Typhon ( / ˈ t aɪ f ɒ n , - f ən / ; Ancient Greek : Τυφῶν , romanized : Typhôn , [tyːpʰɔ̂ːn] ), also Typhoeus ( / t aɪ ˈ f iː ə s / ; Τυφωεύς , Typhōeús ), Typhaon ( Τυφάων , Typháōn ) or Typhos ( Τυφώς , Typhṓs ), was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology . According to Hesiod , Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus . However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus . Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters.
183-457: Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna , or in later accounts, the island of Ischia . Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story
366-577: 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. Pindar Pindar ( / ˈ p ɪ n d ər / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Πίνδαρος Pindaros [píndaros] ; Latin : Pindarus ; c. 518 BC – c. 438 BC )
549-416: A "babel of screaming sounds". Nonnus also gives Typhon "legions of arms innumerable", and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had "many" hands, and Ovid had given Typhon a hundred hands, Nonnus gives Typhon two hundred. According to Hesiod 's Theogony , Typhon "was joined in love" to Echidna , a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon "fierce offspring". First, according to Hesiod, there
732-472: A "hissing" Typhon, his eyes flashing, "withstood all the gods", but "the unsleeping bolt of Zeus" struck him, and "he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt. And now, a helpless and a sprawling bulk, he lies hard by the narrows of the sea, pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna; while on the topmost summit Hephaestus sits and hammers the molten ore. There, one day, shall burst forth [370] rivers of fire,1with savage jaws devouring
915-735: A "tangled army of snakes", snaky feet, and hair. According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper", whose "every hair belched viper-poison", and Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head", and "the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!". Following Hesiod and others, Nonnus gives Typhon many heads (though untotaled), but in addition to snake heads, Nonnus also gives Typhon many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make 'the cries of all wild beasts together', and
1098-656: A branch in Thebes, and his reference to 'my ancestors' in Pythian 5 could have been spoken on behalf of both Arcesilas and himself – he may have used this ambivalence to establish a personal link with his patrons. He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia , as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus , a national hero of Aegina and Molossia. According to tradition, Neoptolemus died disgracefully in
1281-494: 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
1464-455: A campaign of smears against him – possibly the poets Simonides and his nephew Bacchylides . Pindar's original treatment of narrative myth, often relating events in reverse chronological order, is said to have been a favourite target for criticism. Simonides was known to charge high fees for his work and Pindar is said to have alluded to this in Isthmian 2 , where he refers to
1647-465: A challenge to Zeus. And a cataclysmic battle for "the sceptre and throne of Zeus" is joined. Typhon piles up mountains as battlements and with his "legions of arms innumerable", showers volley after volley of trees and rocks at Zeus, but all are destroyed, or blown aside, or dodged, or thrown back at Typhon. Typhon throws torrents of water at Zeus' thunderbolts to quench them, but Zeus is able to cut off some of Typhon's hands with "frozen volleys of air as by
1830-424: 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
2013-416: 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,
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#17327718555302196-402: A demeaning role. He seems indifferent to the intellectual reforms that were shaping the theology of the times. Thus an eclipse is not a mere physical effect, as contemplated by early thinkers such as Thales , Anaximander and Heraclitus , nor was it even a subject for bold wonder, as it was for an earlier poet, Archilochus ; instead Pindar treated an eclipse as a portent of evil. Gods are
2379-581: A distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle". Wounded, Typhon fled to the Syrian Mount Kasios, where Zeus "grappled" with him. But Typhon, twining his snaky coils around Zeus, was able to wrest away the sickle and cut the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Typhon carried the disabled Zeus across the sea to the Corycian cave in Cilicia where he set
2562-451: A festival at Argos . His ashes were taken back home to Thebes by his musically gifted daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. One of Pindar's female relatives claimed that he dictated some verses to her in honour of Persephone after he had been dead for several days. Some of Pindar's verses were inscribed in letters of gold on a temple wall in Lindos , Rhodes. At Delphi, where he had been elected
2745-529: A fight with priests at the temple in Delphi over their share of some sacrificial meat. Pindar diplomatically glosses over this and concludes mysteriously with an earnest protestation of innocence – "But shall my heart never admit that I with words none can redeem dishonoured Neoptolemus". Possibly he was responding to anger among Aeginetans and/or Molossians over his portrayal of Neoptolemus in an earlier poem, Paean 6 , which had been commissioned by
2928-400: 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 was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was
3111-574: A hawk, Hermes an ibis, Ares a fish, Artemis a cat, Dionysus a goat, Heracles a fawn, Hephaestus an ox, and Leto a mouse. The geographer Strabo (c. 20 AD) gives several locations which were associated with the battle. According to Strabo, Typhon was said to have cut the serpentine channel of the Orontes River , which flowed beneath the Syrian Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra ), while fleeing from Zeus, and some placed
3294-507: A huge risk, hazarded not in right"), telling the audience that he will not talk of it ("silence is a man's wisest counsel"). The Theban hero Heracles was a favourite subject but in one poem he is depicted as small in order to be compared with a small Theban patron who had won the pankration at the Isthmian Games: a unique example of Pindar's readiness to shape traditional myths to fit the occasion, even if not always flattering to
