Aidonian's blog

Doing a introductory into Greek mythology is even harder than I thought. The second part i will discuss the Gods, while the third part will focus on the heroes.

The Gods of Olympus is a name given to a group of Gods that live on top the mountain called Olympos. Their names are well known: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, Hestia, Hades, Athena, Ares, Apollon, Artemis, Hephaestos, Dionysos, Hermes, Aphrodite. Some of them were even more know under their Roman names like Mercury, Venus, Apollo, Vesta, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, Mars, Minerva, Diana, Ceres, Vesta, etc… Some of the days of the week bear their names and the planets were named after them. While most of people tend to think that the Greek and Roman Gods are the same, it wasn’t always like that. In the beginning, they didn’t have forms or real stories (that we know off). Due to influences from Greek colonies in southern Italy, the Roman Gods changed over time and syncretized with the Greek ones.

Here is the thing: everything evolves, even religion. Nothing stays the same. This is also true for the Greek Gods. Two writers had a enormous influence on the depiction of the Gods and these are: Hesiodos and Homeros. Their works changed how the Gods were viewed to the point that even philosophers started to get annoyed by this Homeric view of the Gods. They started to question this view. Later some Christians thought that this meant that they were atheists, but they weren’t. The philosophers still believed in the Gods, but not in the way it was done then.

The Gods in myths

In Greek myths we see that the Gods behave very humanlike and could be jealous, angry, capricious, fall in love with mortals. Zeus and Poseidon are known to have the most mortal offspring of any other god. One thing that also stands out is that the Gods did not limit themselves to just women. Sometimes they also took male lovers like Zeus and Apollon did. In the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome they didn’t frown upon homosexuality. For them it was part of human nature. The focus was on preserving and continuing the family name. So they had to marry a woman. But it didn’t mean that they couldn’t have any male lovers. While they were tolerant, in ancient Rome, a man of certain position could have been ridiculed if he was the receiver and not the giver.

The Olympian Gods were not the first group of Gods. They were the last one though. There were at least three distinct groups of deities: Protogenoi (First-Born), Titans and Olympian Gods.The Protogenoi were the First-Born Gods after Khaos. Khaos here doesn’t mean what it means today. Than it meant void. After the Protogenoi came the Titans, whom are now most known for the movie “Clash of the Titans (a movie that ironically didn’t inolve any Titans) and the Olympian Gods. There are also other groups of lesser known deities like those deified rivers, mountains, etc… The well known Protogenoi will be Gaia and Ouranos (Uranus) Those two were the parents of the Kyklops (Cyclops), Hekatonkheires, Titans. From the Titans are the most famous Kronos (Saturn) because he is know to have devoured his own children after Rheia (his wife) give birth to them. Why? Well that has to do with the fact that when the Titans were born, Ouranos locked them up.It was the youngest son Kronos who took the sickle and cut off the manhood of his father. When the cut off manhood fell into the sea Aphrodite rose from the foam of the sea and arrived on Cyprus. That is not all. The blood that fell unto the Earth tranformed into the Erinyes: goddessess of vengeance. Other sources say that Nyx was their mother. But let’s keep it that they were born from the blood of the genitals that were cut off. Those Erinyes, sometimes also called Furies, haunted the new leader of the Titans: Kronos. His own father gave him the prophecy that he too would be overthrown by his son. So when his wife give birth, he swallowed them whole. After the fifth child was devoured. Rheia couldn’t stand it any longer. She got advice to replace the baby with a rock and that she did. Kronos didn’t saw the difference and swallowed the rock. The youngest child of Kronos and Rheia was brought to Crete where he was raised by the Korybantes and nymphs. It was until he grew up that Zeus undertook action to free his siblings and that lead to the Great War between the Titans and Gods called Titanomachy. After that war, most of the Titans were exiled to Tartaros but not all of them. Some of got to walk free like Prometheus (who later would go on to create mankind from clay and Pallas Athena breath life into it)his brother Epimetheus (who is known to marry Pandora who than opened the box that released all kinds of evils unto the world)Hekate among others.

