The Poems of Hesiod

by Hesiod

  As long as heaven and earth are locked in sexual embrace, forming a solid whole, there is no space within which the created world can appear. Castration was a real practice imposed on enemies taken in ancient war (and in modern too), but in the logic of the myth castration is separation, and separation is creation. Both males, Kumarbi and Kronos, have children within themselves. The children of each, Teshub and Zeus, both of them storm gods, overcome their fathers to win victory in heaven.

  According to the Hittite-Hurrian Song of Ullikummi, the storm god, Teshub, must defend his reign against a dragon of chaos, Ullikummi, even as Zeus takes on the formidable Typhon. The Hittite-Hurrian Ea uses the weapon with which heaven and earth were separated to cut the enormous Ullikummi, born from a rock, away from Ubelluri, the giant who holds up the world; Zeus too uses a special weapon, the thunderbolt, against the monster Typhon. Teshub takes his stand on Mount Casius in Syria to view Ullikummi, the same mountain on which the battle against Typhon takes place, according to Apollodorus, a Greek compiler of myths of the second century A.D. In fact the name “Typhon” seems to be derived from the West Semitic Sapon, the god of Mount Casius. The stone that Kronos swallows instead of his children is similar in the equation of stone with offspring in the Hittite-Hurrian myth.

  In Enuma elish, first came the generation of Apsu and Tiamat and their descendants. These new gods bring a principle of movement into the world (their dance) that contrasts sharply with the older forces, standing for inactivity and inertia (symbolized by their desire to rest). The primordial gods’ resistance to change leads to a battle in which the newer gods overthrow the older. This succession motif is also the basis of Hesiod’s story.

  In the first round of the battle, the wise and clever Ea overcomes wicked Apsu by a spell; his magical power resides in the spoken word. Ea’s cleverness is contrasted with Apsu’s brutish lust to destroy, a common folktale motif. The dragon’s slayer is clever and tricky; his opponent, dull and stupid. Tiamat (like Hesiod’s Earth in the Theogony) is both beneficent and malevolent, first opposing her husband’s destructive designs but then giving birth to an army of monsters. Later, in a repetition of the succession motif, Tiamat is destroyed by her grandson Marduk, who becomes ruler of the world.

  In both Enuma elish and in Hesiod’s Theogony the first generation of gods is made up of primal pairs: Apsu, the male sweet waters, and Tiamat, the female salt waters; and in Hesiod, Sky and Earth. The fathers Apsu and Sky hate their first children, who are begotten within the mother. In an initial round of conflict, the sons, clever Ea and wily Kronos, overthrow their fathers. In a second round of conflict, gods of the third generation—the storm god Marduk and the storm god Zeus—revolt against an earlier generation. Terrible monsters are overcome: Tiamat and her offspring in Enuma elish; the Titans and Typhon, children of Earth, in the Greek story. The storm god is then made king. Eastern and Hesiodic myths alike report a cosmic history that begins with mighty powers of nature and ends in the organization of the universe as a monarchic, patriarchal state.

  There are differences in detail and profound differences in tone between the Eastern stories and the Greek. The writing systems of the Mesopotamians and Hittite-Hurrians, unlike the Greek alphabet, were unable to record the suppleness and color of spoken language. Nonetheless, there are enough similarities to place beyond doubt that the Hesiodic cosmogonic tradition is old and has passed across linguistic and cultural lines. Hesiodic myth partly reflects the Greeks’ own attitudes, but its basic structure, and many of its cultural assumptions, come from non-Greek peoples.

  Other Eastern Motifs in Hesiod’s Poetry

  Works and Days, too, belongs to an ancient Eastern literary genre called Wisdom Poetry, wherein a wise or prophetic teacher admonishes an errant ruler or relative. Many of Hesiod’s moralizing maxims in the Works and Days have clear Eastern parallels—for example, the admonition to labor and the need to avoid idleness. The Prometheus myth’s explanation of sacrificial practice has Eastern precedents. Often in the East many deities work together to make a creature, as the Olympian gods make Pandora. Parallels to the certainly non-Greek Myth of the Five Races are found in Iran and Judea, including such specific features as long life, good weather, and a single language for the Golden Age, followed by short life and a breakdown of family and virtue in the last age. Animal fable is part of the Eastern genre of wisdom from the earliest times, as represented in Hesiod’s story of the Hawk and the Nightingale. The promise of good times to follow on righteous behavior is paralleled by Yahweh’s instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai, as are similar Hesiodic moral precepts by other Eastern sources. Hesiod’s list of lucky and unlucky days has clear Eastern parallels.

