Chaos – The Primordial Age
For those writers who dared to look into the deep past of Greek myth, one thing was certain… chaos was there, and chaos was always there. Chaos is an ethereal eternal void of nothingness and everything. In this primordial soup of creation lies the atoms that shall become everything clustered together waiting to be formed and born.
From Chaos a spark ignited and life was formed. In a weird way, these new entities formed themselves. These concepts, physical manifestations of the deepest parts of nature became the backdrop of Greek lore and the primal setting for the wars to come.
Some stories say a great swan goddess emerged, others write that only three were born, in Hesiod’s Theogony we have five: Eros, Nyx, Erebus, Tartarus, and Gaia.
Nyx was the night and Erebus was the dark that accompanied her, from them sprang many children of darkness and personifications of our deepest fears, our dreams, and sleep, from them depression, old age, revenge, fury, and fate were born.
Eros is eternal love and the attraction that binds the universe together. Some stories see him instead as a child of Aphrodite. Perhaps this is a different incarnation or a path of the many lives of the gods. Regardless, he is love, the interconnectedness of all life.
Tartarus needs no introduction. It is the deepest depths of the underworld. It is under the earth, under the rivers and mountains, so deep that no sunlight could possibly reach. The great torturous cavernous eternity down below was filled with punishment and despair, surrounded by a river of fire. It is the place reserved for those who have committed the greatest offenses to the gods.
And finally, we have Gaia, our great mother, ancestor to nearly all divinities and by extension, an ancestor of us humans. She was the earth itself. She is the heart of all Nature and from her, the mountains were born, called the Ourea. Her second child was the primordial ocean, Pontus, who surrounded her at the edges of the world. She also birthed the great elder sky above her and became her consort, Ouranos the king of the Sky, Lord of the heavens.
With Ouranos, Gaia had several sets of children
The first set was The Cyclops – Brontes, Steropes, and Arges – three one-eyed giants masters at the forge and quite skilled as smiths. However, their father saw them as monstrous in appearance with their single eye. And locked them away in Tartarus.
Next came The Hecatoncherries – Briareus, Cottus, Gyges – these three beings had a hundred heads, and a hundred hands, as you can imagine they were called, the Hundred-Handed ones. They were giants with incredible strength. But, their father looked at them and was dissatisfied with the result, seeing them as grotesque and unworthy of being alive. He condemned them to the pit of Tartarus as well.
The Titans were the third set of children. There were twelve in total, six female, and six male. However, Ouranus was fearful of this set of children, fearing one of them would replace him as king of the universe. He condemned each one to the underworld as well.
Gaia, displeased with this treatment of her children, of all her children, asked each titan if they would be willing to supplant their father and take charge. It was not until the youngest and bravest of the titans, Cronus, decided to take a stand, that Ouranus’ fate was sealed. One day, with a sickle forged by his mother, Cronus attacked his father.
He cut his father, in the first and greatest castration of the universe. This event not only led to more life on earth and the birth of a particular love goddess but also marked a shift in power. The generation of the primordials was Over. Cronus replaced his father as the king of the heavens and led the Titans in a Great Golden Age of Titans.
The Golden Age of Titans
Cronus now king of a new age also disliked his brethren, the Cyclops, and Hecatoncherries, and kept them imprisoned in Tartarus, not bothering to release them. Gaia was helpless to stop him. The Titans ruled the earth for a golden age of untold millennia:
Oceanus and Tethys took to the seas supplanting Pontus and Thalassa, Elder sea gods. Together Tethys and Oceanus bore thousands of ocean nymphs and river spirits, including the river Styx itself
Hyperion and Theia gave birth to Eos the dawn, Helios the sun, and Selene the moon
Iapetus married a sea nymph and together they had four children two of which are very well known: Atlas who eventually holds the world up on his shoulders and Prometheus the trickster who eventually gives fire to humanity.
Phoebe and Crius were the parents of Leto and Astarte and grandparents of Hecate and Apollo and Artemis
Coeus was the great constellations of the sky and the great axis of the world
Themis was divine order, justice, and law
Mnemosyne was the goddess of memory and the mother of the 9 muses, the spirits of inspiration, and great tales, “the goddesses of the arts and proclaimers of Heroes” – Disney’s Hercules
Then we have Rhea, an earth goddess and the successor of her mother Gaia. She was the sister and eventual wife of Cronus.
Together they had six children: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera and of course Zeus.
The childhood of these divine children is complicated, to say the least.
