The Twelve Olympians Read online

  The first of the gods had been Ouranos, who mated with Ge—the Earth—and begat the Titans and the Giants, and last of all, the youngest, Kronos, who married his sister Rhea. By the advice of his mother, Ge, Kronos castrated his father and ruled in his stead. As already recounted in the Myth of Hera, Kronos swallowed all his children by Rhea save the youngest, Zeus, for whom a stone was substituted. The infant was now hidden in a cave in Crete and nourished by animals while armed spirits, called Kuretes, danced around it. Then Zeus, growing up quickly, forced Kronos to disgorge his brothers and sisters, and dethroned him. The Titans, elder brothers of Kronos, having come to his help, there ensued somewhere in Asia Minor the ‘battle of the Gods and Giants’, and the latter were beaten by the Olympian Gods and imprisoned. Zeus, secure on Olympus, began—apart from other activities—to visit many goddesses and mortals. From the indices of a famous modern work{24} one may compile a list of the goddesses, nymphs, and mortal girls with whom Zeus was reputed to have consorted, and these collected stories are evidence for the irresponsibility of ancient myth-mongers. The tales are mainly Hesiodic, but certain ‘learned’ contributions were also made by others.

  Five separate strands of story-telling have got themselves plaited together to make this extraordinary rope of a myth:

  (i) There is the bloody and dismal part now known to be Hittite and Hurrian, with some Babylonian affinities, already discussed.{25} This is now regarded as the concoction of Asiatic Hurrian theologians about 1500 B.C., handed on to Phœnicians, and passed by the latter to Greeks like Hesiod. It is independent of the other strands.

  (ii) The pre-Hellenic beliefs concerning a great Mother-goddess have also got into the myth. The emphasis on Ge, Rhea, and lastly Hera, and on the parts they played, arise from these beliefs, as do many of the love-affairs attributed to Zeus, who succeeded to the chain of lovers of the Great Goddess.

  (iii) There is a strand deriving from ancient Minoan legend. Not only is the infant Zeus hidden in a Cretan cave and brought up in the island, but there was shown in one place the holy sepulchre where Zeus had been buried. A dead Zeus rising to live again was certainly a reflection of the tale about the annual god-boy-lover of the Great Goddess of Minoan days.

  (iv) A very strong strand was the one supplied by the pedigree-makers, for no family was royal unless it was god-descended. You might trace your line from Poseidon, Apollo, or Hermes, but to be Zeus-born was the most distinguished of all. The palace bard who could not sing of some lovely queen or princess whom Zeus, beholding her from high Olympus, visited, would soon lose his job. Desperate opponents of the old religion, like the unhappy Clement, made great play with these imaginary scandals, and a careful catalogue of the god’s love-affairs can supply him with one wife, one ex-wife, and—over a vast span of centuries—fifty-three mistresses. Yet in the heyday of a single lifetime King Solomon in all his glory was able, so it is alleged, to acquire a far more splendid company.{26}

  (v) Last comes a strand, slender perhaps, but enduring, which accounts for the long life of the stories of the god’s affairs. The myth had an appeal to the unsophisticated in many Greek lands. Every male simpleton secretly longed to become a great lover such as Zeus; and every simple girl secretly hoped to be loved by him.

  Now that the Hurrian-Hittite monster-tales can be totally discarded, one tendency has become clear. There is a thread that runs through from the simple Greek farm-girl’s prayer to be loved of a god, through from an early notion of a god who died and rose again, through from the love-poem in Homer’s Iliad, and through from the athlete dedicating to God his body trained to perfection, through to the mallet and chisel in the hands of Pheidias, and so to the poem written soon after 300 B.C. by Aratos of Soloi:

  From Zeus let us begin: Him do we mortals never leave unnamed. Full of Zeus are all the streets and all the marketplaces of man; full is the sea and the heavens thereof. Always we have need of Zeus; for we also are His offspring.

  The thread is a kind of love of God with an affection for mankind, and it is humanism.

  It is for humanism that Zeus ultimately stands.

  IV—ATHENE

  THE last two chapters dealt with the most exalted of the Olympians; this and the next are to tell about much more personal deities. If a philosophic Greek had told you that they are but aspects of the central ‘Idea’ of a godhead—which is God—you would perhaps remark that they were both exceptionally attractive aspects.

