Theogony

She's not mentioned anywhere in Homer.

She is mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony from such episodes as Theogony and the Ecstasy.

That's a good one.

Remember that one?

The oldest story the Greeks told about Olympia reached back to the very beginning of the world, to the age before Zeus was king of the gods.

In the beginning, according to the poet Hesiod, whose Theogony, the birth of the gods, was composed around 700 BCE, the first of all beings were Chaos, the yawning void, and Gaia, the earth, and Gaia gave birth to Ouranos, the starry sky, who covered her on every side.

From the union of earth and sky came the first great race of gods, the Titans, six sons and six daughters, mighty and ancient beings, among them Okeanos, the great river that encircled the world, and Themis, the goddess of law and order, and Nemosine, the goddess of memory.

The youngest of the Titans was Cronos, whom Hesiod calls crooked-minded, the most terrible of the children of earth.

So we do still have a lot to cover.

Let's start with the basics, shall we? Reading from the Theogony, Hesiod tells us this regarding the birth of Artemis and Apollo.

Then Aegis-bearing Zeus joined in love with Leto, and she bore Apollo and Artemis, shedder of arrows, loveliest of all Ouranos' children.

So, immediately, Artemis is described as Artemis, Shedder of Arrows.

They're craftsmen and troublemakers, depending on which storyteller you listen to.

In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are three brothers, Brontes, Sterops, and Arges, born of Uranus and Gaia.

They're depicted as huge smiths who forged Zeus' thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident, and Hades' helmet of darkness.

It shows how Greek culture linked divine power with massive labor.

Now, that's a more modern work.

If you're looking to go back... to the ancients and uh read about mythology in in that way there are a few different places to go and the first one i would recommend would be uh either hesiod or hesiod i've heard it pronounced both ways and i've also heard it pronounced theogony or Theogony.

So I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's one of those.

And this work is, this guy was probably a rough contemporary of Homer, but he wrote Theogony and then Works and Days.

Works and Days is more about working and that sort of thing, but Theogony is the the birth of the gods.

It's like the genealogy of the gods and it's fascinating and I love it.

And look at how short this, I mean, this is two books in this book and look at how small it is.

Now, you maybe have heard of his name, and it's probably because of these poems.

The first is called Theogony, and it literally means the birth of the gods.

It's the story of, like, the big cosmic family tree.

Chaos, the Titans, the war in the heavens, Zeus taking the throne.

Gifts to crooked judges, gifts that poison things, and that theme is gonna be very important to really contextualize this whole story.

Now, Hesiod actually tells this myth twice.

He tells it once in Theogony and then once in Works and Days, and there are two versions that actually don't match, which is why the story is kind of, like, told and retold in all sorts of different ways, but we'll get to that in a second.

So to sum up thus far, there is one grumpy farmer, one ungrateful brother, two poems, and two different stories of the first woman, AKA Pandora.

And then, of course, no real interruption.

Next month we'll be back talking about the next book, which is Theogony by Hesiod.

But today we're doing Return of the King.

So Junius, um, we've talked a lot, I think, already about our sort of experience with the text of Lord of the Rings, and I don't think we need to revisit that particular discussion.

Well-

In my day

... well, so next up is Hesiod, and, uh, we should clarify, we are doing both the Works and Days and the Theogony.

Sure.

... and got drunk.

Were you talking about Theogony or Works and Days by Hesiod? 'Cause Hesiod's a person.

He's a-

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I forgot I thought I was-

He's the guy from, uh, 700.

No, I was talking about the, the Theogony, I think.

Is that what it is?

So when looking at surviving literature, archeology, cult practices and the places where she was actually worshiped- We find a goddess whose identity is much more geographically and historically complicated than, you know, the modern love goddess would suggest.

Now, one of her most famous versions of her birth comes from Hesiod's Theogony, and this is probably the origin story that most people immediately associate with Aphrodite.

In that account, she emerges from the sea foam produced around the severed genitals of Uranus after Cronus attacks his father and casts the severed member into the sea.

You know, from that strange and violent event comes Aphrodite, and she rises from the sea and eventually comes ashore at Cyprus and Cythera.