3477-411: A huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, and fire flashing from his eyes: In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to
3660-452: A hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria ( c. 540 –530 BC), depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails for legs below . Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing". For Nicander (2nd century BC), Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs. Apollodorus describes Typhon as
3843-450: A hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvelous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another,
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#17327718555304026-437: A knife", and hurling thunderbolts is able to burn more of Typhon's "endless hands", and cut off some of his "countless heads". Typhon is attacked by the four winds, and "frozen volleys of jagged hailstones." Gaia tries to aid her burnt and frozen son. Finally Typhon falls, and Zeus shouts out a long stream of mocking taunts, telling Typhon that he is to be buried under Sicily's hills, with a cenotaph over him which will read "This
4209-407: A life well-lived. He presents no theory of history apart from the view that Fortune is variable even for the best men, an outlook suited to moderation in success, courage in adversity. Notions of 'good' and 'bad' in human nature were not analysed by him in any depth nor did he arrive at anything like the compassionate ethics of his near contemporary, Simonides of Ceos. His poems are indifferent to
4392-512: A maiden song does seem to be different in tone, due however to the fact that it is spoken in the character of a girl: ἐμὲ δὲ πρέπει παρθενήια μὲν φρονεῖν γλώσσᾳ τε λέγεσθαι. emè dè prépei parthenḗia mèn phroneîn glṓssāi te légesthai. I must think maidenly thoughts And utter them with my tongue. Enough of his dithyrambic poetry survives for comparison with that of Bacchylides, who used it for narrative. Pindar's dithyrambs are an exuberant display of religious feeling, capturing
4575-489: 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
4758-579: 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
4941-552: A personal dilemma. Nemean 7 in fact is the most controversial and obscure of Pindar's victory odes, and scholars ancient and modern have been ingenious and imaginative in their attempts to explain it, so far with no agreed success. In his first Pythian ode, composed in 470 BC in honour of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron , Pindar celebrated a series of victories by Greeks against foreign invaders: Athenian and Spartan-led victories against Persia at Salamis and Plataea , and victories by
5124-462: 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 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
5307-403: A plan with Cadmus and Pan to beguile Typhon. Cadmus, disguised as a shepherd, enchants Typhon by playing the panpipes, and Typhon entrusting the thunderbolts to Gaia, sets out to find the source of the music he hears. Finding Cadmus, he challenges him to a contest, offering Cadmus any goddess as wife, excepting Hera whom Typhon has reserved for himself. Cadmus then tells Typhon that, if he liked
5490-592: A priest of Apollo, the priests exhibited an iron chair on which he used to sit during the festival of the Theoxenia . Every night, while closing the temple doors, they intoned: "Let Pindar the poet go unto the supper of the gods!" Pindar's house in Thebes became one of the city's landmarks. When Alexander the Great demolished Thebes in 335 BC, as punishment for its resistance to Macedonian expansionism, he ordered
5673-522: 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
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5856-404: A prophet, and lesser poets are to him as ravens are to an eagle; the art of such men is as hackneyed as garland-making; his is magical: εἴρειν στεφάνους ἐλαφρόν: ἀναβάλεο: Μοῖσά τοι κολλᾷ χρυσὸν ἔν τε λευκὸν ἐλέφανθ᾽ ἁμᾷ καὶ λείριον ἄνθεμον ποντίας ὑφελοῖσ᾽ ἐέρσας. To plait garlands is easy. Strike up! The Muse Welds together gold and white ivory And the lily-flower snatched from
6039-438: 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
6222-517: A recent defeat of Athens by Thebes at the Battle of Coronea (447 BC). The poem ends with a prayer for Aegina's freedom, long threatened by Athenian ambitions. Covert criticism of Athens (traditionally located in odes such as Pythian 8, Nemean 8 and Isthmian 7) is now dismissed as highly unlikely, even by scholars who allow some biographical and historical interpretations of the poems. One of his last odes ( Pythian 8 ) indicates that he lived near
6405-418: A reference to Mount Etna in Hesiod's description of Typhon's fall: And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in
6588-550: A request by Pindar for payment of fees owed to himself. His defeats by Corinna were probably invented by ancient commentators to account for the Boeotian sow remark, a phrase moreover that was completely misunderstood by scholiasts, since Pindar was scoffing at a reputation that all Boeotians had for stupidity. His fame as a poet drew Pindar into Greek politics. Athens, the most important city in Greece throughout his poetic career,
6771-541: 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
6954-485: A shrine to the oracle Alcmaeon and that he stored some of his wealth there. In the same ode he says that he had recently received a prophecy from Alcmaeon during a journey to Delphi ("...he met me and proved the skills of prophecy that all his race inherit") but he does not reveal what the long-dead prophet said to him nor in what form he appeared. The ode was written to commemorate a victory by an athlete from Aegina . Pindar doesn't necessarily mean himself when he uses
7137-623: 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 the Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards. According to the Iliad , after the battle with
7320-518: 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
7503-472: A snake-headed tail) with Typhon then being the father. While mentioning Cerberus and "other monsters" as being the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, the mythographer Acusilaus (6th century BC) adds the Caucasian Eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus . The mythographer Pherecydes of Athens (5th century BC) also names Prometheus's eagle, and adds Ladon (though Pherecydes does not use this name),