  Athene cannot fail to be interesting. Her origins from two different sources can be traced in a satisfactory manner. The sources merge to make the Homeric Athene, who is conceived of in terms of the Iliad and Odyssey in many Greek cities down to 600 B.C. Then in her chief city, Athens, one can watch her altering into another kind of goddess.

  The brilliant civilisation of Minoan Crete began from about 1900 B.C. to grow up in and around a few luxurious palaces wherein civil and sanitary engineers vied with one another in the creation of many-storeyed buildings, functional bathrooms, and water-closets. The kings and princes who owned these palaces appear to have given special devotion to a ‘Palace Goddess’, who was one aspect of the all-pervading Mediterranean mother-goddess discussed in Chapter II. However, in her role of Palace Goddess emphasis was not upon motherhood, but upon that kind of feminine wisdom, intuition—call it what you will—which is comforting to the male; even as masculine stability and resourcefulness comfort the female. The attributes of the Palace Goddess were a shield, a snake, a tree, and a bird. When presently the Greek-speaking peoples moved down into Greece and came, about 1700 B.C., under cultural influences from Crete, their kings and princes took over this young goddess, adapting her for their own Achaean and Mycenaean Palace Shrines, identifying her, at the same time, with their own young warrior-goddess, daughter of Zeus, known simply as ‘the Maid’ and called by various titles: Korē, Parthenos, Pallas, meaning ‘girl, virgin, maiden’. Thus her usual double appellative was ‘Pallas Athene’, the latter name being pre-Hellenic in origin.

  Because she was the Palace Goddess, she was from the women’s point of view skilled in all household arts and crafts; yet from the man’s point of view she was the Wise One, the strategist—even the tactician—leader in warfare. In classical times one will always find that where her worship is, there an ancient palace had been. Thus she became the goddess not only of the palace, but also of the fortress and of the fortified city. That is why she was worshipped at Sparta and Corinth, at Argos and Thebes, as well as in many lesser city-states.

  Some scholars think that she gave her name to—others that she derived it from—her greatest city. However, whichever way it was, her cult, her dominion over men’s minds, and their deep affection for her were far stronger in her own Athens than in any other Greek state. There was, of course, the right attitude to Zeus and Apollo, to Poseidon and Hephaistos, as well as to other gods within Athens and Attica. Yet Athene, daughter of Zeus, had an absolute supremacy in the thoughts and hearts of the people of Athens, and it appears that this was due primarily to one man, for the title ‘Apostle of Athene’ is one that could well be applied to the famous Peisistratus. This brilliant and popular politician of an ancient and horsey family secured for himself the position of autocrat of Athens about 566 B.C.,{27} resting his power on the approval of the merchants and the goodwill of the workers, and gradually overcoming the ill-will of many—but not of all—of his fellow-nobles. The first recorded fact concerning his administration is his founding of the Greater Panathenaia—that is, of the athletic, poetical, musical, and race-course contests held every fourth year in Athens in honour of Athene. Since the foundation, more than two centuries earlier, of the quadrennial Olympic festival{28} other athletic games had been started in other centres, and now Athens took her place as a city to be visited by competitors from all over Greece. The prizes for the winners were large vases, with a painted figure of Athene on one side, containing oil from an olive-grove sacred to the goddess. An integral part of the festival was the great Panathenaic Pr
ocession, which followed a long route up to the Acropolis, where special rites in the goddess’s honour took place. At the same date the autocrat introduced a new kind of coinage for the state, having, upon the obverse, a head of Athene—an owl, her bird, upon the other side—and because of this head the coins began to be spoken of as korai, or ‘girls’. Moreover, at this very time the Athenian painted-pottery industry was already booming, and it is possible to see from pictures on vases painted in Athens the general attitude to and thoughts about the goddess herself, while from the contemporary monuments in stone and marble upon the Acropolis of Athens more may be deduced.