  The myths of Herakles, one of which is told in The Shield of Herakles, seem almost entirely inspired by Eastern tales. The story of Herakles’ birth, told in the Shield, is very like Egyptian propaganda for the birth of Pharaoh in the New Kingdom, wherein the great god Amon visits the queen on the same night as her husband. Most of Herakles’ traditional exploits, though not told in the Shield, find Eastern parallels too, sometimes close (the lion combat, the seven-headed Hydra, the Golden Apples of the Hesperidês), and are especially reminiscent of the adventures of Samson. Like Herakles, Samson kills a lion with his bare hands and is undone by a woman. The notion of a cycle of labors is Eastern, reminding us of the eleven labors of a Mesopotamian hero named Ninurta.

  The Transmission of Eastern Motifs to Greece

  Somehow Eastern literary expression, then, became part of the special language of the Greek aoidos, the singer of tales. But how did such elements cross from East to West? How did they cross the barriers of language and custom? Homer and Hesiod were aoidoi (“singers”), heirs to ancient traditions of making oral verse, whereas in the East the scribal schools were transcendent. In comparing Western literature like Hesiod’s poems with Eastern literature, we are comparing alphabetic, aoidic, dictated documents by men of questionable social status with nonalphabetic exercises produced in the scribal schools by learned professionals of high social status, meant to impress and educate students and peers. But Hesiod’s story of the storm god’s war against his forefathers and a dragon of chaos can have come to Greece only through oral means.

  It is easy to conceive of bilingual speakers, not being sure if we mean biliterate as well, or instead. If we think of bilingualism as meaning the ability to speak two languages, we can imagine a bilingual community wherein people spoke both Greek and a Semitic language. The transmission of oral song must have taken place in such an illiterate environment. Greek-speaking singers may have heard and learned from Semitic-speaking singers, but the closeness of Semitic expressions and poetic style to Greek expressions and poetic style make it more likely that individual bilingual poets could sing in both a Semitic language and in Greek. It is striking that the flow of tradition is entirely in one direction, as if an inheritor of an ancient tradition of Semitic song passes it on to a feeble Hellenic tradition that is quickly enveloped and taken over.

  Bilingual speakers are common in the world today, but in an illiterate environment it is probably not possible for a Greek to learn a West Semitic language well through casual contact or vice versa. We must therefore assume intermarriage and bilingual households, some of them including oral performers who could sing in either language. Such households are at every level plausible and are probably attested archeologically in mixed Semitic-Greek epigraphic finds from eighth-century Ischia, in ITALY, and Eretria, in Euboea.

  The transmission of culture from Semitic speakers to Greek speakers remains a mystery, but it somehow took place. Hesiod’s poems are the strongest testimony to this.

  Introduction to the Theogony

  There was no official account of the creation in Greek culture, but Hesiod’s Theogony provided by far the most common one. Hesiod tells of the origin of the universe through succeeding generations of gods, and much of the Theogony is devoted to the recitation of genealogies. Cosmogony, “the begetting of th
e cosmos,” a story that explains the origin of the world, is for Hesiod the same as theogony, “the begetting of the gods,” a story that explains the origin of the gods and their rise to power. In form Hesiod’s poem is an elaborate hymn to the Greek storm god, Zeus. To explain the glory of Zeus, and how his rule over the world came to pass, Hesiod must go back to the beginning of things, to the generations of Chaos, “chasm,” Earth (Gaia, ghī-a), and Sky (Ouranos, oo-ra-nos).

  Summary of the Poem

  First came Chaos, not a thing or condition, but a being of some kind. Chaos was not always there, yet where it comes from Hesiod does not tell, and we are not sure what Hesiod meant by the word. “Chaos” is cognate with our “gap” and “yawn.” It means “chasm,” in which a separation has taken place, leaving a gap in the middle, and separation is a traditional way of thinking about creation. Also Earth came into being, the world’s solid foundation. Then, or at the same time, came Tartaros, another being, but also a place far below Earth. Earth later has offspring fathered by Tartaros. Hesiod is trying, in mythical terms, to delineate the space of the world we live in.

