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160-517: After Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea, she bore the first generation of Olympians: the six siblings Zeus , Hades , Poseidon , Hestia , Demeter , and Hera . Certain descendants of the Titans, such as Prometheus , Atlas , Helios , and Leto , are sometimes also called Titans. The Titans were the former gods: the generation of gods preceding the Olympians . They were overthrown as part of

320-563: A chthonic earth-god rather than a god of the sky. These local divinities were gradually consolidated, via conquest and religious syncretism , with the Homeric conception of Zeus. Local or idiosyncratic versions of Zeus were given epithets — surnames or titles which distinguish different conceptions of the god. Timaeus (dialogue) Timaeus ( / t aɪ ˈ m iː ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Τίμαιος , translit.   Timaios , pronounced [tǐːmai̯os] )

480-478: A single unique world (31b). Additionally, because the demiurge wanted his creation to be a perfect imitation of the Eternal "One" (the source of all other emanations), there was no need to create more than one world. The creator decided also to make the perceptible body of the universe by four elements, in order to render it proportioned . Indeed, in addition to fire and earth, which make bodies visible and solid,

640-494: A bride, and names it Daidale. When preparations are being made for the wedding, Hera rushes down from Cithaeron, followed by the women of Plataia , and upon discovering the trick, the couple are reconciled, with the matter ending in joy and laughter among all involved. After his marriage to Hera, different authors describe Zeus's numerous affairs with various mortal women. In many of these affairs, Zeus transforms himself into an animal, someone else, or some other form. According to

800-507: A chorus composed of freed Titans. Possibly even earlier than Pindar and Aeschylus, two papyrus versions of a passage of Hesiods' Works and Days also mention Cronus being released by Zeus, and ruling over the heroes who go to the Isle of the Blessed; but other versions of Hesiod's text do not, and most editors judge these lines of text to be later interpolations. It is generally accepted that

960-472: A cube, of air an octahedron, of water an icosahedron, and of fire a tetrahedron. Each of these perfect polyhedra would be in turn composed of triangular faces the 30-60-90 and the 45-45-90 triangles. The faces of each element could be broken down into its component right-angled triangles, either isosceles or scalene, which could then be put together to form all of physical matter. Particular characteristics of matter, such as water's capacity to extinguish fire,

1120-424: A cuckoo bird, landing on Mount Thornax. He creates a terrible storm, and when Hera arrives at the mountain and sees the bird, which sits on her lap, she takes pity on it, laying her cloak over it. Zeus then transforms back and takes hold of her; when she refuses to have intercourse with him because of their mother, he promises that she will become his wife. Pausanias similarly refers to Zeus transforming himself into

1280-416: A cuckoo to woo Hera, and identifies the location as Mount Thornax. According to a version from Plutarch , as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica , Hera is raised by a nymph named Macris on the island of Euboea when Zeus kidnaps her, taking her to Mount Cithaeron , where they find a shady hollow, which serves as a "natural bridal chamber". When Macris comes to look for Hera, Cithaeron,

1440-469: A fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. According to Musaeus , after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to Themis . Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus. Antoninus Liberalis , in his Metamorphoses , says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in

1600-547: A great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton. Hyginus , in his Fabulae , relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus

1760-550: A huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's children. Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children. Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon,

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1920-527: A key role in an important part of Greek mythology, the succession myth. It told how the Titan Cronus , the youngest of the Titans, overthrew Uranus , and how in turn Zeus, by waging and winning a great ten-year war pitting the new gods against the old gods, called the Titanomachy ("Titan war"), overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of

2080-427: A likely story" (29d). Timaeus suggests that since nothing "becomes or changes" without cause, then the cause of the universe must be a demiurge or a god, a figure Timaeus refers to as the father and maker of the universe. And since the universe is fair, the demiurge must have looked to the eternal model to make it, and not to the perishable one (29a). Hence, using the eternal and perfect world of " forms " or ideals as

2240-489: A man who was guilty of murdering his father-in-law, by purifying him and bringing him to Olympus. However, Ixion started to lust after Hera. Hera complained about this to her husband, and Zeus decided to test Ixion. Zeus fashioned a cloud that resembles Hera ( Nephele ) and laid the cloud-Hera in Ixion's bed. Ixion coupled with Nephele, resulting in the birth of Centaurus . Zeus punished Ixion for lusting after Hera by tying him to

2400-579: A more complex narrative. Typhon is, similarly to in Hesiod, the child of Gaia and Tartarus, produced out of anger at Zeus's defeat of the Giants. The monster attacks heaven, and all of the gods, out of fear, transform into animals and flee to Egypt, except for Zeus, who attacks the monster with his thunderbolt and sickle. Typhon is wounded and retreats to Mount Kasios in Syria, where Zeus grapples with him, giving

2560-522: A priestess of Hera, who is subsequently turned into a cow, and suffers at Hera's hands: according to Apollodorus, Hera sends a gadfly to sting the cow, driving her all the way to Egypt, where she is finally transformed back into human form. In later accounts of Zeus's affair with Semele , a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia , Hera tricks her into persuading Zeus to grant her any promise. Semele asks him to come to her as he comes to his own wife Hera, and when Zeus upholds this promise, she dies out of fright and

2720-510: A prophecy from his parents, Gaia and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father. This causes Rhea "unceasing grief", and upon becoming pregnant with her sixth child, Zeus, she approaches her parents, Gaia and Uranus, seeking a plan to save her child and bring retribution to Cronus. Following her parents' instructions, she travels to Lyctus in Crete , where she gives birth to Zeus, handing

2880-438: A punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the human race. After Hephaestus does so, several other gods contribute to her creation. Hermes names the woman ' Pandora '. Pandora was given in marriage to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus . Zeus gave her a jar which contained many evils. Pandora opened

3040-725: A result of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus . Some Titans were apparently allowed to remain free. According to Hesiod , the Titan offspring of Uranus and Gaia were Oceanus , Coeus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , Theia , Rhea , Themis , Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Tethys , and Cronus . Eight of the Titan brothers and sisters married each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe, Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two Titan brothers married outside their immediate family. Iapetus married his niece Clymene ,

3200-587: A sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Moirai and Themis ; he instead transforms them into various species of birds. According to

3360-541: A scholion on the Iliad (citing Hesiod and Bacchylides ), when Europa is picking flowers with her female companions in a meadow in Phoenicia, Zeus transforms himself into a bull, lures her from the others, and then carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where he resumes his usual form to sleep with her. In Euripides ' Helen , Zeus takes the form of a swan, and after being chased by an eagle, finds shelter in

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3520-500: A similar fashion, in the Iliad , Hera, upon swearing an oath by the underworld river Styx , "invoked by name all the gods below Tartarus, that are called Titans" as witnesses. They were the older gods, but not, apparently, as was once thought, the old gods of an indigenous group in Greece, historically displaced by the new gods of Greek invaders. Rather, they were a group of gods, whose mythology at least, seems to have been borrowed from