For Cronus heard of some great prophecy, or perhaps it was a curse said by his father, where his children would supplant him and take control of the universe, bringing the age of the Titans to an end. Cronus was afraid his children would do to him, what he had done to his own father. This did not sit well with the king of the titans and he therefore took matters into his own hands or should I say, mouth.
For every time one of his children was born, Cronus would swallow them whole. Because they were gods they would not die, instead, Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hera spent their childhood and developing years in the belly of their father. To paraphrase Stephen Fry in his book Mythos, the belly of Cronus must’ve looked like a teenager’s bedroom.
Only Zeus, the youngest, was saved by his mother. For Rhea had given her husband a rock called the Omphalos stone, in place of the babe, and Cronus, without hesitation, swallowed the rock whole thinking it was a child.
Zeus grew up in a cavern in Crete and was cared for by the goat nymph, Amalthea, and other protectors who helped raise the child until he came of age and eventually became cupbearer to Cronus atop Mount Othrys, the seat of the Titan Throne. There under the guidance of his mother and one or two allies, he waited for the perfect moment to strike.
The Rise of the Olympians
When everything was set, when he knew he was ready, Zeus fed his unknowing father a mixture of mustard and wine. Cronus drank the wine with vigor only to succumb to the dreaded drink that made him vomit everything he had inside him.
He first puked the stone Omphalos, the replacement of Zeus that now sits in the center of the world in the temple complex at Delphi. Then little by little in the reverse order in which they were swallowed he puked the five gods, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, and Hestia last. They were swallowed as children but emerged as fully-fledged adults.
Zeus was ready to take charge and his siblings were just as ready for war.
United They Stand and the war against the great Titans began.
While there is very little information on the war between the Olympians and the Titans, called the Titanomachy, what we do know is that this war was said to have lasted ten years.
This war of the Titans was fought in the fields of Thessaly at the base of the Titan seat of Mount Othrys. During this time allies were born and sides were chosen. Themis, divine law, and Prometheus, the god of foresight, sided with the Olympians.
The Titans unleashed a last secret weapon birthed by Gaia herself, the Typhon! The Olympians were few but they had allies from unexpected areas. For Zeus unleashed his own secret weapon in the form of his uncles, the Hecatoncherries, and Cyclops.
The Hecatoncherries hurled boulders and stones at the Titans while the Cyclops forged one of the greatest weapons of creation, the Lightning Bolt of Zeus. While the Typhon gave the Olympians a worthy battle, it too fell to the might of these new and powerful gods.
The Olympians were victorious, and the seat of Othrys fell. The Titans that allied with Cronus were punished and condemned to the underworld, giving them a new title, Gods of Earth, Chthonic deities. They were of the underworld while the Olympians were the gods of heaven.
Cronus’ fate was one worse than any punishment in the underworld. He was cut into pieces and his parts were spread throughout Tartarus, unable to die and to always remember his failure.
Legend has it that Cronus pieced himself back together through the ages until he was a simple god, not bent on revenge but on peace. Completed but eternally broken, Cronus escaped the depths of Tartarus and fled to the west, he took up the sickle he used on his father a tool of the field. His name changed to Saturn and he became a god of grain and agriculture, forever remembering his siblings of the great golden age, this is why Saturn in our solar system has many moons named after the other titans.
After the fall of the Titans there was another incident, a second war the Olympians needed to get through. For Gaia was displeased with how the Titans, her own children, were treated and cast down. Gaia, with the remaining blood of the castrated Uranus, decided to birth another set of children, a fourth set of monstrous children, the Gigantes, the Giants.
These Giants were each created as an antithesis of the Olympians. A giant to fight war, one to take on the Sea, a giant to fight wine, and the celestial twins. One giant to challenge Hades and another to confront Zeus himself. This Gigantomachy lasted another 10 years. What we do know is that the Olympians were victorious once more with the help of new Olympians and of Heracles. After this battle, the age of Olympus, the age of Zeus, was firmly established in the universe.
The Age of the Olympians
The victorious Olympians soon divided the world amongst themselves. After a bit of a skirmish, the world was divided as such:
Poseidon became the ruler and God of the Sea. With his wife, Amphitrite, they replaced Oceanus and Tethys. He ruled over the seas and became the father of Polyphemus the great Cyclops that challenged Odysseus. Poseidon was also the father of Triton, Orion, and the legendary Theseus, slayer of the mighty Minotaur.
