Mythology Book

ANCIENT GREECE 21

Her sexual attentions had to be

entirely and eternally available to

him, so their offspring could not

be allowed to see the light of day.

Successive infants were consigned

to subterranean depths.

First came the 12 Titans—the

sisters Theia, Mnemosyne, Phoebe,

Themis, Tethys, and Rhea, and

their brothers Oceanus, Coeus,

Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and

Kronos. Each in his or her turn

was rammed into some convenient

crack or crevice of the earth and

left there, trapped. After the Titans

came three giant brothers, the

Kyklopes, each of whom had a

single eye at the center of his

forehead. Like their siblings, they

were consigned at birth to be

buried in the heart of the earth.

Then came three more giants

of even greater strength—the

Hecatoncheires, whose name ❯❯

See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ The war of gods and Titans 32–33 ■ The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ The fate of

Oedipus 86–87

The sky god Ouranos is depicted as

a benign father with offspring draped

around him in a wood engraving after

a fresco by the Prussian artist Karl

Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841).

Hesiod and his

Theogony

The ancient Greek poet Hesiod

may well be a myth in his own

right, for there is no evidence that

any such person actually existed.

The works attributed to him—

assorted poetry from the 8th and

7th centuries bce—may simply

have been conveniently bundled

together. They include a

miscellany of poems, from brief

narratives to genealogies that

record the heroic ancestries

of important families.

The importance of these works

in tracing back traditions and

uncovering origins is undeniable.

The genealogical poems discuss

human beginnings, while the

Theogony, Hesiod’s most famous

work, focuses on the birth of the

gods and is the source for much

of what we know about Greek

myth. Hesiod was not the only

available authority; other more

mystic-minded thinkers and

writers promoted an alternative

“Orphic” tradition, built around

the myth of Orpheus, the bard

and musician. For the most part,

however—and for well over

2,000 years now—it has been

the version of mythical events

attributed to Hesiod that has

held sway.

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