  Thoughts about Deity tend to correspond to human interest and emotions, ambitions and loves. And so the pictorial presentations of an important anthropomorphic deity like Athene may help one to understand some of the personal interests and emotions which, at a given time, prompted men to think of her in that presented way. If they were representing her frequently as a child-goddess or a young girl-goddess, clumsy though some such pictures might be, it means that many influential Athenians were, at that given time, rather devoted to their own youthful daughters. Now from 566 B.C. onward for a long time young unmarried girls of good family were, in contrast to wives, very important in the eyes of their relatives, partly because they might get appointed as basket-bearers and temporary attendants on the goddess or on other deities, thereby winning congratulations for their parents, partly because it is natural for a father to be proud of a comely marriageable daughter. It is evident that Athene, at least as an art type, became an interesting sublimation of this idea and, until about 440 B.C., she was frequently represented as a girlish divinity, while the great bulk of the statues dedicated to her were statues of girls. A favourite theme with the vase-painters was the Birth of Athene,{29} shown as a baby-figure emerging from the brain of Zeus, or a child standing upon his knees. The Greeks liked stories about ‘new-born babe’ divinities; and even a later poet like Callimachus was to write of this quaint legend:

  No mother bare that goddess, but the head of Zeus.

  The head of Zeus bows not in falsehood, nor

  In falsehood hath his Daughter any part.

  By about 460 B.C. some sculptors began to represent Athene as a girl of about twelve, the most famous of them being Myron, whose bronze group of the young Athene with Marsyas, the satyr, must have given much delight. A small bronze in New York (Plate II) shows a rather similar girl-goddess letting fly her owl from her right hand. A helmet of the shape called Corinthian is on her head, and she wears a plain Doric chiton fastened with a pin on each shoulder and girt up at the waist. Gods like Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes, and others might be, and constantly were, represented as naked; but not goddesses, unless they granted permission to be thus revealed, and only Aphrodite came to permit this often. Indeed, to catch unawares a goddess bathing could have terrible consequences. Handsome hunters in Greece were well advised to be careful how they approached mountain tarns and woodland bathing-pools. The youth who from shelter of rock or thicket had observed some lovely creature shedding her simple chiton in order to bathe was incurring no great risk if the vision were mortal girl or mountain nymph, but if she were a goddess disaster was certain. They said of Actæon that he surprised Artemis herself bathing in the silvery pool of a mountain stream and that he was instantly changed into a young stag and torn to pieces by his own hounds.

  Callimachus—the poet already cited—wrote early in the third century B.C. a hymn known as ‘The Bath of Pallas’ in honour of Athene, and worked into this an older legend which he had learnt as a youth in Athens.

  The story is not mine, but told by others. Girls! there was one nymph of old in Thebes whom Athene loved much, more than all her companions, the mother she was of Teiresias, and she was never apart from her.

  This nymph, Chariklo, was, like all her kind, ageless; for enduring youthfulness was the fortune of nymphs, even though they might be the mothers of mortal men.

  Yet even her did many tears await in the days that followed, albeit she was a friend so pleasing to the heart of Athene. One day those two undid the buckles of their robes beside the fair-flowing Fountain of the Horse on Helicon and bathed; and noontide quiet held all the hill. Those two were bathing and it was the noontide hour and a great quiet held that hill. Only Teiresias, on whose cheek the down was just darkening, still ranged with his hounds the holy place. And, athirst beyond telling, he came unto the flowing fountain, wretched man! and unwillingly saw that which is not lawful to be seen. And Athene was angered, yet said to him: “What god, O son of Everes, led you on this grievous way? hence you shall never more take back your eyes!”

  She spoke and night seized the eyes of the youth and he stood speechless; for pain glued his knees and helplessness stayed his voice. But the nymph cried: “What have you done to my boy, Lady? Is such the friendship of you goddesses? You have taken away the eyes of my son. Foolish child! You have seen the breasts and thighs of Athene, but the sun you shall not see again.”

  And the goddess Athene pitied her friend and spoke to her and said, “Noble Lady, take back all the words that you have spoken in anger. It is not I that made your child blind. For no sweet thing is it for Athene to snatch away the eyes of children. But the laws of Kronos order thus: Whosoever shall behold any of the immortals, when the god himself chooses not, he shall behold at a heavy price.”

