Chapter 2 SHOCKING BEHAVIOUR[1]
Among the most basic questions to excite human curiosity are those which ask how the world began and how it is sustained.We are still searching for answers to these questions today.Ancient peoples asked them too.In fact,they were concerned by them even more than we are today.For we live today in a world dominated by science and technology,in a world in which man has increasingly used his ingenuity to control his natural environment.However,before the rise of science,and when technology was still primitive,Nature seemed far more powerful,majestic and threatening.This was particularly the case in ancient Greece,with its many mountainous areas,[2]extensive coastline,and islands surrounded by the sea.[3]So how did the ancient Greeks explain the origins of the universe? Here is a summary of their account of how things began.[4]Be warned：you will find it utterly revolting.
The Beginning of the World：Titans and Olympians
In the beginning there was Chaos or nothingness.Out of the Chaos emerged Gaia（the Earth）,Eros（Love）and Tartarus（the Abyss or Hell）.Without any male assistance,Gaia gave birth to Uranus（the Sky）and the giant one-eyed Cyclopes.[5]
Uranus（the Sky）then fertilized Gaia（the Earth）,who gave birth to the Titans,six male and six female.（The modern adjective“titanic,”meaning gigantic or colossal,is derived from“Titan.”）However,Uranus was afraid that his own children might usurp his throne,and so he drove them all down to earth.This angered Gaia,who persuaded the youngest male Titan,Kronos（Saturn）,to castrate his father.Kronos threw his father’s genitalia into the sea,and from the blood issuing from the wound the Furies[6]emerged,while Aphrodite,the goddess of love,was born from the resulting sea foam（as is depicted in the exceptional Renaissance painting by Botticelli,The Birth of Venus）.Kronos（Saturn）took over as the ruler of the universe.Kronos then married his sister,Rhea,and established domination over the other Titans.
Having treated his father in this way,Kronos feared that any children to whom Rhea gave birth would treat him in the same way.So every time Rhea gave birth,he snatched up the child and ate it.In this way Kronos swallowed five of his children.[7]However,when Rhea gave birth to the sixth,Zeus（Jupiter）,she wrapped up a stone in baby’s clothing and fed it to her husband in place of Zeus,while she sent Zeus himself to Mount Ida in Crete[8]to be protected by nymphs.[9]By the time Kronos discovered what had happened,it was too late.
The Victory of Zeus
When Zeus had grown up,he gave his father a drugged drink which caused Kronos to vomit,throwing up Rhea’s other children and the stone.He then challenged Kronos to fight for dominion over the gods.In a war that lasted ten years,with the help of the Cyclopes,who provided him with thunderbolts,Zeus and his siblings were victorious,and Kronos and his sibling Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus.[10]Zeus became the ruler of Olympus,[11]married his sister,Hera（Juno）,and distributed power to his other siblings and children.[12]For example,Poseidon（Neptune）was made god of the seas and oceans,Hades（Pluto）the god of the Underworld.
The Birth of Athena
Zeus,like his father,feared what his children might do to him — all the more so when he heard of a prophecy that Metis,one of his wives,would give birth to a god greater than him.Zeus therefore persuaded his wife to turn herself into a fly and then swallowed her.However,Metis was already pregnant at that time with Athena（Minerva）.[13]This caused Zeus considerable discomfort,in particular headaches,which arose as a result of Metis constructing a helmet for Athena while inside the body of Zeus.Eventually Zeus asked his son Hephaistos（Vulcan）to split open his head with an axe.Out of Zeus’s head emerged Athena,the goddess of wisdom and war,fully grown and fully armed.
The Characteristics of the Gods
No sane person could find these stories anything other than disgusting and unbelievable.It is possible to see in the distrust of the older generation for the younger the fear that the older must eventually give way to the younger,but for resistance to inevitable change to be so brutal is shocking.The full nature of the horror of Saturn devouring his children has been conveyed several times by western artists,most strikingly by the early 19th century Spanish artist Goya.
We tend to associate the idea of God,or of the gods,with the idea of the good.So there seems to be a major contradiction here.These Greek gods are frequently cruel,greedy,suspicious,violent and promiscuous.So can we can conclude that the idea of“god”/“God”has changed since the days of ancient Greece? Have human beings become more civilized and better able to organize themselves in society? And has our idea of gods / God changed accordingly? Surely it has.
