The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (8 page)

1
. Hesiod, who records this myth, was a Cadmeian, and the Cadmeians came from Asia Minor (see
59.
5
), probably on the collapse of the Hittite Empire, bringing with them the story of Uranus’s castration. It is known, however, that the myth was not of Hittite composition, since an earlier Hurrian (Horite) version has been discovered. Hesiod’s version may reflect an alliance between the various pre-Hellenic settlers in Southern and Central Greece, whose dominant tribes favoured the Titan cult, against the early Hellenic invaders from the north. Their war was successful, but they thereupon claimed suzerainty over the northern natives, whom they had freed. The castration of Uranus is not necessarily metaphorical if some of the victors had originated in East Africa where, to this day, Galla warriors carry a miniature sickle into battle to castrate their enemies; there are close affinities between East African religious rites and those of early Greece.

2
. The later Greeks read ‘Cronus’ as
Chronos
, ‘Father Time’ with his relentless sickle. But he is pictured in the company of a crow, like Apollo, Asclepius, Saturn, and the early British god Bran; and
cronos
probably means ‘crow’, like the Latin
cornix
and the Greek
corōne
. The crow was an oracular bird, supposed to house the soul of a sacred king after his sacrifice (see
25.
5
and
50.
1
).

3
. Here the three Erinnyes, or Furies, who sprang from the drops of Uranus’s blood, are the Triple-goddess herself; that is to say, during the king’s sacrifice, designed to fructify the cornfields and orchards, her priestesses will have worn menacing Gorgon masks to frighten away profane visitors. His genitals seem to have been thrown into the sea, to encourage fish to breed. The vengeful Erinnyes are understood by the mythographer as warning Zeus not to emasculate Cronus with the same sickle; but it was their original function to avenge injuries inflicted only on a mother, or a suppliant who claimed the protection of the Hearth-goddess (see 105.
k
, 107.
d
, and 113.
a
), not on a father.

4
. The ash-nymphs are the Three Furies in more gracious mood: the sacred king was dedicated to the ash-tree, originally used in rain-making ceremonies (see
57.
1
). In Scandinavia it became the tree of universal magic; the Three Norns, or Fates, dispensed justice under an ash which Odin, on claiming the fatherhood of mankind, made his magical steed. Women must have been the first rain-makers in Greece as in Libya.

5
. Neolithic sickles of bone, toothed with flint or obsidian, seem to
have continued in ritual use long after their supersession as agricultural instruments by sickles of bronze and iron.

6
. The Hittites make Kumarbi (Cronus) bite off the genitals of the Sky-god Anu (Uranus), swallow some of the seed, and spit out the rest on Mount Kansura where it grows into a goddess; the God of Love thus conceived by him is cut from his side by Anu’s brother Ea. These two births have been combined by the Greeks into a tale of how Aphrodite rose from a sea impregnated by Uranus’s severed genitals (see
10.
b
). Kumarbi is subsequently delivered of another child drawn from his thigh – as Dionysus was reborn from Zeus (see
27.
b
) – who rides a storm-chariot drawn by a bull, and comes to Anu’s help. The ‘knife that separated the the earth from the sky’ occurs in the same story, as the weapon with which Kumarbi’s son, the earth-born giant Ullikummi, is destroyed (see
35.
4
).

7

THE DETHRONEMENT OF CRONUS

C
RONUS
married his sister Rhea, to whom the oak is sacred.
¹
But it was prophesied by Mother Earth, and by his dying father Uranus, that one of his own sons would dethrone him. Every year, therefore, he swallowed the children whom Rhea bore him: first Hestia, then Demeter and Hera, then Hades, then Poseidon.
²

b
. Rhea was enraged. She bore Zeus, her third son, at dead of night on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, where no creature casts a shadow
³
and, having bathed him in the River Neda, gave him to Mother Earth; by whom he was carried to Lyctos in Crete, and hidden in the cave of Dicte on the Aegean Hill. Mother Earth left him there to be nursed by the Ash-nymph Adrasteia and her sister Io, both daughters of Melisseus, and by the Goat-nymph Amaltheia. His food was honey, and he drank Amaltheia’s milk, with Goat-Pan, his foster-brother. Zeus was grateful to these three nymphs for their kindness and, when he became Lord of the Universe, set Amaltheia’s image among the stars, as Capricorn.
⁴
He also borrowed one of her horns, which resembled a cow’s, and gave it to the daughters of Melisseus; it became the famous Cornucopia, or horn of plenty, which is always filled with whatever food or drink its owner may desire. But some say that Zeus
was suckled by a sow, and rode on her back, and that he lost his navel-string at Omphalion near Cnossus.
⁵

c
. Around the infant Zeus’s golden cradle, which was hung upon a tree (so that Cronus might find him neither in heaven, not on earth, nor in the sea) stood the armed Curetes, Rhea’s sons. They clashed their spears against their shields, and shouted to drown the noise of his wailing, lest Cronus might hear it from far off. For Rhea had wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes, which she gave to Cronus on Mount Thaumasium in Arcadia; he swallowed it, believing that he was swallowing the infant Zeus. Nevertheless, Cronus got wind of what had happened and pursued Zeus, who transformed himself into a serpent and his nurses into bears: hence the constellations of the Serpent and the Bears.
⁶

