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 86–87The 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
TheogonyThe 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 discusshuman 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.US_018-023_Creation.indd 21 05/12/17 4:15 pm