Creation

1. Creation

2. The Beginning Chaos Uranos Geia Eros

3. Children of Uranos and Geia • Cyclopes • Hecatoncheires • Titans • Ocean: Oceanus [and a few offspring] • Sun: Hyperion [ >> Helios, Apollo, Phaethon] • Moon: Selene [>> Artemis, Diana, Endymion] • Dawn: Eos [>> Aurora, Tithonus]

4. Uranus’ little problem • Relationship of Father and Child • Cronus as Hero • …as Castrator • …as Successor

5. Castration of Uranus • In destruction, creation • Order within the heavens • Order within the family • Birth of Aphrodite The agricultural cycles

6. Goya’sCronos

7. Cronus’ little problem • Again, the father – child relationship • The revenge cycle, again • Zeus as a ‘hidden child’ who will later return to kill/overthrow his father • Hidden how? • Where? • Adulthood: He’s the New Father

8. Zeus • The revenge cycle: can it end? How? • War between Zeus and Titans • “Zeus was victorious, the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, guarded by the Hecatoncheires; and Atlas was punished with the task of holding up the sky.” • Conquest. • Family. • Respect for elders and children • Zeus as the rule and exception War with the giants

9. Zeus in Iliad, Book 8 • “Go now, you gods, test me that you all may know. Fasten you a rope of gold from heaven, and all you gods lay hold thereof and all goddesses; yet you could not drag from heaven to earth Zeus, counsellor supreme, not though you used all your strength. But once I likewise were minded to pull upwards with all my heart, then I would draw you up along with the very earth and sea. Thereafter would I bind the rope about a pinnacle of Olympus, and so should all those things be hung in air. By so much am I beyond gods and beyond men."

10. Generations • From Uranos to Cronos to Zeus: • Law and Justice • Family as stability [with hiccups…] • Hera • Twelve Olympians • The physical world • Nature of mortal man • The social world

11. Ages of Man • Gold • Men are obedient, live at ease • Silver • Childhood lasts 100 yrs; men are quarrelsome • Bronze • Violence, lawlessness and an anonymous death • Heroes • Valiant, lawful and remembered with honor • Iron • Men work for food and shelter, live lives of disease, pain and aging. Shame haunts us all.

12. The Modern Age “I will probably never win the World Series of Poker.” “I will probably never be more handsome than Jude Law /prettier than Natalie Portman.” “There will be serious difficulty at some point[s] in my life.”

13. Vernant on balance • “Even rhetorical habits… show affinities with the binary thought characteristic of Greek language and expression with the familiar oscillation between "on the one hand' , and' , on the other. ' There is the insistence on a triadic form of argument with a beginning, a middle, and an end, or the division of a problem into three component parts, and the high value placed on the achievement of an aesthetic style of form and balance. “ • “This fondness for balance also reveals itself in the desire to station oneself in a position neither too remote nor too close to the object in question. Both an intellectual and an aesthetic stance, the concept of a' 'bonne distance," reflected in the thought of Pascal and evident too in structuralist ideas about mediation between opposites through a middle term, owes not a little to Aristotle's notion of the mean, and fits more generally with Greek concerns about geometrically defined limits and boundaries.”

14. Prometheus, ‘Forethought’ • A Titan who did not initially oppose Zeus • Gives man fire • Negotiates ritual requirements for man • Barley cakes vs. the hecatomb • “Do ut des” in Roman religion • Suffers for his efforts • Law prevails • [Cf. the ending of Faust]

15. Pandora Created by Zeus as a punishment Given to Epimetheus [‘Afterthought’] Carried the box of all evils Elpis only remains

16. Testing Man • Lycaion • Disrespect for the god and for man’s taboos • Result: beast becomes a beast Deucalion and Pyrrah • Survivors of ‘the flood’ sent from Zeus • Repopulate the world