There has also developed an idea of a God.“Transcendence”is the quality of being above and beyond the physical world.The Greek gods are certainly not transcendent.They are anthropomorphic.In other words,they have human form and characteristics;they are not simply abstractions or ideas.For this reason it was natural to portray them in art and sculpture.
But the Greek gods,although they have human characteristics,also have characteristics unique to themselves.They are immortal and can only be wounded in very unusual circumstances.Mostly they remain young.Their immortality and youth are secured by the constant use of nectar or ambrosia.Nectar,which literally means“overcoming death,”is a sweet liquid secreted by plants to attract insects.For example,bees collect nectar from which they make honey.Ambrosia literally means“food of the gods.”
Another feature of ancient Greece very foreign to modern western culture is that there are very many Greek gods.Greek religion was thus polytheistic rather than monotheistic.Most Greek gods have a particular area of expertise.For example,Ares（Mars）is the god of war,Athena（Minerva）the goddess of wisdom and courage,Hades（Pluto）the god of the dead,Aphrodite（Venus）the goddess of love,Hephaistos（Vulcan）the god of metallurgy and volcanoes.In the Greek and Roman world,temples were frequently dedicated in honour of particular gods and goddesses.Later,the three major monotheistic religions,Judaism,Christianity and Islam,emphatically rejected polytheism.
The stories of Kronos and Zeus appear to us as extremely primitive.The gods often lack the minimum requirements of human social behaviour.For example,there appears to be no taboo on incest（although later,as we shall see in the story of Oedipus,this became a major taboo in Greek society）.Indeed these gods have very little notion of“society.”The defining characteristic of the behaviour of Kronos and Zeus is not the promotion of what is good — in other words,the welfare of society or the establishment of peace and stability.Rather they devote their energies entirely to the struggle for individual power.Having the strength to prevail is the defining characteristic of these gods.Here is an ugly and primitive aspect of the ancient Greek world.[14]
However,we must remember that the ancient Greek world covers a period of very many centuries and that opinion did not remain constant and unchanging.In particular,the 5th century B.C.saw the growth of scientific enquiry,the questioning of traditional religion and the beginnings of atheism.There were those who called for ancient myths to be censored.For example,the great Greek philosopher Plato（427B.C.– 347 B.C.）so strongly disapproved of the immoral example set by the gods that,in his most famous work,The Republic（around 380 B.C.）,which sets out his idea of an ideal society,he specifically banned mention of their immorality from his education system.[15]He wrote:
The story of what Kronos did,and what he suffered at the hands of his son,is not fit to be repeated as it is to the young and innocent,even if it were true … we can permit no stories about Hera being tied up by her son,or Hephaistos being flung out of heaven by his father for trying to help his mother when she was getting a beating,or any of Homer’s battles of the gods … it is of the utmost importance that the first stories children hear shall aim at producing the right moral effect.
So we can see here that educated and thoughtful Greeks came to reject their badly-behaved gods.Bad examples could do harm to society,especially to the young and impressionable.There were also Greek thinkers,including Plato,who went further by challenging polytheism and advocating monotheism.This was something that later made Greek culture of interest to some Jewish leaders.However,cultures as thoroughly grounded as Greek culture have enduring qualities.Greeks and Romans continued to observe the ritual worship of their many gods until eventually the Roman emperor became a Christian and made Christianity,a monotheistic religion,the official religion of the Roman Empire.[16]
Gods and Heroes
Although,as has been noted,there is no single authoritative version of the Greek myths,there is a mythological chronology.The poet Hesiod arranged the Greek myths in a kind of order by providing the Five Ages of Man：Golden,Silver,Bronze,Heroic and Iron.
Writing in the Iron Age,Hesiod saw his own age as far inferior to those which preceded it.This is very different from the way most people think today.Since the rise of science in the 17th century,human beings have had confidence in the possibility of progress in all areas of human activity.There is a strong sense of moving forwards and of things getting better.But this was not the case in the ancient world or the medieval world.Very often there was,rather,a strong sense of falling away,of decline from a better past that was irrecoverable.