3680-518: A snake and raped her. Rhea became pregnant and gave birth to Persephone . Zeus in the form of a snake would mate with his daughter Persephone, which resulted in the birth of Dionysus . Zeus granted Callirrhoe's prayer that her sons by Alcmaeon , Acarnan and Amphoterus , grow quickly so that they might be able to avenge the death of their father by the hands of Phegeus and his two sons. Both Zeus and Poseidon wooed Thetis , daughter of Nereus . But when Themis (or Prometheus) prophesied that

3840-440: A soul, the demiurge "put intelligence in soul, and soul in body" in order to make a living and intelligent whole. "Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God" (30a–b). Then, since the part is imperfect compared to the whole, the world had to be one and only. Therefore, the demiurge did not create several worlds, but

4000-404: A stone to swallow. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he is not in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him. Hyginus also says that Ida , Althaea, and Adrasteia , usually considered the children of Oceanus , are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus. According to

4160-468: A succession of kings in heaven: Anu (Sky), Kumarbi , and the storm-god Teshub , with many striking parallels to Hesiod's account of the Greek succession myth. Like Cronus, Kumarbi castrates the sky-god Anu, and takes over his kingship. And like Cronus, Kumarbi swallows gods (and a stone?), one of whom is the storm-god Teshub, who like the storm-god Zeus, is apparently victorious against Kumarbi and others in

4320-458: A template, he set about creating our world, which formerly only existed in a state of disorder. Timaeus continues with an explanation of the creation of the universe, which he ascribes to the handiwork of a divine craftsman. The demiurge, being good, wanted there to be as much good as was the world. The demiurge is said to bring order out of substance by imitating an unchanging and eternal model (paradigm). Ananke , often translated as 'Necessity',

4480-401: A third element was required as a mean: "two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of union between them". Moreover, since the world is not a surface but a solid, a fourth mean was needed to reach harmony: therefore, the creator placed water and air between fire and earth. "And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of

4640-769: A thirteenth Titan, Dione , the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. Plato's inclusion of Phorkys, apparently, as a Titan, and the mythographer Apollodorus 's inclusion of Dione , suggests an Orphic tradition in which the canonical twelve Titans consisted of Hesiod's twelve with Phorkys and Dione taking the place of Oceanus and Tethys. The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his somewhat confused genealogy, after listing as offspring of Aether (Upper Sky) and Earth (Gaia), Ocean [Oceanus], Themis, Tartarus, and Pontus, next lists "the Titans", followed by two of Hesiod's Hundred-Handers : Briareus and Gyges, one of Hesiod's three Cyclopes : Steropes, then continues his list with Atlas, Hyperion and Polus, Saturn [Cronus], Ops [Rhea], Moneta , Dione, and

4800-417: A transparent Indo-European etymology. Plato , in his Cratylus , gives a folk etymology of Zeus meaning "cause of life always to all things", because of puns between alternate titles of Zeus ( Zen and Dia ) with the Greek words for life and "because of". This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship. Diodorus Siculus wrote that Zeus

4960-476: A tree which produces golden apples as a wedding gift. Eratosthenes and Hyginus attribute a similar story to Pherecydes, in which Hera is amazed by the gift, and asks for the apples to be planted in the "garden of the gods", nearby to Mount Atlas . Apollodorus specifies them as the golden apples of the Hesperides , and says that Gaia gives them to Zeus after the marriage. According to Diodorus Siculus ,

Titans - Misplaced Pages Continue

5120-466: A war of the gods. Other Hittite texts contain allusions to "former gods" ( karuilies siunes ), precisely what Hesiod called the Titans, theoi proteroi . Like the Titans, these Hittite karuilies siunes , were twelve (usually) in number and end up confined in the underworld by the storm-god Teshub, imprisoned by gates they cannot open. In Hurrian, the Hittite's karuilies siunes were known as

5280-599: A welcome volunteer, on the side of Zeus; and it is by reason of my counsel that the cavernous gloom of Tartarus now hides ancient Cronus and his allies within it. The mythographer Apollodorus , gives a similar account of the succession myth to Hesiod's, but with a few significant differences. According to Apollodorus, there were thirteen original Titans, adding the Titaness Dione to Hesiod's list. The Titans (instead of being Uranus' firstborn as in Hesiod) were born after

5440-416: A wheel that spins forever. Once, Helios the sun god gave his chariot to his inexperienced son Phaethon to drive. Phaethon could not control his father's steeds so he ended up taking the chariot too high, freezing the earth, or too low, burning everything to the ground. The earth itself prayed to Zeus, and in order to prevent further disaster, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at Phaethon, killing him and saving

5600-430: A youthful affair between Zeus and Hera. In the Iliad , the pair are described as having first lay with each other before Cronus is sent to Tartarus, without the knowledge of their parents. A scholiast on the Iliad states that, after Cronus is banished to Tartarus, Oceanus and Tethys give Hera to Zeus in marriage, and only shortly after the two are wed, Hera gives birth to Hephaestus , having lay secretly with Zeus on

5760-535: Is a sensible object, the inner circle of the Diverse transmits its movement to the soul, whereby opinions arise, but when it is an intellectual object, the circle of the Same turns perfectly round and true knowledge arises (37a–c). The world as a whole, the planets, and the stars are living, visible gods (39e) that have an important role in creating human beings and regulating their moral life (41d). Timaeus claims that

5920-682: Is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan war and the battle over the City of Troy , in which Zeus plays a major part. Scenes in which Zeus appears include: When Hades requested to marry Zeus's daughter, Persephone , Zeus approved and advised Hades to abduct Persephone, as her mother Demeter would not allow her to marry Hades. In the Orphic "Rhapsodic Theogony" (first century BC/AD), Zeus wanted to marry his mother Rhea . After Rhea refused to marry him, Zeus turned into

6080-593: Is born, emerging from Zeus's head, but the foretold son never comes forth. Apollodorus presents a similar version, stating that Metis took many forms in attempting to avoid Zeus's embraces, and that it was Gaia alone who warned Zeus of the son who would overthrow him. According to a fragment likely from the Hesiodic corpus, quoted by Chrysippus, it is out of anger at Hera for producing Hephaestus on her own that Zeus has intercourse with Metis, and then swallows her, thereby giving rise to Athena from himself. A scholiast on

6240-424: Is given "ephemeral fruits" by the Moirai , which reduce his strength. The monster then flees to Thrace, where he hurls mountains at Zeus, which are sent back at him by the god's thunderbolts, before, while fleeing to Sicily , Zeus launches Mount Etna upon him, finally ending him. Nonnus , who gives the longest and most detailed account, presents a narrative similar to Apollodorus, with differences such as that it