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7686-437: A tradition which had the gods, in order to escape from Typhon, transform themselves into animals, and flee to Egypt. Pindar calls Typhon the "enemy of the gods", and says that he was defeated by Zeus' thunderbolt. In one poem Pindar has Typhon being held prisoner by Zeus under Etna, and in another says that Typhon "lies in dread Tartarus", stretched out underground between Mount Etna and Cumae . In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound ,
7869-476: 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 ,
8052-793: A vast volcanic region stretching from Sicily to Cumae (in the vicinity of modern Naples ), a region which presumably also included Mount Vesuvius , as well as Ischia. Many subsequent accounts mention either Etna or Ischia. In Prometheus Bound , Typhon is imprisoned underneath Etna, while above him Hephaestus "hammers the molten ore", and in his rage, the "charred" Typhon causes "rivers of fire" to pour forth. Ovid has Typhon buried under all of Sicily, with his left and right hands under Pelorus and Pachynus , his feet under Lilybaeus , and his head under Etna; where he "vomits flames from his ferocious mouth". And Valerius Flaccus has Typhon's head under Etna, and all of Sicily shaken when Typhon "struggles". Lycophron has both Typhon and Giants buried under
8235-416: 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
8418-430: 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
8601-411: Is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD ( P.Oxy .2438). The other four are collections that were not finalized until some 1600 years after his death: Although these sources are based on a much older literary tradition, going as far back as Chamaeleon of Heraclea in the 4th century BC, they are generally viewed with scepticism today: much of the material
8784-507: Is also connected with that of Python (the serpent killed by Apollo ), and both stories probably derived from several Near Eastern antecedents. Typhon was (from c. 500 BC ) also identified with the Egyptian god of destruction Set . In later accounts, Typhon was often confused with the Giants . According to Hesiod 's Theogony ( c. 8th – 7th century BC), Typhon was
8967-682: 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
9150-610: Is born in Dicte , and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he 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
9333-593: 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
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#17327718555309516-545: Is buried under the island. Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC), like Pherecydes, presents a multi-stage battle, with Typhon being struck by Zeus' thunderbolt on mount Caucasus , before fleeing to the mountains and plain of Nysa, and ending up (as already mentioned by the fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus ) buried under Lake Serbonis in Egypt. Like Pindar, Nicander has all the gods, but Zeus and Athena , transform into animal forms and flee to Egypt: Apollo became
9699-484: Is by no means certain that they were all sung by choirs – the use of choirs is testified only by the generally unreliable scholiasts. Scholars at the Library of Alexandria collected his compositions in seventeen books organized according to genre: Of this vast and varied corpus, only the epinikia – odes written to commemorate athletic victories – survive in complete form;
9882-570: Is clearly fanciful. Scholars both ancient and modern have turned to Pindar's own work – his victory odes in particular – as a source of biographical information: some of the poems touch on historic events and can be accurately dated. The 1962 publication of Elroy Bundy's ground-breaking work Studia Pindarica led to a change in scholarly opinion: the Odes were no longer seen as expressions of Pindar's personal thoughts and feelings, but rather as public statements "dedicated to
10065-476: 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
10248-697: 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
10431-442: 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
10614-612: 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
10797-520: Is largely unread among the general public. Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poet's role. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the Classical period . Like other poets of the Archaic Age, he has a profound sense of the vicissitudes of life, but he also articulates a passionate faith in what men can achieve by
10980-729: 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 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
11163-413: Is not known how commissions were arranged, nor if the poet travelled widely: even when poems include statements like "I have come" it is not certain that this was meant literally. Uncomplimentary references to Bacchylides and Simonides were found by scholiasts but there is no reason to accept their interpretation of the odes. In fact, some scholars have interpreted the allusions to fees in Isthmian 2 as
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#173277185553011346-422: 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
11529-571: Is the barrow of Typhoeus, son of Earth, who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up". Most accounts have the defeated Typhon buried under either Mount Etna in Sicily , or the volcanic island of Ischia , the largest of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples , with Typhon being the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Though Hesiod has Typhon simply cast into Tartarus by Zeus, some have read
11712-483: Is too sketchy to allow us to understand the full nature of this innovation). Although he probably spoke Boeotian Greek , he composed in a literary language that tended to rely more on the Doric dialect than his rival Bacchylides , but less insistently than Alcman . There is an admixture of other dialects, especially Aeolic and epic forms, and an occasional use of some Boeotian words. He composed 'choral' songs yet it
11895-541: Is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mother's name was Cleodice. It is told that in his youth, or possibly infancy, bees built a honeycomb in his mouth and this was the reason he became a poet of honey-like verses. (An identical fate has been ascribed to other poets of the archaic period.) Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode ( Pythian 10 ). He studied
12078-518: 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
12261-519: 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 the Muses . He was respected as a sky father who was chief of the gods and assigned roles to the others: "Even
