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From Manual of Mythology, by Alexander S. Murray; Revised Edition, Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher, 1895; pp. 37-40.

37

THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.

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IN thinking of the origin of the world in which they lived, the Greeks for the most part, it would appear, were satisfied with the explanation given by the poet Hesiod — that in the beginning the world was a great shapeless mass or chaos out of which was fashioned first the spirit of love, Eros, and the broad-chested earth, Gæa; then Erebus, darkness, and Nyx, night. From a union of the two latter sprang Æther, the clear sky, and Heméra, day. The earth, by virtue of the power by which it was fashioned, produced in turn Uranus, the firmament which covered her with its vault of brass, as the poets called it, to describe its appearance of eternal duration, the mountains, and Pontus, the unfruitful sea. Thereupon Eros, the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the gods, began to agitate the earth and all things on it, bringing them together, and making pairs of them. First in importance of these pairs were Uranus and Gæa, heaven and earth, who peopled the earth with a host of beings, Titans, Giants, and Cyclopes, of far greater physical fame and energy than the races who succeeded them. It is a beautiful idea, that of love making order out of chaos, bringing opposite elements together, and preparing a world to receive mankind.

Another apparently older and certainly obscure notion is that expressed by Homer, which ascribes the origin of the world to 38 sprang from him, or whether they were conceived as coexisting with him from the beginning, we are not told. The numerous ancient stories, however, concerning floods, after which new generations of men sprang up, and the fact that the innumerable fertilizing rivers and streams of the earth were believed to come from the ocean, as they were seen to return to it, and that all the river gods were accounted the offspring of Oceanus, suggest the prevalence of such a form of belief with regard to the origin of the world in times previous to Hesiod. We are told that the ocean encircled the earth with a great stream, and was a region of wonders of all kinds; that Oceanus lived there, with his wife Tethys; that there were the islands of the blest, the gardens of the gods, the sources of the nectar and ambrosia on which the gods lived. Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk with mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest on its outer edge all round. This outer edge was supposed to be slightly raised, so that the water might not rush in and overflow the land. The space between the surface of the earth and the heavens was seen to be occupied by air and clouds, and above the clouds was supposed to be pure ether, in which the sun, moon, and stars moved. The sun rising in the eastern sky in the morning, traversing the celestial arch during the day, and sinking at evening in the west, was thought to be under the guidance of a god in a chariot drawn by four splendid horses. After sinking into Oceanus, it was supposed that he took ship and sailed during the night round to the east, so as to be ready to begin a new day.

In all the region of air above the clouds moved the higher order of gods; and when, for the sake of counsel or intercourse they met together, the meeting-place was the summit of one of those lofty mountains whose heads were hid in the clouds, but chief of all, the inaccessible Olympus in Thessaly. 39 Around the highest point of it was the palace of Zeus, with the throne on which he sat in majesty to receive such visits as those of Thetis (Iliad i. 498) when she came to plead for her son. On plateaus or in ravines lower down were the mansions of the other gods, provided, as was thought, with the convenience of store-rooms, stabling, and all that was usual in the houses of princes on earth. The deities who thus inhabited Olympus, and for that reason were styled the Olympian deities, were twelve in number. We do not, it is true, always find this number composed of the same gods, but the following may be taken as having been the most usual; Zeus (Jupiter), Hera (Juno), Poseidon (Neptune), Demeter (Ceres), Apollo, Artemis (Diana), Hephæstus (Vulcan), Pallas Athenē (Minerva), Ares (Mars), Aphroditē (Venus), Hermes (Mercury), and Hestia (Vesta). Though allied to each other by various degrees of relationship, and worshipped in many places at altars dedicated to them as a united body, they did not always act together in harmony, a most memorable instance of their discord being that (Iliad viii. 13-27) in which Zeus threatened to hurl the others into Tartarus, and challenged them to move him from Olympus by letting themselves down with a golden chain and pulling with all their might. Should they try it, he said, he could easily draw them up, with earth and sea into the bargain, fasten the chain to the top of Olympus, and let the whole hang in mid air. The name Olympus was not confined to the Thessalian mountain, though it may have had the earliest, as in after times it had the principal, claim to the title, but was applied to no less than fourteen mountains in various parts of the Greek world, each of which appears to have been regarded as an occasional meeting-place, if not a permanent seat of the gods. Finally, the word was used to designate a region above the visible sky, from which, to express its height, it was said that once a brazen anvil fell nine days and 40 nine nights before it reached the earth. At an equal distance beneath the surface of the earth was Tartarus, a vast gloomy space walled in with brass, where the Titans lived in banishment.

The lower order of deities, having naturally no place in Olympus, were restricted to the localities on earth where they exercised their powers — as, for instance, the Naiads, or Nymphs of fountains, to the neighborhood of fountains and springs; the Oreads, or mountain Nymphs, to the mountains and hills; and the Dryads, or Nymphs of trees, to trees. With regard to the place of residence of the heroes or semi-divine beings after their translation from earth, there existed considerable variety of opinion, of which we shall afterward have occasion to speak.

Representations of the deities assembled in Olympus for a particular occasion — as at the birth of Athenē from the head of her father Zeus — occur not infrequently on the Greek painted vases. This was the subject chosen by Pheidias for the sculptures in one of the pediments of the Parthenon now in the British Museum. The loss, however, of many of the figures renders it impossible to say now who were the deities he selected, or whether he even adhered to the usual number of twelve. At one end of the pediment the sun rises in his chariot from the sea, ad the other the moon rides away. The event must therefore have taken place at the break of day. The same fact is to be observed in the scene at the birth of Aphrodite, in presence of the assembled deities, with which Pheidias adorned the base of his statue of Zeus at Olympia, and of which we have the description in Pausanias (v. 403). At one end was the Sun stepping into his chariot, next to him Zeus and Hera, then Hephæstus (?) and Charis, then Hermes and Hestia. In the centre was Eros receiving Aphrodite as she rises from the sea, and Peitho crowning Aphrodite; then Apollo and Artemis, next Athenē and Heracles, then Poseidon and Amphitrite, and lastly the Moon (Selene) riding away. The deities are thus grouped in pairs of male and female, those of greater importance being toward either end of the composition.






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