Hades became the ruler of the underworld. He was so connected with this realm of the dead, with the fields of Asphodel and the plains of Elysium, and the great rivers that his name became synonymous with his abode. He has even been called the Zeus of the Underworld. His wife was Persephone, goddess of the spring and flora daughter of Demeter who started the cycle of the seasons. The children of Hades were creatures of revenge, the Furies, a goddess of nightmares, Melinoe, and the prince of Hades, Zagreus.
And finally, we have Zeus, the great king, the Lord of Olympus, The King of the Gods, and the Heavens. Zeus’ wife was Hera, an equally powerful goddess who challenged his reign and authority several times. She was the queen of the gods and with Zeus, they were parents of youth, Hebe, and of war, Ares. The blacksmith of the gods, Hephaestus, was also called the son of Zeus, though he is oftentimes regarded as the son of Hera alone.
Together they reigned over the heavens and over the world of man, but Zeus’ list of children does not end there. In Greek myth and legends, the sky encompasses the world and so too does Zeus. Every land, every kingdom, and city-state all have some claim or some connecting tie to Father Zeus. It was Zeus the father of great heroes and kings such as Rhadamanthus, Pollux, Helen of Troy, King Minos, Arcas of Arcadia, and Tantalus. He fathered Perseus slayer of Medusa and of course Heracles the most famous of all the demigods.
Zeus was a father of heroes and gods alike, he fathered the great twins Apollo and Artemis who were associated with the Sun and Moon respectively. He fathered the 9 Muses, and Hermes, the messenger of the gods. He was the father of Dionysus, the God of wine and celebration who Zeus himself carried to term, and he was also the father to the great god of nature Pan, the Graces, and the Charities. Of Athena, goddess of strategy and war – with her own curious birth, and of course Persephone, goddess of the springtime.
Here the Greek stage explodes into a compendium of stories, a menagerie of monsters and beasts. It becomes a multi-story interconnected saga of heroes and kings, of torture, despair, victories, and romances. Eventually, mankind was created and they became the worshipers of these gods.
Prometheus gave them fire and was punished for it. The gods jumped in and out of the lives of humans either out of love, answering prayers, sending dreams, or challenging threats.
Athena was born from the head of Zeus and came to life fully armored and ready for battle for she is a deity of war much akin to Ares, but where Ares is violent Athena is strategic, where Ares is eager to destroy, Athena is eager to plan and enact. Athena silenced the challenge of Arachne who eventually became the mother of spiders. The Greek City, the capital of Greece, carries her name, Athens.
Artemis ruled over the wild untamed wilderness. She silenced Acteon after being disrespected and unleashed the Calydonian Boar on a city. Hermes took the red cattle of Apollo and was the god of travelers and tricksters. Apollo fell in love with a nymph and was recognized as not just a god of sunlight, but of light and inspiration, of art and music, and at his side were the nine muses, connecting him to literature. Hephaestus, the smith, was married to Aphrodite but she preferred the heart of War. Ares in a fit of jealousy killed the handsome Adonis. And Eros fell in love with Psyche who was willing to die for him. Hestia took care of the hearth and gave her seat at the council to Dionysus who had the greatest of festivals with crazed followers. Io was turned into a cow, Argos of a hundred eyes was beheaded and from his blood peacocks were made, Calisto became Ursa Major, and satyrs lured travelers into traps, while Europa was taken by a bull. Orpheus traveled to the underworld, and so did Odysseus, Heracles, and Aeneas before the founding of Rome. The world is held up by Atlas, and Daedalus built the Labyrinth of Crete, while Heracles split Europe and Africa.
During times of war, the gods were often forced to pick sides. Such was the case during the Trojan War. This great and legendary conflict lasted a generation with countless heroes and kings such as Patroclus, Hector, Priam, Helen, Paris, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, and of course the near indestructible Achilles, one of the greatest warriors to ever live.
It was the Olympians who saw the shift of power from Crete to Athens in the mainland and it was them who had favorite humans, lovers, favored city-states, and children throughout the Greek world.