6400-752: Is his sister Demeter , with whom he has Persephone . Zeus's next consort is the Titan Mnemosyne ; as described at the beginning of the Theogony , Zeus lies with Mnemosyne in Piera each night for nine nights, producing the nine Muses. His sixth wife is the Titan Leto , who bears him the twins Apollo and Artemis , who, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , are born on the island of Delos . In Hesiod's account, Zeus's seventh and final wife

6560-442: Is his sister Hera . While Hera is Zeus's seventh wife in Hesiod's version, in other accounts she is his first and only wife. In the Theogony , the couple has three children, Ares , Hebe , and Eileithyia . While Hesiod states that Hera produces Hephaestus on her own after Athena is born from Zeus's head, other versions, including Homer, have Hephaestus as a child of Zeus and Hera as well. Various authors give descriptions of

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6720-612: Is instead Cadmus and Pan who recovers Zeus's sinews, by luring Typhon with music and then tricking him. In the Iliad , Homer tells of another attempted overthrow, in which Hera, Poseidon, and Athena conspire to overpower Zeus and tie him in bonds. It is only because of the Nereid Thetis , who summons Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires , to Olympus, that the other Olympians abandon their plans (out of fear for Briareus). According to Hesiod, Zeus takes Metis , one of

6880-461: Is one of Plato's dialogues , mostly in the form of long monologues given by Critias and Timaeus , written c. 360 BC. The work puts forward reasoning on the possible nature of the physical world and human beings and is followed by the dialogue Critias . Participants in the dialogue include Socrates , Timaeus, Hermocrates , and Critias. Some scholars believe that it is not the Critias of

7040-404: Is postponed to Critias . The main content of the dialogue, the exposition by Timaeus, follows. Timaeus begins with a distinction between the physical world, and the eternal world. The physical one is the world which changes and perishes: therefore it is the object of opinion and unreasoned sensation. The eternal one never changes: therefore it is apprehended by reason (28a). The speeches about

7200-422: Is reduced to ashes. According to Callimachus, after Zeus sleeps with Callisto, Hera turns her into a bear, and instructs Artemis to shoot her. In addition, Zeus's son by Alcmene, the hero Heracles , is persecuted continuously throughout his mortal life by Hera, up until his apotheosis. According to Diodorus Siculus , Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, was the very last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with; following

7360-653: Is round about them", and further, that Zeus "thrust Cronos down to dwell beneath earth and the unresting sea." Brief mentions of the Titanomachy and the imprisonment of the Titans in Tartarus also occur in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound . In the Hymn , Hera, angry at Zeus, calls upon the "Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men". In Prometheus Bound , Prometheus (the son of

7520-425: Is uncertain. Hesiod in the Theogony gives a double etymology, deriving it from titaino [to strain] and tisis [vengeance], saying that Uranus gave them the name Titans: "in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards". But modern scholars doubt Hesiod's etymology. Jane Ellen Harrison asserts that the word "Titan" comes from

7680-568: The Iliad , in contrast, states that when Zeus swallows her, Metis is pregnant with Athena not by Zeus himself, but by the Cyclops Brontes. The motif of Zeus swallowing Metis can be seen as a continuation of the succession myth: it is prophesied that a son of Zeus will overthrow him, just as he overthrew his father, but whereas Cronos met his end because he did not swallow the real Zeus, Zeus holds onto his power because he successfully swallows

7840-577: The Cyclopes , who, in return, and out of gratitude, give him his thunderbolt, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Then begins the Titanomachy , the war between the Olympians, led by Zeus, and the Titans, led by Cronus, for control of the universe, with Zeus and the Olympians fighting from Mount Olympus , and the Titans fighting from Mount Othrys . The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases

8000-581: The Dead Gods ( Dingiruggû ), the Banished Gods ( ilāni darsūti ), and the Defeated (or Bound) Gods ( ilāni kamûti ). In Orphic literature, the Titans play an important role in what is often considered to be the central myth of Orphism , the sparagmos , that is the dismemberment of Dionysus , who in this context is often given the title Zagreus . As pieced together from various ancient sources,

8160-526: The Egyptian priest in Sais about long-term factors on the fate of mankind: There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story that even you [Greeks] have preserved, that once upon a time, Phaethon , the son of Helios , having yoked

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8320-648: The Giants , who fight the Olympian gods in a battle known as the Gigantomachy. According to Hesiod, the Giants are the offspring of Gaia, born from the drops of blood that fell on the ground when Cronus castrated his father Uranus; there is, however, no mention of a battle between the gods and the Giants in the Theogony . It is Apollodorus who provides the most complete account of the Gigantomachy. He says that Gaia, out of anger at how Zeus had imprisoned her children,

8480-606: The Hundred-Handers , who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface. He gives them nectar and ambrosia and revives their spirits, and they agree to aid him in the war. Zeus then launches his final attack on the Titans, hurling bolts of lightning upon them while the Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning

8640-537: The Muses . He was respected as a sky father who was chief of the gods and assigned roles to the others: "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence." He was equated with many foreign weather gods , permitting Pausanias to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". Zeus's symbols are the thunderbolt , eagle , bull , and oak . In addition to his Indo-European inheritance ,

8800-469: The Near East (see "Near East origins," below). These imported gods gave context and provided a backstory for the Olympian gods, explaining where these Greek Olympian gods had come from, and how they had come to occupy their position of supremacy in the cosmos. The Titans were the previous generation, and family of gods, whom the Olympians had to overthrow, and banish from the upper world, in order to become

8960-461: The Oceanid daughters of Oceanus and Tethys , as his first wife. However, when she is about to give birth to a daughter, Athena , he swallows her whole upon the advice of Gaia and Uranus, as it had been foretold that after bearing a daughter, she would give birth to a son, who would overthrow him as king of gods and mortals; it is from this position that Metis gives counsel to Zeus. In time, Athena

9120-552: The Proto-Indo-European vocative * dyeu-ph 2 tēr ), deriving from the root * dyeu - ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Albanian Zoj-z and Messapic Zis are clear equivalents and cognates of Zeus . In the Greek, Albanian, and Messapic forms the original cluster *di̯ underwent affrication to *dz . Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such

9280-433: The Theogony , after Zeus reaches manhood, Cronus is made to disgorge the five children and the stone "by the stratagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus", presumably in reverse order, vomiting out the stone first, then each of the five children in the opposite order to swallowing. Zeus then sets up the stone at Delphi , so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men". Zeus next frees

9440-467: The Thirty Tyrants who appears in this dialogue, but his grandfather, also named Critias. At the beginning of the dialogue, the absence of another, unknown dialogue participant, present on the day before, is bemoaned. It has been suggested from some traditions— Diogenes Laertius (VIII 85) from Hermippus of Smyrna (3rd century BC) and Timon of Phlius ( c. 320 – c. 235 BC)—that Timaeus