As the mythological chronology unfolds,the gods become increasingly distant figures.Whereas to begin with,it is their own activities which are the focus of the myths,by the Heroic age[17]the focus has shifted to the heroes,one of whose parents is often a god or goddess but the other of whom is human.In between is a transitional period in which gods and humans intermingle.Many of the myths of this period are myths about love or punishment.
The tales of love often involve incest or the seduction or rape of a mortal woman by a male god,resulting in heroic offspring.As we shall see in a later chapter,there is almost no sense of outrage at a man violating a woman in these stories.Rather,the man is to be admired：he is powerful enough to have been able to conquer and dominate.Just as Kronos’ and Zeus’ behaviour towards their relatives revolts us,so does this attitude.
The tales of punishment usually involve the theft of some invention or artifact.The story of Prometheus is one of the best examples of this.
Prometheus and the Creation of Man
Prometheus was the wisest of the Titans;his name means“forethought.”In the war between Zeus and the Titans,he deserted his fellow Titans and fought alongside Zeus.Prometheus created man,while the goddess Athena gave man soul and breath.
However,Prometheus offended Zeus by arranging for men to keep the best parts of the animals sacrificed to the gods,while the gods took the worst.Zeus responded by withholding from man the gift of fire.So Prometheus stole the gift of fire and bestowed it upon man.In revenge for this,Zeus imposed a terrible punishment.Prometheus was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus where a ravenous eagle（or in some sources a vulture）ate his liver each day.The liver grew back each night but the vulture returned and ate it again and again.
Zeus planned this punishment to go on for 30,000 years or until Prometheus revealed the prophecy of a potential marriage by Zeus that would produce a son who would seek to overthrow his father.[18]Eventually,however,Herakles reconciled Zeus and Prometheus,killed the vulture and freed Prometheus.[19]
Perseus and Medusa
For a further tale of outrageous behaviour,mixed with horror and love,we have only to turn to the story of Perseus and Medusa.
Akrisios,king of Argos,had a daughter,Danae,but also wanted a son.He went to consult an oracle.An oracle was a priest or priestess through whom the gods spoke to humans.[20]The oracle Akrisios consulted informed him that he would never have a son but that he would have a grandson who would eventually kill him.Alarmed,Akrisios placed his daughter in solitary confinement in a bronze tower.However,Zeus gained entrance to the tower by transforming himself into a shower of gold.[21]He was thus able to impregnate Danae,with the result that she gave birth to the semi-divine Perseus.
Perseus’s birth was kept secret from Akrisios but,after four years,the sound of Perseus playing led Akrisios to discover the existence of his grandson.He immediately ordered a carpenter to build a huge chest,forced Danae and his grandson to climb into it,and then dumped it in the sea.The chest was eventually washed up on the island of Seriphos.Perseus and his mother were cared for by a fisherman who was the brother of the unscrupulous King Polydektes.
Polydektes was consumed with desire for Perseus’s mother and wanted Perseus out of the way for fear that he would block his advances.One day,at what he claimed was to be his marriage banquet,he demanded the present of a horse from each of his guests.Perseus was too poor to afford a horse but offered instead to obtain the head of the gorgon,Medusa.Confident that Perseus would die in the attempt,Polydektes accepted his offer.
Gorgons were vicious monsters with sharp fangs.There were three of them,two of whom were immortal.Medusa was mortal,but there was a grave difficulty for any potential assassin,as anyone who looked at her would be turned to stone.This was because her hair was made up of live,poisonous snakes.According to one tradition,[22]this was a punishment from the goddess Athena because Medusa had copulated with Poseidon（Neptune）in Athena’s temple after Poseidon had been aroused by Medusa’s golden hair.
With the help of Hermes（Mercury）and benevolent nymphs,Perseus obtained what he needed to capture the gorgon：a cap of darkness that would make him invisible so that he could take Medusa by surprise;a bag for her head once it was decapitated;winged sandals;and the sickle-shaped knife previously used by Kronos to castrate his father.Athena,ever vengeful towards Medusa,gave him an essential piece of equipment：a bronze mirror so that he could see Medusa’s reflection without looking on her face.[23]Thus armed,Perseus was able to strike off Medusa’s head and bag it.[24]He then began the return journey back to Seriphos.