It wasn’t the first war that Zeus had to deal with. After a while Gaia was unhappy and brought the Gigantes into the world as Typhon to go after the Gods. When Typhon first came into the world, most of the Gods fled, but not Zeus. He stood and fought Typhon. He was almost defeated if not for the help of his son Hermes. During the Gigantomachy, the Gods sought help of Herakles to help them defeat these monstrous beings.

These types of events were not unique to Greek mythology. If you look as Mesopotamian mythology, Egyptian mythology, you see simlar events taking place. It is something that they all had in common that the rule of the king of the Gods was being questioned and challenged. The current King of the Gods was victorious in all these battles. He too received a prophecy that one day a son born from Metis would be born and dethrone him. Fearful of that what happened to his father would happen to him, he transformed Metis into a fly and swallowed a pregnant Metis whole. Later on, he would receive such headaches that he asked his smith, his son Hephaestos to crack his head open. When he did, the Goddess Athena came forth from it. Metis wasn’t seen anymore and continued to gave counsel to the King of the Gods. This wasn’t the first time a God would be born in unusual fashion. Dionysos would be next. Semele, a granddaughter of Kadmos was seduced by Zeus and was pregnant with Dionysos when Hera disguised as a maiden tricked her into letting Zeus show his real form. Hera knew that this would kill her and the unborn child. Zeus would save the child, hand him over the Persephone before he was born. The Orphic cult would go a step further. Zagreos, the child of Persephone and Zeus was killed, torn to pieces by the Titans and ate his flesh – who were sent there by Hera. In retaliation, Zeus killed the Titans with his thunderbolts. From the ashes of the Titans, humans were born and carry the sin of what the Titans did. I know I mentioned Zeus a lot. It isn’t because he is a fascinating God, because he is. Its just as king of the Gods, he has a part in most of the stories involving the Gods. He is called Father of the Gods and man, next to be King of the Gods because he is the father of all the Olympian Gods. They are his dynasty. In earlier posts I talked about Hades under his original name: Aidoneos.

The Gods in ordinary life

It should be clear that the myths are very different from what the Gods truly are. Take Hera for example. In the myths she is represented as a shrew, jealous and vengefull goddess, but she was rather a popular Goddess among the ancient Greeks. Zeus was more than just King of the Gods, father of Gods and men and God of rain and lightning. He was protector of cities, leader of the Moirai, giver of good counsel, had underworld connections. Most Gods have a kind of khthonic connections. But only Hermes and Iris were allowed to travel to Underworld(Hades) and back. It was regarded that travelling to Hades would make someone impure and they need to ritually cleanse themselves. Similar as they commited a crime. Herakles was ordered to not just ritually cleanse himself but as an act of penance, he had to work for his cousin Eurystheus to cleanse himself of the miasma of killing his wife and kids. Even though the madness that led to their deaths was induced by Hera. While there were temples and shrines but they were maintained by ordinary people and priests but those priests were diffferent from priests in Religio Romano. Ancient Greece did not have a real clergy class. Each head of the family could be a priest. Each polis (city) could have their own calender, their own kind of festivals but some did have distinct guardian deity like Athens, which was named after the Goddess Athena. When the city was formed, both Athena and Poseidon wanted to claim the city for themselves but in the end it was decided that it would be Athena . It was not the first contest among the Gods that had impact on the lives of the citizens of a city. Because of a golden apple, Zeus send Hermes with Aphrodite, Hera and Athena to Troy, to Paris and let a mortal decide who was the most beauitful Goddess of them all. Paris chose Aphrodite and the outcome was the Trojan war because Hera and Athena banded together and make sure that the Greeks would attack the Trojans. Today the Hellenic Gods speak to the imagination of many people.Not just through the media like with tv shows and movies but also through actual worship. In Greece Hellenic polytheism is accepted as a actual religion. In the US there are couple of organisations dedicated to bring back the worship of the Hellenic Gods like Hellenion (I’m a member)

While in ancient times it was regarded as social custom to participate in worship and cultus of the Gods, and not doing it could be reason to be ostracised. Today that is not the case. Anyone who worships the Hellenic Gods does it because they want to and not because social customs dictate it.