9600-648: The Timaeus had a strong influence on medieval Neoplatonic cosmology and was commented on particularly by 12th-century Christian philosophers of the Chartres School , such as Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches , who, interpreting it in the light of the Christian faith, understood the dialogue to refer to a creatio ex nihilo . Calcidius himself never explicitly linked the Platonic creation myth in

9760-734: The Timaeus with the Old Testament creation story in Genesis in his commentary on the dialogue. The dialogue was also highly influential in Arabic-speaking regions beginning in the 10th century AD. The Catalogue (fihrist) of Ibn al-Nadīm provides some evidence for an early translation by Ibn al-Bitriq ( Al-Kindī 's circle). It is believed that the Syrian Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809 – 873 AD) corrected this translation or translated

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9920-485: The oracle of Dodona , his consort was said to be Dione , by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite . According to the Theogony , Zeus's first wife was Metis , by whom he had Athena . Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Apollo , Artemis , Hermes , Persephone , Dionysus , Perseus , Heracles , Helen of Troy , Minos , and

10080-517: The tutelary deity of the mountain, stops her, saying that Zeus is sleeping there with Leto. Photius , in his Bibliotheca , tells us that in Ptolemy Hephaestion 's New History , Hera refuses to lay with Zeus, and hides in a cave to avoid him, before an earthborn man named Achilles convinces her to marry Zeus, leading to the pair first sleeping with each other. According to Stephanus of Byzantium , Zeus and Hera first lay together at

10240-399: The world-soul . He then divided following precise mathematical proportions, cutting the compound lengthways, fixed the resulting two bands in their middle, like in the letter chi (Χ) and connected them at their ends, to have two crossing circles. The demiurge imparted on them a circular movement on their axis: the outer circle was assigned Sameness and turned horizontally to the right, while

10400-723: The "gods of down under" ( enna durenna ) and the Hittites identified these gods with the Anunnaki , the Babylonian gods of the underworld, whose defeat and imprisonment by the storm-god Marduk , in the Babylonian poem Enûma Eliš (late second millennium BC or earlier), parallels the defeat and imprisonment of the Titans. Other collectivities of gods, perhaps associated with the Mesopotamian Anunnaki, include

10560-475: The Eating of Flesh , Plutarch writes of "stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood". While, according to the early 4th century AD Christian apologist Arnobius , and the 5th century AD Greek epic poet Nonnus , it is as punishment for their murder of Dionysus that

10720-810: The Greek succession myth was imported from the Near East , and that along with this imported myth came stories of a group of former ruling gods, who had been defeated and displaced, and who became identified, by the Greeks, as the Titans. Features of Hesiod's account of the Titans can be seen in the stories of the Hurrians , the Hittites , the Babylonians , and other Near Eastern cultures. The Hurro - Hittite text Song of Kumarbi (also called Kingship in Heaven ), written five hundred years before Hesiod, tells of

10880-404: The Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war called "the Titanomachy " ( Ancient Greek : ἡ Τῑτᾱνομαχίᾱ , romanized :  hē Tītānomakhíā , lit.   'a battle of Titans'). As

11040-691: The Greek τίτανος, signifying white "earth, clay, or gypsum", and that the Titans were "white clay men", or men covered by white clay or gypsum dust in their rituals. The planet Saturn is named for the Roman equivalent of the Titan Cronus. Saturn's largest moon, Titan , is named after the Titans generally, and the other moons of Saturn are named after individual Titans, specifically Tethys , Phoebe , Rhea , Hyperion , and Iapetus . Astronomer William Henry Pickering claimed to have discovered another moon of Saturn which he named Themis , but this discovery

11200-529: The Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity. Popular conceptions of Zeus differed widely from place to place. Local varieties of Zeus often have little in common with each other except the name. They exercised different areas of authority and were worshiped in different ways; for example, some local cults conceived of Zeus as

11360-417: The Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes in Tartarus. Although Hesiod does not say how Zeus was eventually able to free his siblings, according to Apollodorus, Zeus was aided by Oceanus' daughter Metis , who gave Cronus an emetic which forced him to disgorge his children that he had swallowed. According to Apollodorus, in the tenth year of the ensuing war, Zeus learned from Gaia, that he would be victorious if he had

11520-564: The Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopes as allies. So Zeus slew their warder Campe (a detail not found in Hesiod) and released them, and in addition to giving Zeus his thunderbolt (as in Hesiod), the Cyclopes also gave Poseidon his trident , and Hades a helmet, and "with these weapons the gods overcame the Titans, shut them up in Tartarus, and appointed the Hundred-handers their guards". The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his Fabulae , gives an unusual (and perhaps confused) account of

11680-639: The Hundred-Handers the task of acting as their warders. Apollodorus provides a similar account, saying that, when Zeus reaches adulthood, he enlists the help of the Oceanid Metis , who gives Cronus an emetic , forcing to him to disgorge the stone and Zeus's five siblings. Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe . The Cyclopes give him his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident and Hades his helmet of invisibility, and

11840-672: The Lydian , considered Zeus to have been born in Lydia , while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus , says that he was born in Arcadia . Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he is born in Dicte , and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he

12000-539: The Sun), would seem to be the result of cosmological necessity, for how could a world encircling river, or the Sun, be confined in Tartarus? As for other male offspring of the Titans, some seem to have participated in the Titanomachy, and were punished as a result, and others did not, or at least (like Helios) remained free. Three of Iapetus' sons, Atlas , Menoetius , and Prometheus are specifically connected by ancient sources with

12160-470: The Titan Iapetus ) refers to the Titanomachy, and his part in it: When first the heavenly powers were moved to wrath, and mutual dissension was stirred up among them—some bent on casting Cronus from his seat so Zeus, in truth, might reign; others, eager for the contrary end, that Zeus might never win mastery over the gods—it was then that I, although advising them for the best, was unable to persuade

12320-489: The Titaness Tethys . Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound , has Oceanus free to visit his nephew Prometheus sometime after the war. Like Oceanus, Helios, the Titan son of Hyperion, certainly remained free to drive his sun-chariot daily across the sky, taking an active part in events subsequent to the Titanomachy. The freedom of Oceanus, along with Helios (Sun), and perhaps Hyperion (to the extent that he also represented

12480-426: The Titanomachy, but Prometheus does remain free, in the Theogony , for his deception of Zeus at Mecone and his subsequent theft of fire , for which transgressions Prometheus was famously punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock where an eagle came to eat his "immortal liver" every day, which then grew back every night. However Aeschylus 's Prometheus Bound (as mentioned above) does have Prometheus say that he