12444-794: The Corycian cave in Turkey. In Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound , Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves", and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus (4th or 5th century AD) have Typhon born in Cilicia. The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus . Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Cronus, her and Zeus' father (whom Zeus had overthrown), and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them underground, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries
12627-603: 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 the Proto-Indo-European vocative * dyeu-ph 2 tēr ), deriving from
12810-404: The Muses inspired Homer with relevant information and with the language to express it, Pindar seems to receive only their inspiration: his role is to shape that inspiration with his own wisdom and skill. Like his patrons, whom he immortalizes in verse, he owes his success to hard work as well as to innate gifts; though he hires himself out, he has a vocation. The Muses are to him as an oracle is to
12993-461: 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
13176-463: The Theogony Zeus and Typhon meet in cataclysmic conflict: [Zeus] thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through
13359-486: 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 a transparent Indo-European etymology. Plato , in his Cratylus , gives
13542-517: 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
13725-488: The "little tune" of his pipes, then he would love the music of his lyre – if only it could be strung with Zeus' sinews. So Typhon retrieves the sinews and gives them to Cadmus, who hides them in another cave, and again begins to play his bewitching pipes, so that "Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm". With Typhon distracted, Zeus takes back his thunderbolts. Cadmus stops playing, and Typhon, released from his spell, rushes back to his cave to discover
13908-756: The Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promomtory. The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, mentioned above, says Typhon was born in Cilicia "under Arimon", and Nonnus mentions Typhon's "bloodstained cave of Arima" in Cilicia. Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus , in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra ) and the Orontes River , sites associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus, and according to Strabo,
14091-794: The Caucasian Eagle, Ladon, and the Sphinx, also adds the Nemean lion (no mother is given), and the Crommyonian Sow , killed by the hero Theseus (unmentioned by Hesiod). Hyginus (1st century BC), in his list of offspring of Typhon (all by Echidna), retains from the above: Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Hydra and Ladon, and adds "Gorgon" (by which Hyginus means the mother of Medusa , whereas Hesiod's three Gorgons , of which Medusa
14274-477: 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,
14457-529: 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
14640-498: The Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning 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
14823-478: The Muse as "a hireling journeyman". He appeared in many poetry competitions and was defeated five times by his compatriot, the poet Corinna , in revenge of which he called her Boeotian sow in one of his odes ( Olympian 6. 89f.). It was assumed by ancient sources that Pindar's odes were performed by a chorus, but this has been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that the odes were in fact performed solo. It
15006-511: The Olympian Games. The establishment of these athletic and musical festivals was among the greatest achievements of the Greek aristocracies. Even in the 5th century BC, when there was an increased tendency towards professionalism, they were predominantly aristocratic assemblies, reflecting the expense and leisure needed to attend such events either as a competitor or spectator. Attendance was an opportunity for display and self-promotion, and
15189-412: The Sicilian prince, Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas . Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot; and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, paving the way for his subsequent visit to Sicily. Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends', personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene , ( Pythians 4 and 5 ), pleading for
15372-439: 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:
15555-612: The Titans fighting from Mount Othrys . The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases 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
15738-466: 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 the Giants , who fight the Olympian gods in a battle known as
15921-406: 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
16104-582: The art of lyric poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione , and he is also said to have received some helpful criticism from Corinna . The early to middle years of Pindar's career coincided with the Greco-Persian Wars during the reigns of Darius and Xerxes . This period included the first Persian invasion of Greece , which ended at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, and the second Persian invasion of Greece (480-479 BC). During
16287-462: The authorities in Thebes to fine him 5,000 drachmae, to which the Athenians are said to have responded with a gift of 10,000 drachmae. According to another account, the Athenians even made him their proxenus or consul in Thebes. His association with the fabulously rich Hieron was another source of annoyance at home. It was probably in response to Theban sensitivities over this issue that he denounced
16470-452: The battle appears in Nonnus 's Dionysiaca (late 4th or early 5th century AD). Zeus hides his thunderbolts in a cave, so that he might seduce the maiden Pluto , and so produce Tantalus . But smoke rising from the thunderbolts, enables Typhon, under the guidance of Gaia, to locate Zeus's weapons, steal them, and hide them in another cave. Immediately Typhon extends "his clambering hands into
16653-457: The battle at Catacecaumene ("Burnt Land"), a volcanic plain, on the upper Gediz River , between the ancient kingdoms of Lydia , Mysia and Phrygia , near Mount Tmolus (modern Bozdağ) and Sardis the ancient capital of Lydia. In the versions of the battle given by Hesiod, Aeschylus and Pindar, Zeus' defeat of Typhon is straightforward; however, a more involved version of the battle is given by Apollodorus. No early source gives any reason for
16836-412: 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