  Another primordial original god is Eros, “desire,” the force that brings sexual beings together to produce still more offspring. Eros is a being too. From sexual generation will come the complex genealogies that make up so much of the Theogony. Apparently Earth and Eros did not come from Chaos or from each other, but they constitute the three-formed aspect of the primordial stuff from which the world arose: a gaping (Chaos), the foundation of everything (Earth), and sexual attraction (Eros), which guarantees future generation and change.

  Darkness (Erebos, er-e-bos) and Night (Nyx) emerged from Chaos. They are really qualities of Chaos. From Earth, the foundation of all, sprang a host of creatures, baffling in their complexity and in their origins and nature.

  Earth bore first, without the benefit of sexual intercourse, Sky, the Mountains, and Sea (Pontos). Then in sexual union with her own son Sky, Earth gave birth to six male and six female Titans. What “Titan” means is unknown. Last of the Titans to be born was Kronos, Sky’s rival for power.

  One Titan was the watery male Ocean (Okeanos, ō-kē-a-nos) and the female Tethys (tē-this), her name probably a distortion of the Mesopotamian watery Tiamat (see the section on Enuma elish in the General Introduction). Ocean is a river that goes around the world, where the arc of the sky touches the earth’s surface. Ocean feeds the waters of springs, wells, and rivers. Ocean and Tethys united to give birth to six thousand Oceanids (ō-sē-a-nids), who are spirits of the sea, rivers, and fountains.

  Other Titans are Koios and Kreios, whose names are obscure, and Theia, “goddess.” They have little role to play in myth, as does the Titan Phoibê (fē-bē), “brilliant goddess,” somehow connected with the light of the sky. The Titan Themis, “law,” refers to what is secure and stable. Oracles were given in her name, and she will bear children to Zeus. The name of the Titan Mnemosynê (nē-mos-i-nē) means “memory,” and she will bear the Muses to Zeus. Iapetos looks like the name of one of the biblical sons of Noah, Japheth, ancestor of the Europeans, but there is no other resemblance. Kronos and Rhea (rē-a) are doublets for Sky and Earth. They are father and mother, or grandfather and grandmother, of the twelve Olympians, including Zeus, the principal subject of praise in the Theogony.

  Earth also bore in union with Sky the three Cyclopês (si-klō-pēz), “round-eyes,” and the hugely powerful Hundred-Handers (Hekatonkirês, he-ka-ton-kī-rēz). The relation of the Cyclopês to the shepherd Cyclops, Poseidon’s son, who imprisons Odysseus in the Odyssey, has never been clarified. Hesiod’s Cyclopês were divine smiths who manufactured Zeus’s overwhelming weapon—the lightning. They are named Brontês, “thunderer,” Steropês, “flasher,” and Argês, “brightener.” The three Hundred-Handers had each a hundred arms that shot from their shoulders and fifty heads. They are creatures of indomitable power who can mangle an enemy in their massive hands.

  The name of the Titan Hyperion means “he who goes above.” He is a sun god. In union with Theia, he is father to Helios, a sun god too; Moon (Selenê, se-lē-nē); and Dawn (Eos, ē-os). Daughters of Night are the Fates (Moirai, moy-rī), who determine one’s birth, the length of one’s life, and the time of one’s death. Nemesis (nem-e-sis), “she who gives what is due,” is another daughter of Night: she brings punishment for evil deeds. Then Darkness and Night had sexual intercourse and produced their opposites: Brightness (Aithêr, ī-ther) and Day (Hemera, hē-mer-a).

  Although Sky and Earth produced many children, none could come forth, because Sky loathed his own children. He hid them away “in a hiding place of Earth.” An unhappy Earth therefore plotted with her son Kronos to overcome the despotic Sky. She gave Kronos a steel sickle, and then, when Sky came to Earth “dragging night, and he lay all over Earth wanting to make love, and he was spread out all over her,” Kronos reached out and cut away his father’s genitals.