12640-434: The Titanomachy, their war with the Olympians. As a group, they have no further role in conventional Greek myth, nor do they play any part in Greek cult. As individuals, few of the Titans have any separate identity. Aside from Cronus, the only other figure Homer mentions by name as being a Titan is Iapetus. Some Titans seem only to serve a genealogical function, providing parents for more important offspring: Coeus and Phoebe as

12800-408: The Titanomachy. According to Hyginus the Titanomachy came about because of a dispute between Jupiter and Juno (the Roman equivalents of Zeus and Hera). Juno, Jupiter's jealous wife, was angry at her husband, on account of Jupiter's son Epaphus by Io (one of her husband's many lovers). Because of this Juno incited the Titans to rebel against Jupiter and restore Saturn (Cronus) to the kingship of

12960-790: The Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Cronus and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (i.e. the river gods, the Oceanids, the Olympians, the Horae, the Moirai, and the Muses) are not normally considered to be Titans, descendants of the other Titans, notably: Leto, Helios, Atlas, and Prometheus, are themselves sometimes referred to as Titans. Passages in a section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus suggest

13120-439: The Titans and banishes them to Tartarus, his rule is challenged by the monster Typhon , a giant serpentine creature who battles Zeus for control of the cosmos. According to Hesiod, Typhon is the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus , described as having a hundred snaky fire-breathing heads. Hesiod says he "would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had it not been for Zeus noticing the monster and dispatching with him quickly:

13280-467: The Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards. According to the Iliad , after the battle with the Titans, Zeus shares the world with his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus receives the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, with the earth and Olympus remaining common ground. Upon assuming his place as king of the cosmos, Zeus's rule is quickly challenged. The first of these challenges to his power comes from

13440-405: The Titans end up imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus. The only ancient source to explicitly connect the sparagmos and the anthropogony is the 6th century AD Neoplatonist Olympiodorus , who writes that, according to Orpheus, after the Titans had dismembered and eaten Dionysus, "Zeus, angered by the deed, blasts them with his thunderbolts, and from the sublimate of the vapors that rise from them comes

13600-511: The Titans in a revolt against Zeus (Jupiter). The Theogony has Menoetius struck down by Zeus' thunderbolt and cast into Erebus "because of his mad presumption and exceeding pride". Whether Hesiod was using Erebus as another name for Tartarus (as was sometimes done), or meant that Menoetius's punishment was because of his participation in the Titanomachy is unclear, and no other early source mentions this event, however Apollodorus says that it was. Hesiod does not mention Prometheus in connection with

13760-406: The Titans, bore the Giants to Uranus. There comes to the gods a prophecy that the Giants cannot be defeated by the gods on their own, but can be defeated only with the help of a mortal; Gaia, upon hearing of this, seeks a special pharmakon (herb) that will prevent the Giants from being killed. Zeus, however, orders Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to stop shining, and harvests all of

13920-489: The Titans, children of Heaven and Earth; but they, disdaining counsels of craft, in the pride of their strength thought to gain the mastery without a struggle and by force. ... That it was not by brute strength nor through violence, but by guile that those who should gain the upper hand were destined to prevail. And though I argued all this to them, they did not pay any attention to my words. With all that before me, it seemed best that, joining with my mother, I should place myself,

14080-534: The Titans, defeating them and throwing them into Tartarus , with the Hundred-Handers as their guards. Only brief references to the Titans and the succession myth are found in Homer . In the Iliad , Homer tells us that "the gods ... that are called Titans" reside in Tartarus. Specifically, Homer says that "Iapetus and Cronos ... have joy neither in the rays of Helios Hyperion [the Sun] nor in any breeze, but deep Tartarus

14240-399: The account (20b) to do so. Critias proceeds to tell the story of Solon 's journey to Egypt where he hears the story of Atlantis , and how Athens used to be an ideal state that subsequently waged war against Atlantis (25a). Critias believes that he is getting ahead of himself, and mentions that Timaeus will tell part of the account from the origin of the universe to man. Critias also cites

14400-402: The basis for an Orphic doctrine of the divinity of man." However, when and to what extent there existed any Orphic tradition which included these elements is the subject of open debate. The 2nd century AD biographer and essayist Plutarch makes a connection between the sparagmos and the punishment of the Titans, but makes no mention of the anthropogony, or Orpheus, or Orphism. In his essay On

14560-412: The better portions. He sacrificed a large ox , and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones with fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones. This set a precedent for sacrifices, where humans will keep the fat for themselves and burn the bones for

14720-449: The birth of Heracles, he ceased to beget humans altogether, and fathered no more children. The following is a list of Zeus's offspring, by various mothers. Beside each offspring, the earliest source to record the parentage is given, along with the century to which the source dates. When the gods met at Mecone to discuss which portions they will receive after a sacrifice, the titan Prometheus decided to trick Zeus so that humans receive

14880-439: The blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys , whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Prometheus Lyomenos , an undated lost play by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 455 BC), had

15040-428: The bridal clothing; she is so relieved that the couple are reconciled. According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica , when Hera is angry with her husband, she retreats instead to Cithaeron, and Zeus goes to the earth-born man Alalcomeneus, who suggests he pretend to marry someone else. With the help of Alalcomeneus, Zeus creates a wooden statue from an oak tree, dresses it as

15200-409: The cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing]

15360-479: The celestial personifications Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn). From Iapetus and Clymene came Atlas , Menoetius , Prometheus , and Epimetheus . From Cronus and Rhea came the Olympians: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus. By Zeus, Themis bore the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne bore the nine Muses . While the descendants of

15520-405: The child. The Titans whiten their faces with gypsum, and distracting the infant Dionysus with various toys, including a mirror, they seized Dionysus and tore (or cut) him to pieces. The pieces were then boiled, roasted and partially eaten, by the Titans. But Athena managed to save Dionysus' heart, by which Zeus was able to contrive his rebirth from Semele. Commonly presented as a part of the myth of

15680-426: The children she birthed. This he did with the first five: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon (in that order), to Rhea's great sorrow. However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus, and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion. Meanwhile, Rhea gave Cronus

15840-424: The city of Hermione , having come there from Crete. Callimachus, in a fragment from his Aetia , also apparently makes reference to the couple's union occurring at Naxos . Though no complete account of Zeus and Hera's wedding exists, various authors make reference to it. According to a scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica , Pherecydes states that when Zeus and Hera are being married, Gaia brings

16000-458: The classical "cloud-gatherer" ( Greek : Νεφεληγερέτα , Nephelēgereta ) also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East , such as the scepter . The god's name in the nominative is Ζεύς ( Zeús ). It is inflected as follows: vocative : Ζεῦ ( Zeû ); accusative : Δία ( Día ); genitive : Διός ( Diós ); dative : Διί ( Dií ). Diogenes Laërtius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling

16160-438: The cosmos. According to the standard version of the succession myth, given in Hesiod's Theogony , Uranus initially produced eighteen children with Gaia: the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes , and the three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers), but hating them, he hid them away somewhere inside Gaia. Angry and in distress, Gaia fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus

16320-422: The creator was to bring order and clarity to this substance. Therefore, all the properties of the world are to be explained by the demiurge's choice of what is fair and good; or, the idea of a dichotomy between good and evil . First of all, the world is a living creature . Since the unintelligent creatures are in their appearance less fair than intelligent creatures, and since intelligence needs to be settled in

16480-476: The daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, while Crius married his half-sister Eurybia , the daughter of Gaia and Pontus . The two remaining Titan sisters, Themis and Mnemosyne, became wives of their nephew Zeus . From Oceanus and Tethys came the three thousand river gods , and three thousand Oceanid nymphs. From Coeus and Phoebe came Leto , another wife of Zeus, and Asteria . From Crius and Eurybia came Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses . From Hyperion and Theia came

16640-439: The dialogue addresses the creation of humans, including the soul , anatomy , perception , and transmigration of the soul . Plato also discusses the creation of the body, as well as the causes of bodily and psychic diseases. The Timaeus was translated into Latin first by Marcus Tullius Cicero around 45 BC (sections 27d–47b), and later by Calcidius in the 4th century AD (up to section 53c). Cicero's fragmentary translation

16800-420: The dismembered Dionysus Zagreus, is an Orphic anthropogony, that is an Orphic account of the origin of human beings. According to this widely held view, as punishment for their crime, Zeus struck the Titans with his thunderbolt , and from the remains of the destroyed Titans humankind was born, which resulted in a human inheritance of ancestral guilt, for this original sin of the Titans, and by some accounts "formed

16960-530: The entire work himself. However, only the circulation of many exegeses of Timaeus is confirmed. There is also evidence of Galen 's commentary on the dialogue being highly influential in the Arabic-speaking world, with Galen's Synopsis being preserved in a medieval Arabic translation. During much of the Middle Ages in the Latin-speaking West the Timaeus was the sole work of Plato which

17120-427: The farthest part of huge earth. They cannot get out, for Poseidon has set bronze gates upon it, and a wall is extended on both sides. However, besides Cronus, exactly which of the other Titans were supposed to have been imprisoned in Tartarus is unclear. The only original Titan, mentioned by name, as being confined with Cronus in Tartarus, is Iapetus . But, not all the Titans were imprisoned there. Certainly Oceanus ,

17280-436: The gods on Mount Olympus . His name is cognate with the first syllable of his Roman equivalent Jupiter . Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea , the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera , by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares , Eileithyia , Hebe , and Hephaestus . At

17440-453: The gods. Zeus, enraged at Prometheus's deception, prohibited the use of fire by humans. Prometheus, however, stole fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk and gave it to humans. This further enraged Zeus, who punished Prometheus by binding him to a cliff, where an eagle constantly ate Prometheus's liver, which regenerated every night. Prometheus was eventually freed from his misery by Heracles . Now Zeus, angry at humans, decides to give humanity

17600-410: The gods. Jupiter, with the help of Minerva ( Athena ), Apollo , and Diana ( Artemis ), put down the rebellion, and hurled the Titans (as in other accounts) down to Tartarus. After being overthrown in the Titanomachy, Cronus and his fellow vanquished Titans were cast into Tartarus: That is where the Titan gods are hidden under murky gloom by the plans of the cloud-gatherer Zeus, in a dank place, at

17760-411: The great world encircling river, seems to have remained free, and in fact, seems not to have fought on the Titans' side at all. In Hesiod, Oceanus sends his daughter Styx , with her children Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Power), and Bia (Force), to fight on Zeus' side against the Titans, while in the Iliad , Hera says that, during the Titanomachy, she was cared for by Oceanus and his wife

17920-409: The herb himself, before having Athena summon Heracles . In the conflict, Porphyrion , one of the most powerful of the Giants, launches an attack upon Heracles and Hera; Zeus, however, causes Porphyrion to become lustful for Hera, and when he is just about to violate her, Zeus strikes him with his thunderbolt, before Heracles deals the fatal blow with an arrow. In the Theogony , after Zeus defeats

18080-427: The inner circle was assigned to Difference and turned diagonally and to the left (34c–36c). The demiurge gave the primacy to the motion of Sameness and left it undivided; but he divided the motion of Difference in six parts, to have seven unequal circles. He prescribed these circles to move in opposite directions, three of them with equal speeds, the others with unequal speeds, but always in proportion. These circles are

18240-459: The island of Samos beforehand; to conceal this act, she claimed that she had produced Hephaestus on her own. According to another scholiast on the Iliad , Callimachus , in his Aetia , says that Zeus lay with Hera for three hundred years on the island of Samos. According to a scholion on Theocritus ' Idylls , Zeus, one day seeing Hera walking apart from the other gods, becomes intent on having intercourse with her, and transforms himself into

18400-431: The jar and released all the evils, which made mankind miserable. Only hope remained inside the jar. When Zeus was atop Mount Olympus he was appalled by human sacrifice and other signs of human decadence. He decided to wipe out mankind and flooded the world with the help of his brother Poseidon . After the flood, only Deucalion and Pyrrha remained. This flood narrative is a common motif in mythology. The Iliad

18560-474: The lap of Leda , subsequently seducing her, while in Euripides's lost play Antiope , Zeus apparently took the form of a satyr to sleep with Antiope . Various authors speak of Zeus raping Callisto , one of the companions of Artemis , doing so in the form of Artemis herself according to Ovid (or, as mentioned by Apollodorus, in the form of Apollo ), and Pherecydes relates that Zeus sleeps with Alcmene ,

18720-460: The location of the marriage is in the land of the Knossians , nearby to the river Theren, while Lactantius attributes to Varro the statement that the couple are married on the island of Samos. There exist several stories in which Zeus, receiving advice, is able to reconcile with an angered Hera. According to Pausanias, Hera, angry with her husband, retreats to the island of Euboea, where she

18880-603: The matter from which men are created." Olympiodorus goes on to conclude that, because the Titans had eaten his flesh, we their descendants, are a part of Dionysus. Some 19th- and 20th-century scholars, including Jane Ellen Harrison , have argued that an initiatory or shamanic ritual underlies the myth of the dismemberment and cannibalism of Dionysus by the Titans. Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. The etymology of Τiτᾶνες ( Titanes )

19040-474: The minute particle of each element had a special geometric shape : tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth). Timaeus makes conjectures on the composition of the four elements which some ancient Greeks thought constituted the physical universe: earth, water, air, and fire. Timaeus links each of these elements to a certain Platonic solid : the element of earth would be

