Cosmos is Chaos.
Parthenogenesis: virgin birth (some lizards and even sharks)
...Gaia bore two sons all on her own.
Ouranos(Uranus) the sky covered his mother Gaia the earth everywhere..When he did so...Time began.
Cylopes; one-eyed giants
Hecatonchires; fifty heads and a hundred hands
Ouranos...he cursed them: 'For offending my eyes, you shall never see light again'
The earth is halfway between the sky and Tartarus
...Kronos, swung the scythe back and swept it down in a great arc.The blade, hissing through the air, sliced Ourano's genitals clean from his body.
Ouranos...howled out: 'Kronos,...May your children destroy you as you destroyed me'
..the water bubble and boils.Something arises...Not just someone beautiful but Beauty itself rises fully formed from the foam.In Greek 'from the foam' can be rendered as something like APHRODITE...She alights onto a beach on Cyprus.
Rhea..gave birth to a baby girl whom she named Hestia....Kronos stepped forward, snatched the child from her arms and swallowed it whole.Rhea..Crete..assisted by the she-goat and the Meliae she prepared to give birth in the safety and comfort of a cave on Mount Ida...She named him ZEUS
Zeus would listen as Rhea described the unhappy condition of the world under Kronos.
Rhea: "He rules by fear.He has no sense of loyalty or trust.This is not the way, my Zeus."
Zeus: "Doesn't that make him strong?"
Rhea: "No, it makes him weak..A true leader forges alliances.A true leader is admired and trusted...A true leader is loved."
Zeus leapt fleetly forward, picked up the regurgitated boulder and hurled it far, far away...Kronos...one by one he spewed up the five children he had swallowed.First out was Hera, then came Poseidon,Demeter,Hades and finally Hestia...They would not..call themselves 'Titans'.They would be the gods.
The bloody, violent and destructive conflict that followed is known to historians as the Titanomachy.
Zeus...The eagle and the oak were his symbols were his emblems...his word was law, his power formidably great.But he was not perfect...
Refusing offers of marriage from the other gods, Hestia devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood....it was a custom in Greece to say a grace to her before every meal.
Hestia: Goddess of the hearth, home, domesticity, family, and the stateHades and Poseidon had no love for each other and when Zeus put his hands behind his back...they hesitated...a sapphire as blue as the sea in one and a piece of jet as black as Erebus in the other.Poseidon touched the back of Zeus's right hand..."The oceans are mine"...Hades: "That means I have the underworld.Ha ha!"
As the Titans had made Othrys their mountain home, so Zeus now chose Mount Olympus, Greece's highest peak.
Hera was pregnant when the gods moved to Olympus.
No god can undo the spells, transformations, curses or enchantments of another.
Most original wed dish...Melissa's name for it was honey..."Ah yes" said Zeus. "Pine resin."
The Greeks still add pine resin to wine, call it retsina and offer it to visitors.
metamorphoses..How a god or Titan might be able to turn others or themselves into animals, plants and even solid objects, just as Zeus had done as he had chased Metis...In a twnkle Zeus trnasformed himself into a lizard and with a quick flick of a long sticky tongue Metis had been transfered to his interior...
The King of the Gods had a headache...Zeus gazed at the daughter who had caused him so much pain and smiled a warm smile...
Athena...Wisdom and insight were inherited from her mother, Metis. Handicraft, warcraft and statecraft were hers.Law and justice too...kind f beauty expressed in aesthetics..it was the kind known as Platonic...The Athenians were to prize these attributes of Athena above all others
Athena's simple gift was the first olive tree....The citizens of Cecropia in their wisdom saw the benefits of its fruit, oil and wood..changing the name of their city to Athens in her honour.
Athena, like Demeter, remained untouched by man.
Parthenos, the Greek word for virgin, was often attached to her name - hence 'the Parthenon' her template on the Acropolis.
Metis...sacrified her freedom and remained inside, she could assume the role of wise counsellor...Those who speak truth to power usually end up in chains or an early grave, but inside Zeus's head Metis could never be silenced.
Wisdom, in the form of Metis, may have whispered to Zeus in one ear, but in the other he always heard of passion...
island of Delos...Leto gave birth to a girl..Artemis and a boy Apollo...If Artemis was silver, her twin Apollo was all gold.If Artemis was the moon, he was the sun...His proportions and lineaments remain to this day the very ideal of a certain kind of male beauty.