The twelve main Olympians at the council are:
Zeus – The King of the Gods and lord of thunder and lightning
Hera – The Queen of Heaven, and goddess of marriage and family
Poseidon – Lord of the Seas and earthquakes, creator of horses
Demeter – Lady of Grain and Agriculture creator of winter
Athena – Goddess of Strategy and Good Council, born from the head of Zeus
Ares – God of War, favored in Sparta, father of fear and dread
Aphrodite – Goddess of Love, Lust, and Beauty. Mother to Aeneas of Troy
Hephaestus – Blacksmith of the Gods, student of the cyclopes, and forger of great weapons
Apollo – God of the Arts and inspiration, Sun, and Order, builder of the walls of Troy
Artemis – Goddess of the Hunt and Freedom, with her bow and arrow she and her followers travel the world
Hermes – Messenger to the Gods, Guide to Travelers, one of the few that can enter and exit the underworld with ease
and
Dionysus – God of Wine, Celebration, and Disorder, invoked at every party
While not in the council Hades is the Lord of the underworld with his wife Persephone. Hestia is the Goddess of the Hearth and keeper of the Olympian Flame. Many a god and goddess live in Olympus, in the seat of the sea, and the realm of the underworld, and have been worshiped in Greece, the Greek Isles, and all throughout the Mediterranean. As the Greeks established new colonies the Greek gods move with them.
Temples to Poseidon are seen on different islands and coasts wherever sailors needed hope, a Temple of Artemis is found in the giant complex at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey, and a shrine to Heracles was seen as far away as the coasts of Spain.
For thousands of years, the Greek gods have been worshiped. Temples arose here and there. Cults sprang in all forms with different gods as the focus, such as the cult of the Elysian Mysteries and the Mithraic cult. The Pantheon of Olympus continually grew and the gods changed. Legend has it that during one of the great wars they fled to a southern land. In this land, they wore the heads of animals to be disguised. This way, the Greeks connected their own mythology with that of even more ancient Egyptian beliefs. Curiously gods like Isis were popular outside of Egypt and eventually arrived on the Greek mainland.
The Greeks knew of people of ice and cold, of the hyperborean lands to the north, and the legendary island of Thule which were their own gods of winter. Even Plato spoke of the legendary city of Atlantis which was lost in a single day and night.
Eventually the Classical Age of Greece gave rise to the Hellenistic Age of Alexander the Great spreading Greek politics, customs, and gods even further to new lands to the east. Here the Olympians met gods of the Middle East, of great Bactria, and ancient India, but the age of Alexander was short-lived, and many of the lands he claimed eventually broke away. Finally, a new power emerged from the West. The legend of the Twins cared for by the she-wolf, Lupa, and a civilization that rose from a survivor of the Trojan War, Aeneas merged together and the Republic of Rome was born. Eventually, it grew into an Empire that spread and overtook the Greek world, but who was the real victor of this conquest? For the Roman gods were no match for the Greek gods who took new forms and were reborn with new imagery, powers, and titles.
Zeus became Jupiter
Hera – Juno
Ares – Mars
The once Athena was now Minerva
And Hermes became Mercury
Artemis – Diana
Aphrodite – Venus
Poseidon became Neptune
Even Demeter had a new form of Ceres
Dionysus became Bacchus
Hephaestus – Vulcan
Hestia – Vesta
And Hades became Pluto
Many more of the Greek gods have Roman equivalents but you will notice some names missing from these great gods. Apollo and Hecate refused to change their identity and forever remained principally Greek gods.
Conclusion
Let us also not forget the writers of Greek myth such as Ovid, Apollodorus, Hesiod, and Homer. We should also remember other tales written by Pindar, Pluto, Hyginus, Philostratus, Plutarch, Zeno of Elea, Diodorus Sicculus, Sappho, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Herodotus, and Virgil of the Romans. Let’s also remember more modern writers of these myths and tales such as Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Robert Graves, Edith Hamilton, Rick Riordan, and Neil Gaiman. Let’s explore the reimagining of the Greek world on the plane of Theros from the trading card game Magic the Gathering, let’s remember the video games inspired by Greek lore and histories such as God of War, Hades, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Age of Mythology, and Immortals Fenyx Rising along with streaming shows and movies such as Blood of Zeus, Immortals, Clash and War of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and of course Disney’s Hercules and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Let’s dive into the Greek theatre and see piece by piece what makes the Greek world so intriguing and captivating for thousands of years. Let’s explore timeless stories of love, loyalty, betrayal, heroism, beauty, and despair through their interconnected legends. These are the stories that have captured the heart and served as inspiration for thousands of years for countless artists, poets, and writers. Whether you are a scholar, student, or just a Greek myth enthusiast I hope you join me in this journey through the world of Greek Mythology.
Welcome to Myths Reborn’s Greek Mythology
Myths Reborn 