17019-449: 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
17202-428: 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
17385-653: The cause of its volcanic activity. Most notably the Giant Enceladus was said to be entombed under Etna, the volcano's eruptions being the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors caused by the Giant rolling over from side to side beneath the mountain. Also said to be buried under Etna were the Hundred-hander Briareus , and Asteropus who was perhaps one of the Cyclopes . Typhon's final resting place
17568-474: 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 the myth of Zeus. In Hesiod 's Theogony (c. 730 – 700 BC), Cronus , after castrating his father Uranus , becomes
17751-513: The chamber of the scarlet-clothed Hours is opened And the nectareous flowers usher in the fragrant spring, Then are scattered, then, on the immortal ground The lovely petals of violets; roses are wound in our hair; Loudly echo the voices of songs to the flutes, And choirs step in procession to dark-ribboned Semele . Almost all Pindar's victory odes are celebrations of triumphs gained by competitors in Panhellenic festivals such as
17934-424: 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
18117-418: The clan important enough to deserve mention ( Histories IV.147). Membership of this clan possibly contributed to Pindar's success as a poet, and it informed his political views, which are marked by a conservative preference for oligarchic governments of the Doric kind. Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his 'I' statements do not necessarily refer to himself. The Aegeid clan did however have
18300-538: The conflict, but Apollodorus's account seemingly implies that Typhon had been produced by Gaia to avenge the destruction, by Zeus and the other gods, of the Giants, a previous generation of offspring of Gaia. According to Apollodorus, Typhon, "hurling kindled rocks", attacked the gods, "with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth." Seeing this, the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt (as in Pindar and Nicander). However "Zeus pelted Typhon at
18483-558: 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 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
18666-565: The darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it. Thus Pindar has Typhon in Tartarus, and buried under not just Etna, but under
18849-519: The defeated Typhon is the father of destructive storm winds. Typhon challenged Zeus for rule of the cosmos. The earliest mention of Typhon, and his only occurrence in Homer , is a passing reference in the Iliad to Zeus striking the ground around where Typhon lies defeated. Hesiod 's Theogony gives the first account of their battle. According to Hesiod, without the quick action of Zeus, Typhon would have "come to reign over mortals and immortals". In
19032-425: The disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides ; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet himself. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader and his work
19215-404: The divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire. Defeated, Typhon is cast into Tartarus by an angry Zeus. Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) seemingly knew a different version of the story, in which Typhon enters Zeus' palace while Zeus is asleep, but Zeus awakes and kills Typhon with a thunderbolt. Pindar apparently knew of
19398-460: The divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire. The first certain references to Typhon buried under Etna, as well as being the cause of its eruptions, occur in Pindar: Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon, and: among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of
19581-563: The dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (according to Hesiod, the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys). The lyric poet Lasus of Hermione (6th century BC) adds the Sphinx . Later authors mostly retain these offspring of Typhon by Echidna, while adding others. Apollodorus , in addition to naming as their offspring Orthrus, the Chimera (citing Hesiod as his source)
19764-461: The east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes. The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus 's Dionysiaca . Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature, giving him
19947-410: The eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him. According to Hesiod , Typhon was "terrible, outrageous and lawless", immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise: Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew
20130-401: The embodiment of power, uncompromisingly proud of their nature and violent in defense of their privileges. There is some rationalization of religious belief, but it is within a tradition at least as old as Hesiod , where abstractions are personified, such as "Truth the daughter of Zeus". Sometimes the wording suggests a belief in 'God' rather than 'a god' (e.g. "What is God? Everything"), but
20313-412: The finest breeds of men resulted from divine passions: "For Pindar a mortal woman who is loved by a god is an outstanding lesson in divine favours handsomely bestowed". Being descendants of divine unions with privileged mortals, mythical heroes are an intermediate group between gods and men, and they are sympathetic to human ambitions. Thus, for example, Pindar not only invokes Zeus for help on behalf of
20496-453: The first person singular. Many of his 'I' statements are generic, indicating somebody engaged in the role of a singer i.e. a 'bardic' I. Other 'I' statements articulate values typical of the audience, and some are spoken on behalf of the subjects celebrated in the poems. The 'I' that received the prophecy in Pythian 8 therefore might have been the athlete from Aegina, not Pindar. In that case
20679-571: The goat Amalthea. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] 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
20862-489: 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 , the classical "cloud-gatherer" ( Greek : Νεφεληγερέτα , Nephelēgereta ) also derives certain iconographic traits from
21045-415: The gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in
21228-453: 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
21411-436: The grace of the gods, most famously expressed in the conclusion to one of his Victory Odes : Creatures of a day! What is anyone? What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men A gleam of splendour given of heaven, Then rests on them a light of glory And blessed are their days. ( Pythian 8 ) Five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindar's life. One of them