  Then Athene went on to tell of the terrible fate of Actæon when he saw Artemis bathing, and to declare that by comparison blind Teiresias was fortunate, and Athene gave to him in compensation many honours, making him “a seer to be sung of men hereafter, more excellent by far than any other, both in this world and in the after-life.” Wisdom indeed was in the gift of Athene.

  There is no clearer proof of the love which the Athenians felt for their goddess than the temple which they built for her. The Parthenon, made, all of it, of solid Pentelic marble, was not the largest Greek temple, but it was incomparably the finest. Yet its very splendour was the symptom of a change in feelings about Athene. The pleasing concept of Pallas Athene as a young goddess, fresh-emerged from childhood, was not to endure, even as the youthful vigour of Athens, crowned by her courage and daring against the Medes at Marathon, was not to last. Athens developed into an imperialist power; Athene, under the very inspiration of Pericles and Pheidias, into a symbol of empire. In both gable-groups of the Parthenon she was depicted as one grown to the full estate of goddess-womanhood: the statue of her inside the temple made her a giantess of gold and ivory.{30} It has been destroyed; but we know small copies of this, the second in fame of the works of Pheidias. Two questions must be posed. If we could see that figure could we admire it except as a tour de force of engineering and a brilliant piece of craftsmanship? Could it have possessed any of the deep religious and numinous qualities which we must believe that Zeus—Pheidias’ other work in gold and ivory—possessed? Perhaps a reluctant “No” is the answer to both questions. Be that as it may, Athene had changed to another kind of goddess, emblem of the state, symbol of empire, from which symbol there were to be copied as time marched on other very similar female symbols named ‘Roma’, ‘Britannia and ‘Columbia’.

  Yet when Pheidias had completed his statue of her these symbolical derivatives were still far off, and she was venerated by the Athenians and by other Greeks for another eight hundred years. More than that, Alexander himself, the World Conqueror, adopted her, placing her head upon the gold coinage of his empire. His successors followed suit, and she figured upon the money not only of the Kings of Macedon, Thrace, Pergamum, Cappadocia, Syria, Egypt, and Syracuse, but even on the coins of a series of Greek kings who ruled in North-west India. At last, when the closing of all pagan temples was ordained, the Parthenon became a Christian church, and the cultus of the virgin goddess of Athens was replaced by that of the Virgin Mary. A string of titles and epithets for god or goddess in ancient Greece was frequently rather favoured; thus, among a variety of such tags, the goddess of Athens had been ad
dressed as Pallas Athene Parthenos Gorgo Epēkoos, meaning ‘Girl Athene, Virgin, Terrible, Hearkening-to-prayer’. When the Virgin Mary replaced Athene she, in her turn, became Mater Theou Parthenos Athenaia Gorgo Epēkoos—that is, ‘Mother of God, Virgin Athenian One, Terrible, Hearkening-to-prayer’. It is those last two epithets which especially emphasise the smooth transmutation.{31}

  The sculptures of the Parthenon set forth two important myths about the goddess. Without the co-operation of any god, hero, or mortal, Hera had parthenogenetically borne a son—Hephaistos, the divine craftsman. The implication of feminine self-sufficiency in this deed was both disturbing and displeasing to Zeus. It gave him a headache. The headache got worse; it became insupportable. He summoned the ancient spirits called Eileithyiai, who preside over birth, and their diagnosis was that Zeus was with child in his brain. So the headache was the answer to Zeus’ worry about Hera. Hephaistos, her son, was next summoned and commanded to open the skull of Zeus with a stroke of his axe. Having complied, he took rapid evasive action, even as he saw the tiny child Athene spring from the brain of Zeus. Some witnesses declared she came forth fully armed and quickly grew to god-like majesty; but there are tales about her childhood and youth. Skilled in many arts and crafts, she one day invented the double-flutes, and was delighted with the music she could make, until of a sudden she looked into a clear pool of water as she played them, and was horrified at the ugliness of her puffed-out cheeks. As she threw them away in disgust a satyr named Marsyas was passing and carried them off, to his own undoing. Elated with pride as he taught himself to play them, the wretched creature dared to call himself a better musician than Apollo, and to challenge the god to a contest. What happened to him will be described in another myth in the chapter about Apollo.