d
. Zeus grew to manhood among the shepherds of Ida, occupying another cave; then sought out Metis the Titaness, who lived beside the Ocean stream. On her advice he visited his mother Rhea, and asked to be made Cronus’s cup-bearer. Rhea readily assisted him in his task of vengeance; she provided the emetic potion, which Metis had told him to mix with Cronus’s honeyed drink. Cronus, having drunk deep, vomited up first the stone, and then Zeus’s elder brothers and sisters. They sprang out unhurt and, in gratitude, asked him to lead them in a war against the Titans, who chose the gigantic Atlas as their leader; for Cronus was now past his prime.
⁷

e
. The war lasted ten years but, at last, Mother Earth prophesied victory to her grandson Zeus, if he took as allies those whom Cronus had confined in Tartarus; so he came secretly to Campe, the old gaoleress of Tartarus, killed her, took her keys and, having released the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handed Ones, strengthened them with divine food and drink. The Cyclopes thereupon gave Zeus the thunderbolt as a weapon of offence; and Hades, a helmet of darkness; and Poseidon, a trident. After the three brothers had held a counsel of war, Hades entered unseen into Cronus’s presence, to steal his weapons; and, while Poseidon threatened him with the trident and thus diverted his attention, Zeus struck him down with the thunderbolt. The three Hundred-handed Ones now took up rocks and pelted the remaining Titans, and a sudden shout from Goat-Pan put them to flight. The gods rushed in pursuit. Cronus, and all the defeated Titans, except Atlas, were banished to a British island in the farthest west (or, some say, confined in Tartarus), and guarded there by the Hundred-handed Ones; they never
troubled Hellas again. Atlas, as their war-leader, was awarded an exemplary punishment, being ordered to carry the sky on his shoulders; but the Titanesses were spared, for the sake of Metis and Rhea.
⁸

f
. Zeus himself set up at Delphi the stone which Cronus had disgorged. It is still there, constantly anointed with oil, and strands of unwoven wool are offered upon it.
⁹

g
. Some say that Poseidon was neither eaten nor disgorged, but that Rhea gave Cronus a foal to eat in his stead, and hid him among the horseherds.
¹⁰
And the Cretans, who are liars, relate that Zeus is born every year in the same cave with flashing fire and a stream of blood; and that every year he dies and is buried.
¹¹

1
. Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: i. 1124.

2
. Apollodorus: i. 1. 5; Hesiod:
Theogony
453–67.

3
. Polybius: xvi. 12. 6 ff.; Pausanias: viii. 38. 5.

4
. Hyginus:
Poetic Astronomy
ii. 13; Aratus:
Phenomena
163; Hesiod:
loc. cit
.

5
. Philemon:
Pterygium Fragment
i.1 ff.; Apollodorus: i. 1. 6; Athenaeus: 375f. and 376a; Callimachus:
Hymn to Zeus
42.

6
. Hesiod: 485 ff.; Apollodorus: i. 1. 7; First Vatican Mythographer: 104; Callimachus:
Hymn to Zeus
52 ff.; Lucretius: ii. 633–9; Scholiast on Aratus: v. 46; Hyginus:
Fabula
139.

7
. Hyginus:
loc. cit
.; Apollodorus:
loc. cit
.; Hesiod:
loc. cit
.

8
. Hesiod:
loc. cit
.; Hyginus:
Fabula
118; Apollodorus: i. 1. 7 and i. 2. 1; Callimachus:
Hymn to Zeus
52 ff.; Diodorus Siculus: v. 70; Eratosthenes:
Catasterismoi
27; Pausanias: viii. 8. 2; Plutarch:
Why Oracles Are Silent
16.

9
. Pausanias: x. 24. 5.

10
.
Ibid
.: viii. 8. 2.

11
. Antoninus Liberalis:
Transformations
19; Callimachus:
Hymn to Zeus
8.

1
. Rhea, paired with Cronus as Titaness of the seventh day, may be equated with Dione, Diana, the Triple-goddess of the Dove and Oak cult (see
11.
2
). The bill-hook carried by Saturn, Cronus’s Latin counterpart, was shaped like a crow’s bill and apparently used in the seventh month of the sacred thirteen-month year to emasculate the oak by lopping off the mistletoe (see
50.
2
), just as a ritual sickle was used to reap the first ear of corn. This gave the signal for the sacred Zeus-king’s sacrifice; and at Athens, Cronus, who shared a temple with Rhea, was worshipped as the Barley-god Sabazius, annually cut down in the cornfield and bewailed like Osiris or Lityerses or Maneros (see 136.
e
). But, by the times to which these myths refer, kings had been permitted to prolong
their reigns to a Great Year of one hundred lunations, and offer annual boy victims in their stead; hence Cronus is pictured as eating his own sons to avoid dethronement. Porphyry (
On Abstinence
ii. 56) records that the Cretan Curetes used to offer child sacrifices to Cronus in ancient times.