As he was flying home over Ethiopia on his winged horse,Pegasus,[25]Perseus spotted the beautiful princess Andromeda chained to a rock.Andromeda’s mother had angered the sea god Poseidon（Neptune）by claiming that her daughter was more beautiful than the daughters of the sea god Nereus.[26]In revenge Poseidon had sent a terrible sea monster to lay waste to the land.Only if the king’s daughter was offered as a sacrifice would the monster be appeased.Hence Andromeda was stripped and chained ready for sacrifice.
Perseus immediately fell in love with Andromeda and gallantly saved her by killing the terrible sea monster.He then sought and obtained her parents’ consent to marry her.There was a difficulty：she was already betrothed to the king’s brother,Phineus.However,Phineus had done nothing to rescue her from the sea monster and Perseus did not hesitate to expose the head of Medusa to Phineus and his followers,thereby turning them all to stone.[27]He then returned home to Seriphos with Andromeda.
He made further use of the head of Medusa when he arrived back on Seriphos,turning king Polydektes,who had been harassing his mother,and his entire court to stone.Eventually he presented the gorgon’s head to the goddess Athena,who made it an emblem on her breastplate.In ancient Greece,gorgons became apotropaic symbols.In other words,they were used to ward off evil and often placed on the doors and windows of buildings.Many western churches later had gargoyles,which were designed to perform a similar function,like that of the fierce faces on the shields of ancient Chinese soldiers.[28]
Next Perseus,his wife Andromeda and his mother Danae set out for Argos in order to be reunited with King Akrisios.But when Akrisios heard they were coming,remembering the oracle,he fled to Thessaly.[29]However,one day,Akrisios and Perseus both attended the funeral games[30]of the king of Larissa.Neither knew the other was present,but the oracle’s prediction was fulfilled as Perseus threw a discus which swerved off course and hit the foot of Akrisios and killed him.As usual in Greek myth,the oracle was proved right after all;it was impossible successfully to defy the will of the gods.
Having accidentally killed his grandfather,Perseus decided not to seek his throne but instead exchanged Argos with his cousin for Tiryns.As king of Tiryns,he founded Mycenae.He and Andromeda were great-grandparents of Herakles（at the same time as Perseus was step-brother to Herakles）.[31]
The myth of Perseus illustrates many features of Greek mythology which are repugnant to the modern reader.There is the disregard for family and the fear of the old that they will be displaced by the young.There is the lust of Zeus and Poseidon,the cruelty of Akrisios,and the vengeful anger of Athena.Perseus,however,is able to kill Medusa and rescue Andromeda.Here again it is not the gentle moral virtues that are held up for admiration,but his cunning and strength.The story is fantastic in the extreme,and it ends with an emphasis on fate — the will of the gods cannot be resisted — so Akrisios must die at the hands of his grandson.In the absence of modern moral values,a selfish individualism and a taste for horror come to the fore.Extreme violence will feature in almost all the major Greek myths.The values of the Greeks are not our values.
注释
[1]Throughout the book,the names of the gods are generally given in Greek followed by the Latin version in brackets.The Romans adopted most of the Greek gods and goddesses but re-named them.
[2]80% of Greece is mountainous.
[3]Some commentators contrast this with ancient China,an inland culture in which people lived in harmony with the natural environment rather than regarding it as hostile.
[4]Greek mythology’s main account of the beginning of the world is found in the Theogony of Hesiod.Hesiod lived in the latter half of the 8th century B.C.and was a near contemporary of Homer.His epic poem,the Theogony,contains the creation myth that came to be accepted by most Greeks.“Theogony”means“origin of the gods.”
[5]As Gaia’s actions were not regulated by anyone other than herself,the theory advanced by James Lovelock in the 1960s that the earth is self-regulating was termed the“Gaia principle.”
[6]The Furies,who are sometimes called the Erinyes（the angry ones）,and sometimes the Eumenides（the gracious ones）,were female spirits seeking vengeance.They pursued humans who broke natural laws,and especially those guilty of parricide or perjury.So,for example,they pursued Orestes after he had had murdered his mother,Clytemnestra,the wife of Agamemnon.A large painting of the mutilation of Uranus by Vasari hangs in the 16th century Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
[7]Hestia（Vesta）,Demeter（Ceres）,Hera（Juno）,Poseidon（Neptune）and Hades（Pluto）.