Apollo was lord of mathematics,reason and logic.Poetry and medicine, knowledge, rhetoric and enlightenment were his realm.In essence, he was the god of harmony.
Zeus exiled the young god, Apollo, for the eight years to the snake's birth place beneath Mount Parnassus to atone for his crime...Apollo was tasked with organizing a regular athletic tournaments...The Pythian Games were duly held every four years.
Olympians...Zeus sat on the throne, with Hera at his side...around them Hestia, Poseidon, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, Athena, Artemis and Apollo -thats eleven...
Maia gave birth to a boy, Hermes.
Something is missing.Something....Zeus frowns and thinks.
The Greek for between rivers(Tigris and Euphrates) is Mesopotamia, which is how that area was always known to the Greeks.
Zeus: "Oh, good heavens, no just male.You can imagine what Hera would say otherwise..."..Not that Prometheus was against the idea...Playthings for the immortals..
Zeus:"You can befriend them as much as you like,Prometheus...But one thing they are not to have.Ever.And that is fire."
Anthropos: man (unfortunately refer only to male)=> connected to mens(mind) and manus(hand), in fact gender neutral until perhaps a thousand years ago
Prometheus, who fashioned humanity from the four elements: Earth (Gaia's clay), Water(the spittle of Zeus), Fire(the sun of Apollo) and Air(the breath of Athena)
Temptation loses much of its power when removed from sight.
Pandora..jar..more and more flying shapes buzzed from the mouth of the jar...They were mutant descentants of the dark and evil children of both Nyx and Erebus....Illness, Violence,Deceit,Misery and Want had arrived....One last little creature was left behind to beat its wings hopelessly in the jar for ever.Its name was ELPIS, hope.
Persephone emerged from Hade's domain and the cycle of birth, renewal and growth began again.In this way the seasons came about, the autumn and winter of Demeter's grieving for the absence of ehr daughter and the spring and summer of her jubilation at Persephone's return.
Mount Idas, in Phrygia,Asia Minor, Hermaphroditus hailed...in the clear waters of a spring near Halicarnassus...in an instant Salmacis and Hermaphroditus did indeed become one.One body, two sexes...male and female coexisting in one form.
Aphrodite, the supreme goddess of love and of beauty, was attended by a retinue of winged and naked godlings called Erotes.
Anteros- uncondional love
Eros-the leader of Erotes, god of physical love and sexual desire
Hedylogos- the spirit of the language of love, love letters, romantic fiction
Hermaphroditus-the protector of effeminate males, mannish females
Himeros- the embodiment of desperate, impetuous love
Hymenaios-the guardian of the bridal-chamber and wedding music
Pothos- the personification of longing, of love for the absent and departed
Inachus..was the first king of Argos in the Peloponnese peninsula..his consort Melia bore him two daughters, Io and Mycene.
Io also had a daughter by Zeus, called Keroessa, whose son Byzas went on to found the great city of Byzantium....Io may have been a cow, but she was a very influential one...
Hephaestus...had developed a strong passion for the goddess..Athena..tried to force himself on her..suceeded only in spilling his seed on her thigh...The sodden fillet landed on the ground and Hephaestus's divine semen seeped into the earth and Gaia was made pregnant.From her was born a boy, Erechtheus....the legendary founder of Athens.
Phoenicians...it was the invention and propagation of the alphabet that gave them such an advantage over their neighbours and rivals.
Holistic, a Greek-derived word....dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part
Tantalus ruled the kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor...Mineral deposits from nearby Mount Sipylus yielded him enormous riches...Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess, into the rock of Mount Sipylus. (Spil Dağı, Manisa)..'Aglayan Kaya'...Niobe's tears...(Niobe was insulting Leto...Artemis and Apollo went straight to Tebes, where they hunted down every one of Amphion's and Niobe's fourteen children)
Lydian mode...
The aulos fell to earth in Asia Minor, in the kingdom of Phrygia, near the source of the maender river where it was picked up by a satry called Marsyas...Marsyas the Musical.
Narcissus...he caught his breath in astonishment when in its waters, he saw the loveiest face he had ever laid eyes upon...Narcissus raised a hand.The boy raised his hand in reply....lay down again and brought his face closer to the water...
Midas..goldfinger..king Midas's ears-Midas has ass ears...
website for Greek myth resources: theoi.com
by Stephen Fry