  Great Earth below, fertilized by the drops of blood that fell from the gory wound, gave birth to Erinys (er-in-is), a Fury, a fierce female being who persecutes and drives to madness anyone who sheds kindred blood or who has broken a solemn oath (often in the plural, Erinyes (er-in-i-ez), the Furies). Also from the drops of blood were born the Giants, “Earth-born ones,” creatures of huge power and unbridled ferocity. (One day they will bring their power against Zeus and the Olympians, although Hesiod does not tell this story.)

  Sky lay constantly across Earth, an image of perpetual sexual intercourse. He fertilized her but would not permit his children to come forth. There is no place for the activity of the world. By cutting off his father’s genitals, Kronos separated Earth and Sky. Sky rose to where he was supposed to be, giving the world its proper shape, with Sky above and Earth beneath, and Tartaros someplace beneath Earth. Ocean flows around the whole, the primeval waters. All this has come from Chaos, “chasm,” but the separation of the primordial elements has been bought at a high cost—the violence of son against father. Sky cursed his traitorous son, Kronos.

  The blood of Sky fell on Earth, but Sky’s genitals fell into the sea. The foam of the sea sloshed around them, an extended metaphor from human intercourse, until the foam (Greek aphros) produced a goddess of awesome strength, Aphrodite. Thus the principle of overwhelming sexual desire was born from the gory genitals of a primordial god, the product of a vicious dismemberment. The story encodes the destructive power of sexual attraction, a persistent theme in Greek myth.

  Earth gave birth to the Titans, the Cyclopês, and the Hundred-Handers through intercourse with her own son Sky, but she also had sex with Sea, another son, giving rise to a sequence of complex genealogies of other children. Some were noted for their monstrous forms; others had a variable appearance, like the sea itself.

  As portrayed in Greek art, the Sphinx was female, with wings and a lion’s body. Geryon (jer-i-on), an enemy of Herakles, had three bodies fused at the waist, and he had a two-headed dog, Orthos. Kerberos had fifty heads and guarded the gates of Hades’ house. The water serpent Hydra, “watery,” had seven heads. Echidna was an ordinary woman from the waist up but snaky beneath. Chimaira (ki-mē-ra), “she-goat,” had a lion’s body, a serpent’s tail, and a goat’s head protruding from her back (see fig. 8). Keto (kē-to), “sea monster,” was a fiend of the sea. The Gray Old Ladies (Graiai, grī-ī), were gray from birth but had beautiful cheeks. The Nemean Lion could not be killed by ordinary means. Nereus (nē-rūs), the Old Man of the Sea, could tell the future, like many sea gods, and he could change into any shape he wished. He was the father of the fifty-two Nereids (nē-re-idz), hard to tell apart from the Oceanids, but there were far fewer of them. Thetis (thē-tis) was the best-known Nereid, because she was the mother of Achilles. Thetis could also change her shape at will.

  Now that Sky was overthrown, Kronos became lord of the world, but he needed to be devious, violent, and wary to maintain his rule. Because his parents, Sky and Earth, warned him that he would fall victim to one of his children, Kronos gulped th
em down as fast as his wife and sister, Rhea, gave birth.

  Rhea sought advice from Earth and Sky, her parents, about this terrible situation. They told her to go to the island of CRETE. There she should bear her youngest child, Zeus. She hid the child deep in a Cretan cave so he could not be discovered. When Kronos demanded the latest child in order that he could swallow him, Rhea gave him a huge stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Kronos swallowed it down, and Zeus was saved. He grew to manhood on Crete.

  Hesiod does not reveal what happened next. Somehow Zeus forced Kronos to vomit up his children. The stone came out, too. (It was later displayed at Apollo’s shrine at DELPHI.) Now Zeus became king of the gods. He and his brothers and sisters took up residence on MOUNT OLYMPOS, the highest mountain in Greece. But the Titans resented this arrangement. They gathered together and attacked the Olympian gods in the colossal Titanomachy (tī–tan-o-ma-kē), the Battle of the Titans (Greek machê means “battle”).

  Earth advised Zeus that he could be victorious in the battle only with the help of the three Hundred-Handers. He therefore released them, along with the Cyclopês, from Tartaros, where Sky, fearing their strength, had confined them. The Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopês were enfeebled from long captivity, but they restored their strength by drinking nectar (perhaps meaning “what overcomes death”) and a magical food called ambrosia (“undying”). The grateful Cyclopês, brilliant metallurgists, now made the thunderbolt for Zeus, his distinctive weapon.