21594-409: 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
21777-541: The historian Posidonius (c. 2nd century BC) identified the Arimoi with the Aramaeans of Syria. 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 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 ,
21960-408: The house be left intact out of gratitude for verses praising his ancestor, Alexander I of Macedon . Pindar's values and beliefs have been inferred from his poetry. No other ancient Greek poet has left so many comments about the nature of his art. He justified and exalted choral poetry at a time when society was turning away from it. It "... had for two centuries reflected and shaped the sentiments,
22143-473: The implications are not given full expression and the poems are not examples of monotheism . Nor do they vocalize a belief in Fate as the background to the gods, unlike the plays of Aeschylus for example. Pindar subjects both fortune and fate to divine will (e.g. "child of Zeus ... Fortune"). He selects and revises traditional myths so as not to diminish the dignity and majesty of the gods. Such revisionism
22326-443: The intervention of the Moirai and Themis ; he instead transforms them into various species of birds. According to 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
22509-459: 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
22692-404: The island of Aegina but also its national heroes Aeacus , Peleus and Telamon . Unlike the gods, however, heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards and they are sometimes shown in the poems to demean themselves. Even in that case, they receive special consideration. Thus Pindar refers obliquely to the murder of Phocus by his brothers Peleus and Telamon ("I am shy of speaking of
22875-445: The island of Ischia. Virgil , Silius Italicus and Claudian , all calling the island "Inarime", have Typhon buried there. Strabo, calling Ischia "Pithecussae", reports the "myth" that Typhon lay buried there, and that when he "turns his body the flames and the waters, and sometimes even small islands containing boiling water, spout forth." In addition to Typhon, other mythological beings were also said to be buried under Mount Etna and
23058-431: 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
23241-494: The land of the Arimoi ( εἰν Ἀρίμοις ), where Zeus lashes the land about Typhoeus with his thunderbolts. Presumably this is the same land where, according to Hesiod, Typhon's mate Echidna keeps guard "in Arima" ( εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν ). But neither Homer nor Hesiod say anything more about where these Arimoi or this Arima might be. The question of whether an historical place was meant, and its possible location, has been, since ancient times,
23424-474: 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 ,
23607-477: The level fields of Sicily, land of fair fruit—such boiling rage shall Typho, although charred by the blazing lightning of Zeus, send spouting forth with hot jets of appalling, fire-breathing surge." According to Pherecydes of Athens , during his battle with Zeus, Typhon first flees to the Caucasus , which begins to burn, then to the volcanic island of Pithecussae (modern Ischia ), off the coast of Cumae, where he
23790-460: 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
23973-467: The milk of the she-goat Amalthea , while the Kouretes guard 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
24156-465: 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
24339-509: The mountain where Typhon stood, being drenched with Typhon's blood, became known as Mount Haemus (Bloody Mountain). Typhon then fled to Sicily , where Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon burying him, and so finally defeated him. Oppian (2nd century AD) says that Pan helped Zeus in the battle by tricking Typhon to come out from his lair, and into the open, by the "promise of a banquet of fish", thus enabling Zeus to defeat Typhon with his thunderbolts. The longest and most involved version of
24522-431: The mythical hero. A hero's status is not diminished by an occasional blemish but rests on a summary view of his heroic exploits. Some of his patrons claimed divine descent, such as Diagoras of Rhodes , but Pindar makes all men akin to gods if they realize their full potential: their innate gifts are divinely bestowed, and even then success still depends on the gods' active favour. In honouring such men, therefore, Pindar
24705-401: The nurses of Zeus. According to 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
24888-437: The nymph from a third party, in this case the centaur Chiron . Chiron however affirms the god's omniscience with an elegant compliment, as if Apollo had only pretended to be ignorant: "You, Sire, who know the appointed end of all, and all paths..." Apollo's abduction of the nymph is not presented as a shameful act. Pindar's gods are above such ethical issues and it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Indeed,
25071-407: The offspring of Gaia, or simply "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (6th century BC), Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus , and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to
25254-483: The ordinary mass of people. They are dismissed with phrases such as "the brute multitude" ( Pythian Ode 2.87). Nor are the poems concerned with the fate of rich and powerful men once they lose their wealth and social status (compared for example with the bitter and disillusioned poems of Theognis of Megara ). They are more interested in what successful men do with their good fortune: success brings obligations, and religious and artistic activities need patrons. Whereas
25437-401: The outlook, and the convictions of the Greek aristocracies ... and Pindar spoke up for it with passionate assurance". His poetry is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and men – even the dead are spoken of as participants: "Deep in the earth their heart listens". His view of the gods is traditional but more self-consistent than Homer 's and more reverent. He never depicts gods in
25620-529: The poems for some biographical purposes is considered acceptable once more. πολλὰ γὰρ πολλᾷ λέλεκται: νεαρὰ δ᾽ ἐξευ- ρόντα δόμεν βασάνῳ ἐς ἔλεγχον, ἅπας κίνδυνος. Story is vast in range: new ways to find and test upon the touchstone, Here danger lies. Pindar was born circa 518 BC (the 65th Olympiad ) in Cynoscephalae , a village in Boeotia , not far from Thebes . His father's name
