without speaking, and straight from the jug (chous), as if in the course of the festival,
the Athenians ‘‘unlearned’’ how to drink well.
The Reign of Cronus
The most important general beliefs about a prior epoch, of a ‘‘more ancient’’bios
(‘‘way of life’’),genos(‘‘generation’’ or ‘‘race’’), orbasileia(‘‘reign’’), in which the
world was substantially different, revolved around intersecting myths concerning: (1)
the succession of Zeus to Cronus; (2) the estrangement of gods from men; and (3)
the origins of the human life-cycle of aging, reproduction, and death.
Zeus is often called ‘‘son of Cronus’’ and poets told of how there had once been a
‘‘reign of Cronus’’ until Cronus was overthrown by his son and banished to remote
isles where he still ruled over the Blessed (Graziosi and Haubold 2005:57; Versnel
1987). The story presupposes the possibility of Zeus himself being overthrown in
turn. At the start of his reign, forewarned that Metis will bear him a son who will
supplant him, he swallows her, and hence himself gives birth to Athena through a
crack in his skull. Much later, forewarned that his hypothetical son by Thetis will
overthrow him, he arranges for her to be raped and married to a mortal, resulting in
the mortal hero Achilles. These myths, very popular in both images and literature,
construct the current age, the age of Zeus, as one suspended between a past and
future succession, a reign the end of which has on at least two famous occasions been
narrowly avoided. This notion of the contingency of the gods, their constant need to
be on guard against supersession, is also reflected in the fact that their immortalness
itself needs constantly to be maintained with nectar and ambrosia.
Several famous myths told of the alienation of gods from men. Tantalus had been
close to the gods, sharing their feasts until he tried to feed them his son Pelops;
alternatively, according to Pindar’s self-conscious rewriting of the myth, Pelops had
actually lived on Olympus, serving them ambrosia and nectar, before being ejected
when it appeared that some of the precious substances had been passed on to mortals,
so, like Thetis’s hypothetical son, Pelops was cast down, an ex-immortal, from a world
of deathlessness to one of aging, reproduction, and death (Olympians1.35–66).
Similarly, it was at a communal banquet of gods and mortals that Prometheus first
tried to trick Zeus with fat-covered bones, alienating the gods and provoking Zeus to
refuse men the gift of fire. Hesiod’s sequel to this episode tells how Prometheus stole
fire and gave it to men, and so Zeus made woman, Pandora, a ‘‘misfortune’’ as
penalty ‘‘for the fire’’ (anti puros;Works57), a drain on his resources, forcing him to
work and aging him. She it was who unleashed misfortunes (kaka), hard work (ponos),
and sicknesses into the world when she opened Pandora’s ‘‘Box.’’ The myth empha-
sizes another feature of the anterior epoch: the invention of woman means the
invention of mortal sex.
These themes of a lost world of divine intimacy and lack of toil are brought
together in Hesiod’s classic account of the earlier ‘‘golden race’’ of men, ‘‘friendly
with the immortal gods’’ (Works120): ‘‘These lived in the time of Cronus, when he
was ruler in heaven, and they lived like gods, with no cares in their heart, without toils
or sadness. Terrible old age did not affect them either, but never changing in arms
and legs they enjoyed themselves in feasting, free of all evils. And when they died it
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