Classical Mythology

68 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS

Zeus Attacks Typhoeus. Apulian red-figure oinochoe by the Arpi painter, late fourth cen-

tury B.c. Zeus rides in a chariot driven by Hermes; the snake-legged Typhoeus tries to

defend himself with a rock as a huge wind-monster puffs vainly against the Olympian

gods. (British Museum.)

Most apparent is the constant interweaving of structuralist motifs. The du-

alities (binary opposites) of Lévi-Strauss are everywhere: chaos/order, male/

female, sky/earth, youth/age, and beauty/ugliness. Psychological and psycho-

analytical motifs abound: Freudian sexuality is blatantly manifest in the castra-

tion of Uranus, and the subconscious motivations of the psyche reveal them-

selves in the recurring pattern of the victory of the ambitious son in his battle

Nawura, Dreamtime Ancestor Spirit. By Djawida, 1985; natural pigments on bark, 61 X 27

in. In the religion of the Aborigines of Australia the Dreaming (or Dreamtime)—a Euro-

pean term—is the period outside of time in which the creation and ordering of the cos-

mos takes place and in which supernatural beings and ancestors are agents of creation.

Being outside of time, it is always present. Djawida's painting shows an ancestral creator

and culture-hero who taught human beings the arts of living. Unlike the Greeks, the Abo-

rigines do not set a dividing gulf between human and animal creation. So Nawura has

a crocodile jaw and six fingers on each hand (like his wives), and he is accompanied by

various animals (turtle, crocodile, kangaroo, fish, platypus, emu) and various attributes

of the arts that he taught. In contrast, the Greek Prometheus is unequivocally human in

form and attributes. (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.)