25803-427: The priests at Delphi and which depicted the hero's death in traditional terms, as divine retribution for his crimes. Some doubt this biographical interpretation of Nemean 7 since it is largely based on marginal comments by scholiasts and Pindaric scholiasts are often unreliable. The fact that Pindar gave different versions of the myth may simply reflect the needs of different genres, and does not necessarily indicate
25986-596: The prophecy must have been about his performance at the Pythian Games, and the property stored at the shrine was just a votive offering. Nothing is recorded about Pindar's wife and son except their names, Megacleia and Daiphantus. About ten days before he died, the goddess Persephone appeared to him and complained that she was the only divinity to whom he had never composed a hymn. She said he would come to her soon and compose one then. Pindar lived to about eighty years of age. He died around 438 BC while attending
26169-424: 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 ,
26352-493: The rest survive only by quotations in other ancient authors or from papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt . Even in fragmentary form however, they reveal the same complexity of thought and language that are found in the victory odes. Dionysius of Halicarnassus singled out Pindar's work as an outstanding example of austere style ( αὐστηρὰ ἁρμονία ) but he noted its absence in the maiden songs or parthenia . One surviving fragment of
26535-512: The return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendant of Aegeus , the legendary king of Athens. The clan was influential in many parts of the Greek world, having intermarried with ruling families in Thebes, in Lacedaemonia , and in cities that claimed Lacedaemonian descent, such as Cyrene and Thera . The historian Herodotus considered
26718-408: The rule of tyrants (i.e. rulers like Hieron) in an ode composed shortly after a visit to Hieron's sumptuous court in 476–75 BC ( Pythian 11 ). Pindar's actual phrasing in Pythian 11 was "I deplore the lot of tyrants" and though this was traditionally interpreted as an apology for his dealings with Sicilian tyrants like Hieron, an alternative date for the ode has led some scholars to conclude that it
26901-466: The sea's dew. Pindar's strongly individual genius is apparent in all his extant compositions but, unlike Simonides and Stesichorus for example, he created no new lyrical genres. He was however innovative in his use of the genres he inherited – for example, in one of his victory odes ( Olympian 3), he announces his invention of a new type of musical accompaniment, combining lyre, flute and human voice (though our knowledge of Greek music
27084-535: The seaboard of Asia Minor, north to Macedonia and Abdera ( Paean 2 ) and south to Cyrene on the African coast. Other poets at the same venues vied with him for the favours of patrons. His poetry sometimes reflects this rivalry. For example, Olympian 2 and Pythian 2 , composed in honour of the Sicilian tyrants Theron and Hieron following his visit to their courts in 476–75 BC, refer respectively to ravens and an ape , apparently signifying rivals who were engaged in
27267-479: The second invasion, when Pindar was almost forty years old, Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general, Mardonius , who with many Theban aristocrats subsequently perished at the Battle of Plataea . It is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina . His choice of residence during the earlier invasion in 490 BC is not known, but he was able to attend the Pythian Games of that year, where he first met
27450-512: The serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals. Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia , and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi , Turkey). The poet Pindar ( c. 470 BC ) calls Typhon "Cilician", and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave", an apparent allusion to
27633-478: The she-serpent Delphyne to guard over Zeus and his severed sinews, which Typhon had hidden in a bearskin. But Hermes and Aegipan (possibly another name for Pan ) stole the sinews and gave them back to Zeus. His strength restored, Zeus chased Typhon to mount Nysa, where the Moirai tricked Typhon into eating "ephemeral fruits" which weakened him. Typhon then fled to Thrace , where he threw mountains at Zeus, which were turned back on him by Zeus' thunderbolts, and
27816-404: The single purpose of eulogizing men and communities." It has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a "fatal conjunction" of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindar's life based on either traditional sources or his own poems. However, the pendulum of intellectual fashion has begun to change direction again, and cautious use of
27999-432: 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
28182-452: The son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus : "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite ". The mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD) adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants . Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being
28365-458: The sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", and like neither gods nor men. Three of Pindar 's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed (as in Hesiod), while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but
28548-547: The stone at Delphi , so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men". Zeus next frees 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
28731-404: The subject of speculation and debate. Strabo discusses the question in some detail. Several locales, Cilicia , Syria , Lydia , and the island of Ischia , all places associated with Typhon, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Homer's "Arimoi". Pindar has his Cilician Typhon slain by Zeus "among the Arimoi", and the historian Callisthenes (4th century BC), located the Arimoi and
28914-564: 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 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
29097-505: 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
29280-609: 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
29463-400: The thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of
29646-504: The thunderbolts gone. Incensed Typhon unleashes devastation upon the world: animals are devoured, (Typhon's many animal heads each eat animals of its own kind), rivers turned to dust, seas made dry land, and the land "laid waste". The day ends with Typhon yet unchallenged, and while the other gods "moved about the cloudless Nile", Zeus waits through the night for the coming dawn. Victory "reproaches" Zeus, urging him to "stand up as champion of your own children!" Dawn comes and Typhon roars out