[8]There are two Mount Idas in Greek mythology.The other one,in what is today Turkey,was where the judgment of Paris was allegedly conducted.
[9]Nymphs were female spirits of the rivers.
[10]The Fall of the Titans（1588–90）,a painting in the Mannerist style by Cornelis van Haarlem,can be seen in the State Art Museum in Copenhagen.One version of this myth says the Titans were banished to a British island in the far west.
[11]Mount Olympus,the highest mountain in Greece,was where Zeus and his siblings,the Olympian gods,resided.
[12]Zeus was a very active god.He fathered many other gods and heroes,including Athena,Apollo,Artemis,Hermes,Persephone,Dionysus,Perseus,Heracles,Helen,Minos,the nine Muses,Ares,Hebe and Hephaestus.Only the last three of these were the offspring of Hera.
[13]Athena was the goddess of wisdom and the patroness of Athens.She competed with Poseidon for the honour of having the city of Athens named after her.It was agreed that whichever of them produced the more useful object for men would obtain the honour.Poseidon produced a horse,Athena an olive tree.As the horse was considered to symbolize strife while the olive was an emblem of peace and plenty,Athena won the contest.
[14]Arguably also we may see here an origin of the individualistic,entrepreneurial character of Western culture.
[15]Plato was not alone or the first.In the 6th century B.C.the philosopher Xenophanes had complained that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods“all that is shameful and disgraceful among men;they steal,commit adultery and deceive one another .”
[16]Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 but it was the emperor Theodosius who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 381.In 393 the Olympic Games were discontinued because of their close association with pagan religious ceremonies.They were not revived until 1896.
[17]It was the events of this age that captured the imagination of the three great ancient Greek tragic dramatists：Aeschylus,Sophocles and Euripides.Almost all the plots of their plays come from the stories of this period.
[18]The female who was so dangerous to Zeus was the sea nymph Thetis.（Nymphs were divine,although not necessarily immortal beings,usually depicted as nubile young women.）In order to ensure that her offspring would pose no threat to either Zeus or Poseidon（who also courted her）,it was arranged that she should marry the mortal Peleus.Their offspring was the mortal Achilles.Their marriage was the occasion of contention between three goddesses as to which of them was the most beautiful,leading to the judgment of Paris and the Trojan War.
[19]The story of Herakles’s rescue of Prometheus is found in Hesiod and in the play by Aeschylus,Prometheus Unbound.
[20]The most famous oracle was at Delphi,where Pythia,the priestess of Apollo,resided.
[21]There is a fine painting of this by the Austrian artist,Gustav Klimt — The Shower of Gold（1908）.
[22]The Roman poet,Ovid,provides this story.
[23]Hermes provided the knife.The cap,bag and sandals were obtained from nymphs whose whereabouts were known only to the Graiae,the sisters of the gorgons.The three Graiae had only one eye and one tooth between them.Perseus seized the eye and the tooth and returned them only when the Graiae revealed where he could find the nymphs.
[24]The severed head of Medusa is the subject of fine,if horrific,paintings by Caravaggio（1598）and Rubens（c.1618）.
[25]Pegasus was the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa.According to one tradition he had been tamed by Athena,who sent him to the aid of Perseus.However,Perseus was already able to fly because of the winged sandals provided by Hermes.
[26]Nereus,also known as the“Old Man of the Sea,”lived beneath the waters with his fifty lovely sea nymph daughters,the Nereids.Among the Nereids were Thetis,the mother of Achilles,and Amphitrite,the wife of Poseidon.
[27]This is the subject of a striking late 17th-century painting by Luca Giordano,now in the National Gallery in London.
[28]According to one legend,either Perseus or Athena used the head of Medusa to freeze Atlas into stone,transforming him into the Atlas Mountains（in northwest Africa）that held up both heaven and earth.
[29]Thessaly in northern Greece.
[30]In ancient Greece funeral games were held as a mark of respect for the dead,especially of heroes.It has been suggested that funeral games were the origin of the Olympics.
[31]In astronomy,two of the 88 modern constellations are named after them.