactivity; the old Greek gods do not, but are creative and dynamic (Eros is one of the first gods). In the end, Marduk annihilates all oppositions, whereas Zeus does not: he has to find a place for the hundred-handers and the children of Night (Doom, Death) in his world. Brown: Zeus establishes ãan order which permits free development· does not do violence to the principle of creativityä (43). The conflict is not between activity and inactivity (as in the Enuma Elish), but ãbetween creativity and order.ä And this reflected Greek society, which was just beginning to feel class conflict, and competition between people in various areas was increasing.
~ We know nothing of Homer the man; we do not even know if he existed, if he was a real person. What we do know (thanks to Milman Parry and A. B. Lord) is that both of the works attributed to Homer come from the tradition of purely oral poetry. This poetry was actually presented in song, recited from memory, to an audience. The poem was passed down from one generation of reciters to the next, all without the aid of writing. So while we are pretty sure the poems were not written down until 800 BC, the actual composition of the poems remains shrouded in speculations and doubts.
Fight between Achilles and Agamemnon. We find ourselves in the middle of the Trojan War, seeing the side of the Greeks (Acheans). Agamemnon, the highest-ranking person for the Greeks, has taken a girl (Chryseis) as part of the loot from sacking someplace. But the girl is the daughter of a priest of Apollo (Chryses). So the priest comes to ransom her back from Agamemnon. Agamemnon, furious, sends him away. Then the priest prays to Apollo, god of the plague, to send a plague upon the Greeks, which he does. Through a seer, the Greeks learn that the girl must be returned if the plague is to be stopped. Agamemnon will return the girl only if he is given a substitute girl to make up for the one he lost; his honor would be offended if many other Greeks of lesser importance had girls and he did not. Achilles dislikes this condition, and tempers flare. Insults follow, Agamemnon declares that he will take Achillesâ girl, and Achilles nearly kills Agamemnon. Instead, he just claims that someday Agamemnon will need him to fight, and he wonât help the king then. Agamemnon does take Achillesâ girl. Achilles complains to his mother Thetis, a goddess, about the whole mess, and she promises to ask Zeus to help Achilles (by helping the Trojans), which Zeus agrees to do. Hera, Zeusâ wife, overhears Zeus keeping secrets from her, and grows angry. Hephestus tries to make peace between them, on the grounds that mere mortals shouldnât ruin the godsâ good times.
~ In Book 1, there is a sharply contrasting parallel between the argument of Achilles and Agamemnon, and Zeus and Hera. The humans are tragic and serious, the gods are frivolous and sometimes comical. Hephaestus is a reflection of Nestor as peace-maker, but he ends up making all the gods laugh. And the gods stop arguing so that they can enjoy their feast, unbothered by human suffering and death. The gods are immortal: thus none of their actions have the seriousness, the consequences, the weight of human ones. They will always have time to correct a mistake; they cannot sacrifice their lives.
~ Gods are extremely anthropomorphic; they have a dinner party at the end of Book I.
~ Disease: Apollo sends the plague with his arrows. Are the gods part of nature, or outside it?
~ Compare: another Greek poet, Pindar, writes in his Nemean ode 6:
ãThe race of gods and men is one, and from one mother
we both draw our breath. Yet all the difference in our powers
holds us apart, so that man is nothing,
but the bronze floor of heaven
is eternally unshakable.ä
~ QUESTION: How are the Greek gods different from the images of the divine found in the other myths (especially non-Near East myths)? Any relation to the birth of science?