29829-511: 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
30012-417: The unending clamor and the fearful strife. Zeus with his thunderbolt easily overcomes Typhon, who is thrown down to earth in a fiery crash: So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus
30195-419: The upper air" and begins a long and concerted attack upon the heavens. Then "leaving the air" he turns his attack upon the seas. Finally Typhon attempts to wield Zeus' thunderbolts, but they "felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned." Now Zeus' sinews had somehow – Nonnus does not say how or when — fallen to the ground during their battle, and Typhon had taken them also. But Zeus devises
30378-569: The western Greeks led by Theron of Acragas and Hieron against the Carthaginians and Etruscans at the battles of Himera and Cumae . Such celebrations were not appreciated by his fellow Thebans: they had sided with the Persians and had incurred many losses and privations as a result of their defeat. His praise of Athens with such epithets as bulwark of Hellas ( fragment 76 ) and city of noble name and sunlit splendour (Nemean 5) induced
30561-530: 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 ,
30744-806: The wild spirit of Dionysus and pointing forward to the ecstatic songs of Euripides ' Bacchae . In one of these, dedicated to the Athenians and written to be sung in Spring, he depicts the divine energy of the revitalized world. φοινικοεάνων ὁπότ' οἰχθέντος Ὡρᾶν θαλάμου εὔοδμον ἐπάγοισιν ἔαρ φυτὰ νεκτάρεα. τότε βάλλεται, τότ' ἐπ' ἀμβρόταν χθόν' ἐραταί ἴων φόβαι, ῥόδα τε κόμαισι μείγνυται, ἀχεῖ τ' ὀμφαὶ μελέων σὺν αὐλοῖς οἰχνεῖ τε Σεμέλαν ἑλικάμπυκα χοροί. phoinikoeánōn hopót' oikhthéntos Hōrân thalámou eúodmon epágoisin eár phutà nektárea. tóte bálletai, tót' ep' ambrótan khthón' erataí íōn phóbai, rhóda te kómaisi meígnutai, akheî t' omphaì meléōn sùn auloîs oikhneî te Semélan helikámpuka khoroí. When
30927-558: 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
31110-406: The young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus 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
31293-518: The young Zeus. Antoninus Liberalis , in his Metamorphoses , says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in 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
31476-412: 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 the oracle of Dodona , his consort was said to be Dione , by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite . According to
31659-596: Was Orthrus , the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon , second Cerberus , the multiheaded dog who guarded the gates of Hades , and third the Lernaean Hydra , the many-headed serpent who, when one of its heads was cut off, grew two more. The Theogony next mentions an ambiguous "she", which might refer to Echidna, as the mother of the Chimera (a fire-breathing beast that was part lion, part goat, and had
31842-421: Was a rival of his home city, Thebes , and also of the island state Aegina , whose leading citizens commissioned about a quarter of his Victory Odes. There is no open condemnation of the Athenians in any of his poems but criticism is implied. For example, the victory ode mentioned above ( Pythian 8 ) describes the downfall of the giants Porphyrion and Typhon and this might be Pindar's way of covertly celebrating
32025-612: Was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes . Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by
32208-485: Was apparently also said to be in Boeotia . The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles names a mountain near Thebes Typhaonium, perhaps reflecting an early tradition which also had Typhon buried under a Boeotian mountain. And some apparently claimed that Typhon was buried beneath a mountain in Boeotia, from which came exhalations of fire. Homer describes a place he calls the "couch [or bed] of Typhoeus", which he locates in
32391-510: Was conventionally accompanied by music and dance, and Pindar himself wrote the music and choreographed the dances for his victory odes. Sometimes he trained the performers at his home in Thebes, and sometimes he trained them at the venue where they performed. Commissions took him to all parts of the Greek world – to the Panhellenic festivals in mainland Greece (Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea), westwards to Sicily, eastwards to
32574-498: Was honouring the gods too. His statements about life after death were not self-consistent but that was typical for the times. Traditional ambivalence, as expressed by Homer, had been complicated by a growth of religious sects, such as the Eleusinian mysteries and Pythagoreanism , representing various schemes of rewards and punishments in the next life. However, for the poet, glory and lasting fame were men's greatest assurance of
32757-414: Was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount, when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in
32940-419: Was in fact a covert reference to the tyrannical behaviour of the Athenians, although this interpretation is ruled out if we accept the earlier note about covert references. According to yet another interpretation Pindar is simply delivering a formulaic warning to the successful athlete to avoid hubris . It is highly unlikely that Pindar ever acted for Athenians as their proxenus or consul in Thebes. Lyric verse
33123-590: Was not unique. Xenophanes had castigated Homer and Hesiod for the misdeeds they ascribed to gods, such as theft, adultery and deception, and Pythagoras had envisioned those two poets being punished in Hades for blasphemy. A subtle example of Pindar's approach can be found in his treatment of the myth of Apollo's rape of the nymph Cyrene . As the god of the Delphic oracle , Apollo is all-knowing, yet in keeping with his anthropomorphic nature he seeks information about
33306-718: Was one, were the daughters of Ceto and Phorcys), the Colchian dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece and Scylla . The Harpies , in Hesiod the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra , in one source, are said to be the daughters of Typhon. The sea serpents which attacked the Trojan priest Laocoön , during the Trojan War , were perhaps supposed to be the progeny of Typhon and Echidna. According to Hesiod,
33489-402: 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
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