19200-520: The monster a chance to wrap him in his coils, and rip out the sinews from his hands and feet. Disabled, Zeus is taken by Typhon to the Corycian Cave in Cilicia, where he is guarded by the "she-dragon" Delphyne . Hermes and Aegipan , however, steal back Zeus's sinews, and refit them, reviving him and allowing him to return to the battle, pursuing Typhon, who flees to Mount Nysa; there, Typhon

19360-400: The myth of Zeus. In Hesiod 's Theogony (c. 730 – 700 BC), Cronus , after castrating his father Uranus , becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister Rhea , by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six. He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received

19520-681: The name Ζάς . The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀇𐀸 , di-we (dative) and 𐀇𐀺 , di-wo (genitive), written in the Linear B syllabic script. Zeus is the Greek continuation of * Di̯ēus , the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called * Dyeus ph 2 tēr ("Sky Father"). The god is known under this name in the Rigveda ( Vedic Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita ), Latin (compare Jupiter , from Iuppiter , deriving from

19680-450: The newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon (Aegeum). Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it is not his son. While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so, and other authors give different locations. The poet Eumelos of Corinth (8th century BC), according to John

19840-597: The nine Muses . Leto, who gives birth to the Olympians Apollo and Artemis , takes an active part on the side of the Trojans in the Iliad , and is also involved in the story of the giant Tityos . Tethys, presumably along with her husband Oceanus, took no part in the war, and, as mentioned above, provided safe refuge for Hera during the war. Rhea remains free and active after the war: appearing at Leto's delivery of Apollo, as Zeus' messenger to Demeter announcing

20000-457: The orbits of the heavenly bodies : the three moving at equal speeds are the Sun, Venus and Mercury, while the four moving at unequal speeds are the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (36c–d). The complicated pattern of these movements is bound to be repeated again after a period called a 'complete' or 'perfect' year (39d). Then, the demiurge connected the body and the soul of the universe: he diffused

20160-488: The parents of Leto , the mother, by Zeus, of the Olympians Apollo and Artemis ; Hyperion and Theia as the parents of Helios , Selene and Eos ; Iapetus as the father of Atlas and Prometheus ; and Crius as the father of three sons Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses , who themselves seem only to exist to provide fathers for more important figures such as the Anemoi (Winds), Nike (Victory), and Hecate . The Titans play

20320-433: The parents of Oceanus and Tethys, and Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of Cronus and Rhea "and all that go with them", plus Phorcys . In his Cratylus , Plato quotes Orpheus as saying that Oceanus and Tethys were "the first to marry", possibly also reflecting an Orphic theogony in which Oceanus and Tethys, rather than Uranus and Gaia, were the primeval parents. To Hesiod's twelve Titans, the mythographer Apollodorus , adds

20480-539: The possibility that Homer knew of a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the parents of the Titans. Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys", while in the same passage Hypnos describes Oceanus as "from whom they all are sprung". Plato , in his Timaeus , provides a genealogy (probably Orphic) which perhaps reflected an attempt to reconcile this apparent divergence between Homer and Hesiod, with Uranus and Gaia as

20640-579: The reconstructed story, usually given by modern scholars, goes as follows. Zeus had intercourse with Persephone in the form of a serpent, producing Dionysus. He is taken to Mount Ida where (like the infant Zeus) he is guarded by the dancing Curetes . Zeus intended Dionysus to be his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but a jealous Hera incited the Titans—;who apparently unlike in Hesiod and Homer, were not imprisoned in Tartarus—;to kill

20800-424: The request of Apollo's mother, Leto , Zeus instead ordered Apollo to serve as a slave to King Admetus of Pherae for a year. According to Diodorus Siculus , Zeus killed Asclepius because of complains from Hades, who was worried that the number of people in the underworld was diminishing because of Asclepius's resurrections. The winged horse Pegasus carried the thunderbolts of Zeus. Zeus took pity on Ixion ,

20960-406: The ruling pantheon of Greek gods. For Hesiod, possibly in order to match the twelve Olympian gods, there were twelve Titans: six males and six females, with some of Hesiod's names perhaps being mere poetic inventions, so as to arrive at the right number. In Hesiod's Theogony , apart from Cronus, the Titans play no part at all in the overthrow of Uranus, and we only hear of their collective action in

21120-424: The settlement concerning Persephone , bringing Pelops back to life. While in Hesiod's Theogony , and Homer's Iliad , Cronus and the other Titans are confined to Tartarus—apparently forever—another tradition, as indicated by later sources, seems to have had Cronus, or other of the Titans, being eventually set free. Pindar , in one of his poems (462 BC), says that, although Atlas still "strains against

21280-432: The son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus . Zeus was afraid that his grandson Asclepius would teach resurrection to humans, so he killed Asclepius with his thunderbolt. This angered Asclepius's father, Apollo , who in turn killed the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolts of Zeus. Angered at this, Zeus would have imprisoned Apollo in Tartarus. However, at

21440-422: The soul from the center of the body to its extremities in every direction, allowing the invisible soul to envelop the visible body. The soul began to rotate and this was the beginning of its eternal and rational life (36e). Therefore, having been composed by Sameness, Difference and Existence (their mean), and formed in right proportions, the soul declares the sameness or difference of every object it meets: when it

21600-693: The soul of the world was created (Plato's following discussion is obscure, and almost certainly intended to be read in light of the Sophist ). The demiurge combined three elements: two varieties of Sameness (one indivisible and another divisible), two varieties of Difference (again, one indivisible and another divisible), and two types of Being (or Existence, once more, one indivisible and another divisible). From this emerged three compound substances: intermediate (or mixed) Being, intermediate Sameness, and intermediate Difference. Compounding these three intermediate substances together, one final substance resulted:

21760-421: The steeds in his father's chariot , because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals. The history of Atlantis

21920-453: The threat, in the form of the potential mother, and so the "cycle of displacement" is brought to an end. In addition, the myth can be seen as an allegory for Zeus gaining the wisdom of Metis for himself by swallowing her. In Hesiod's account, Zeus's second wife is Themis , one of the Titan daughters of Uranus and Gaia, with whom he has the Horae , listed as Eunomia , Dike and Eirene , and

22080-565: The three Furies : Alecto , Megaera , and Tisiphone . The geographer Pausanias , mentions seeing the image of a man in armor, who was supposed to be the Titan Anytos , who was said to have raised the Arcadian Despoina . The Titans, as a group, represent a pre-Olympian order. Hesiod uses the expression "the former gods" ( theoi proteroi ) in reference to the Titans. They were the banished gods, who were no longer part of

22240-420: The three Hundred-Handers and the three Cyclopes , and while Uranus imprisoned these first six of his offspring, he apparently left the Titans free. Not just Cronus, but all the Titans, except Oceanus, attacked Uranus. After Cronus castrated Uranus, the Titans freed the Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes (unlike in Hesiod, where they apparently remained imprisoned), and made Cronus their sovereign, who then reimprisoned