17. The Muses • These things then the Muses sang, having their home on Olympus, the nine daughters begotten by great Zeus: Clio and Euterpe and Thalia and Melpomene and Terpsichore and Erato and Polyhymnia and Urania and Calliope. Calliope is the most important of them all because she attends upon revered kings. They pour honeyed dew on the tongue of anyone of the kings cherished by Zeus, whom they, the daughters of great Zeus, honor and look upon favorably at his birth; and from his mouth words flow as sweet as honey. All the people look up to him as he dispenses justice with fair impartiality; and soon speaking with confidence and knowledge he would end even the greatest of disputes. For this very purpose there are wise kings to settle quarrels easily among people who wrong each other in their dealings, by prevailing in the achievement of just retribution with gentle persuasion. As he passes through the city, they greet him with honeyed respect, like a god, and he is conspicuous in any assembly. Such is the nature of the holy gift that the Muses bestow among mortals. (74–93)     From the Muses and Apollo come singers and lyre-players on this earth but kings come from Zeus. Blessed is the [king] whom the Muses love. Sweet is the sound of the words which flow from his lips. For if anyone has a fresh grief in his soul and his troubled heart is parched with sorrow and then a bard, servant of the Muses, sings a hymn about the glorious accomplishments done by men of old and the blessed gods who have their homes on Olympus, soon the one in distress forgets his woes and does not remember any of his troubles, which have been dispelled so quickly by this gift of song bestowed by the goddesses. (Hesiod, 94–103)

18. Birth of Aphrodite • The birth of Aphrodite: •      When first he had cut off the genitals with the adamant and cast them from the land on the swelling sea, they were carried for a long time on the deep. And white foam arose about from the immortal flesh and in it a maiden grew. First she was brought to holy Cythera, and then from there she came to sea-girt Cyprus. And she emerged a dread and beautiful goddess and grass rose under her slender feet. (188–195)     Gods and human beings call her Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess because she grew amid the foam (aphros), and Cytherea of the beautiful crown because she came to Cythera, and Cyprogenes because she arose in Cyprus washed by the waves. She is called too Philommedes (genital-loving) because she arose from the genitals. Eros attended her and beautiful desire followed her when she was born and when she first went into the company of the gods. From the beginning she has this honor, and among human beings and the immortal gods she wins as her due the whispers of girls, smiles, deceits, sweet pleasure, and the gentle delicacy of love. (Hesiod 195–206)

19. Ludovisi Throne, ca. 495 BC

20. Venus de Miloca. 100 BC

21. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus 1482-86

22. Zeus vs. the dragon When Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, vast Gaea brought forth the youngest of her children through the love of Tartarus and the agency of golden Aphrodite. The hands of the mighty god were strong in any undertaking and his feet were weariless. From the shoulders of this frightening dragon a hundred snake heads grew, flickering their dark tongues; fire blazed from the eyes under the brows of all the dreadful heads, and the flames burned as he glared. In all the terrible heads voices emitted all kinds of amazing sounds; for at one time he spoke so that the gods understood, at another his cries were those of a proud bull bellowing in his invincible might; sometimes he produced the pitiless roars of a courageous lion, or again his yelps were like those of puppies, wondrous to hear, or at another time he would hiss; and the great mountains resounded in echo. (820–835)     Now on that day of his birth an irremediable deed would have been accomplished and he would have become the ruler of mortals and immortals, if the father of gods and men had not taken swift notice and thundered loudly and fiercely; the earth resounded terribly on all sides and as well the wide heaven above, the sea, the streams of Ocean, and the depths of Tartarus. Great Olympus shook under the immortal feet of the lord as he rose up and earth gave a groan. The burning heat from them both, with the thunder and lightning, scorching winds, and flaming bolts reached down to seize the dark-colored sea. The whole land was aboil and heaven and the deep; and the huge waves surged around and about the shores at the onslaught of the immortals, and a quake began its tremors without ceasing. Hades who rules over the dead below shook, as did the Titans, the allies of Cronus, in the bottom of Tartarus, from the endless din and terrifying struggle. (836–852)     When Zeus had lifted up the weapons of his might, thunder and lightning and the blazing bolts, he leaped down from Olympus and struck, and blasted on all sides the marvelous heads of the terrible monster. When he had flogged him with blows, he hurled him down, maimed, and vast earth gave a groan. A flame flared up from the god as he was hit by the bolts in the glens of the dark craggy mountain where he was struck down. A great part of vast earth was burned by the immense conflagration and melted like tin heated by the craft of artisans in open crucibles, or like iron which although the hardest of all is softened by blazing fire and melts in the divine earth through the craft of Hephaestus. Thus the earth melted in the flame of the blazing fire. And Zeus in the rage of his anger hurled him into broad Tartarus. (853–868)