22400-504: The three Moirai : Clotho , Lachesis and Atropos . A fragment from Pindar calls Themis Zeus's first wife, and states that she is brought by the Moirai (in this version not her daughters) up to Olympus, where she becomes the bride of Zeus and bears him the Horae. According to Hesiod, Zeus next marries the Oceanid Eurynome , with whom he has the three Charites , namely Aglaea , Euphrosyne and Thalia . Zeus's fourth wife

22560-419: The thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia. A great war was begun, the Titanomachy , for control of the cosmos. The Titans fought from Mount Othrys , while the Olympians fought from Mount Olympus . In the tenth year of that great war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans, helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury of his thunderbolt at

22720-511: The two of them meet in a cataclysmic battle, before Zeus defeats him easily with his thunderbolt, and the creature is hurled down to Tartarus. Epimenides presents a different version, in which Typhon makes his way into Zeus's palace while he is sleeping, only for Zeus to wake and kill the monster with a thunderbolt. Aeschylus and Pindar give somewhat similar accounts to Hesiod, in that Zeus overcomes Typhon with relative ease, defeating him with his thunderbolt. Apollodorus, in contrast, provides

22880-426: The two worlds are conditioned by the different nature of their objects. Indeed, "a description of what is changeless, fixed and clearly intelligible will be changeless and fixed," (29b), while a description of what changes and is likely, will also change and be just likely. "As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief" (29c). Therefore, in a description of the physical world, one "should not look for anything more than

23040-532: The upper world. Rather they were the gods who dwelt underground in Tartarus , and as such, they may have been thought of as "gods of the underworld", who were the antithesis of, and in opposition to, the Olympians, the gods of the heavens. Hesiod called the Titans "earth-born" ( chthonic ), and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , Hera prays to the Titans "who dwell beneath the earth", calling on them to aid her against Zeus, just as if they were chthonic spirits. In

23200-421: The war. In the Theogony both Atlas and Menoetius received punishments from Zeus, but Hesiod does not say for what crime exactly they were punished. Atlas was famously punished by Zeus, by being forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders, but none of the early sources for this story (Hesiod, Homer, Pindar , and Aeschylus ) say that his punishment was as a result of the war. According to Hyginus however, Atlas led

23360-454: The weight of the sky ... Zeus freed the Titans", and in another poem (476 BC), Pindar has Cronus, in fact, ruling in the Isles of the Blessed , a land where the Greek heroes reside in the afterlife: Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus' road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of

23520-530: The wife of Amphitryon , in the form of her own husband. Several accounts state that Zeus approached the Argive princess Danae in the form of a shower of gold, and according to Ovid he abducts Aegina in the form of a flame. In accounts of Zeus's affairs, Hera is often depicted as a jealous wife, with there being various stories of her persecuting either the women with whom Zeus sleeps, or their children by him. Several authors relate that Zeus sleeps with Io ,

23680-417: The world a rotatory or circular movement , which is the "most appropriate to mind and intelligence" on account of its being the most uniform (34a). Finally, he created the soul of the world , placed that soul in the center of the world's body and diffused it in every direction. Having thus been created as a perfect, self-sufficient and intelligent being, the world is a god (34b). Timaeus then explains how

23840-558: The world from further harm. In a satirical work, Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian , Zeus berates Helios for allowing such thing to happen; he returns the damaged chariot to him and warns him that if he dares do that again, he will strike him with one of this thunderbolts. Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults . Though

24000-430: The world was created, and it was harmonised by proportion" (31–33). As for the figure, the demiurge created the world in the geometric form of a globe . Indeed, the round figure is the most perfect one, because it comprehends or averages all the other figures and it is the most omnimorphic of all figures: "he [the demiurge] considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike" (33b). The creator assigned then to

24160-411: Was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was the cause of life (zen). While Lactantius wrote that he was called Zeus and Zen, not because he is the giver of life, but because he was the first who lived of the children of Cronus . Zeus was called by numerous alternative names or surnames, known as epithets . Some epithets are the surviving names of local gods who were consolidated into

24320-487: Was an ally of Zeus during the Titanomachy. The female Titans, to the extent that they are mentioned at all, appear also to have been allowed to remain free. Three of these, according to the Theogony , become wives of Zeus : Themis , Mnemosyne , and Leto , the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe . Themis gives birth to the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne gives birth to

24480-521: Was born in a cave in Dicte. While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts. According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida , daughters of Melisseus , to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea , while the Kouretes guard

24640-595: Was highly influential in late antiquity, especially on Latin-speaking Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine who did not appear to have access to the original Greek dialogue. The manuscript production and preservation of Cicero's Timaeus (among many other Latin philosophical works) is largely due to the works of monastic scholars, especially at Corbie in North-East France during the Carolingian Period. Calcidius' more extensive translation of

24800-608: Was influenced by a book about Pythagoras , written by Philolaus , although this assertion is generally considered false. The dialogue takes place the day after Socrates described his ideal state. In Plato's works, such a discussion occurs in the Republic . Socrates feels that his description of the ideal state was not sufficient for the purposes of entertainment and that "I would be glad to hear some account of it engaging in transactions with other states" (19b). Hermocrates wishes to oblige Socrates and mentions that Critias knows just

24960-437: Was never confirmed, and the name Themis was given to an asteroid, 24 Themis . Asteroid 57 Mnemosyne was also named for the Titan. A proto-planet Theia is hypothesized to have been involved in a collision in the early solar system, forming the Earth's moon. Zeus Zeus ( / zj uː s / , Ancient Greek : Ζεύς ) is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and mythology , who rules as king of

25120-402: Was raised, and Zeus, unable to resolve the situation, seeks the advice of Cithaeron, ruler of Plataea , supposedly the most intelligent man on earth. Cithaeron instructs him to fashion a wooden statue and dress it as a bride, and then pretend that he is marrying one "Plataea", a daughter of Asopus . When Hera hears of this, she immediately rushes there, only to discover the ruse upon ripping away

25280-470: Was the only other co-existent element or presence in Plato's cosmogony . Later Platonists clarified that the eternal model existed in the mind of the demiurge. Timaeus describes the substance as a lack of homogeneity or balance, in which the four elements ( earth , air , fire and water ) were shapeless, mixed and in constant motion. Considering that order is favourable over disorder, the essential act of

25440-472: Was then related to shape and size of the constituent triangles. The fifth element (i.e. Platonic solid) was the dodecahedron , whose faces are not triangular, and which was taken to represent the shape of the Universe as a whole, possibly because of all the elements it most approximates a sphere, which Timaeus has already noted was the shape into which God had formed the Universe. The extensive final part of

25600-555: Was willing. So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush", gave him an adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father. This enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume supreme command of the cosmos, with the Titans as his subordinates. Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control. Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of

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