Study Guide. Previous Next. The Less Short Story In order to really grasp the events surrounding the war between the Titans and the Olympians, it helps to understand how the whole thing got started. So, at the beginning of time, there were only three beings: Chaos, Gaia , and Eros. Gaia is kind of like the goddess of the earth, and she is also the earth itself. Eros is the god of love and may or may not be the same Eros who is born later to Aphrodite.
Chaos is the god of… well… Chaos. Got all that? In time, Chaos gives birth to Erebus and Nyx, darkness and night, and these two give birth to a lot of people that we don't really care about right now. Then Gaia gives birth to Uranus Ouranos , who represents either Heaven or the sky, depending on which version of the story you're reading. No version of the story explains how all of these births happened without anyone doing the deed, but maybe that's beside the point.
Speaking of which, Gaia and Uranus proceed to get it on. A lot. Don't think about the fact that they're mother and son — it'll just give you nightmares. There will be a quiz later. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, "But what about Atlas and Prometheus and those other Titans I've heard about?
The answer is that Atlas and most of those other famous Titans are actually the sons and daughters of the original Titans. Atlas, for example, is the son of Iapetus and Clymene. True story. Then yes, there's more they give birth to three Giants: Cottus, Briareos, and Gyes.
These Giants were said to have fifty heads and a hundred arms each, and came to be known as the Hecatonchires, which means something like "with one hundred hands.
Papa Uranus fears and despises these six powerful creatures, so as they are born, he locks them away inside the earth, laughing at their imprisonment.
To be fair, if we gave birth to giants with fifty heads and a hundred arms, we might lock them away too. Gaia can't bear to see her children mistreated, so she calls upon her first born s , the Titans, and demands that they take revenge on their father for his cruelty. This is where we see the first major difference between versions of this story. This war lasted ten years. Atlas was a major leader on the side of the Titans and Cronus. After the war was over, Zeus imprisoned all of the Titans, except for Themis and Prometheus who fought for him.
These Titans were imprisoned in the earth the same way that Cronus, Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes once were. Hecatonchires guarded the Titans in their prison. Because Atlas was such an important fighter for the opposition, Zeus gave him the special punishment of holding up the world.
They drew straws to see who would rule over which part. Zeus drew the longest straw, so he was given the title of king of the sky. This also meant that he was the head of mortals and all the gods, too. Poseidon got the middle straw, so he became king of the sea. Hades drew the shortest straw, so he became the ruler of the Underworld. The Underworld is also known as the realm of the dead. There are some differently told versions of the Titanomachy, one of which says that Zeus eventually let the Titans go free.
Once Zeus had reign over the earth, he decided to ask Prometheus and Themis to create man and animals to populate the earth as a new generation of mortal beings. Themis created animals, and Prometheus was given the job of creating man. Themis took his job very seriously and finished all of the animals before Prometheus had even decided what gifts to give mankind.
By the time Prometheus was ready to give mankind the gifts, Themis had already used them all on the animals! Prometheus was so angry that he stole the godly fire back from Zeus, and gave it to man.
Zeus was so angry that he chained Prometheus to a mountain forever. Zeus was still so angry that he wanted to punish mankind. He did this by creating a beautiful woman, named Pandora. Pandora then married, and lived a very happy life, until one day she got very curious. Pandora and her husband decided to open the box. When they opened this box, all the evils of the world came spilling out. According to Greek mythology, this is where we get pride, envy, greed, pain, suffering and anything bad.
Pandora and her husband managed to close the box before every horror escaped. They only opened it one more time because the box whispered that it had hope inside, and wanted to let it out. They did open the box then, and hope was released for all of mankind. If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.
Home » Myths » Titanomachy. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Thus it was that when the Greeks made sacrifice to the gods, they enjoyed feasting upon the best edible portions of the animals, while only the white bones that remained were burned for the gods.
The Theft of Fire. He took away from them fire, essential to their livelihood and progress. Prometheus, defiantly our champion, once again tricked Zeus who this time was presumably at first unaware? The Punishment of Prometheus. A further defiance of Prometheus was his refusal to reveal to Zeus a crucial secret that he knew and Zeus did not. If Zeus mated with the sea-goddess Thetis, she would bear a son who would overthrow his father.
Thus Zeus faced the terrible risk of losing his power as supreme god, like Cronus and Uranus before him. Zeus had the wily and devious Prometheus bound in inescapable bonds to a crag of the remote Caucasus Mountains in Scythia, with a shaft driven through his middle. And he sent an eagle to eat his immortal liver each day, and what the eagle ate would be restored again each night.
Generations later, however, Zeus worked out a reconciliation with Prometheus and sent his son Heracles to kill the eagle with an arrow and release Prometheus. Zeus avoided mating with Thetis, who married a mortal, Peleus, and bore a son Achilles to become mightier than his father. He had Hephaestus fashion her out of earth and water in the image of a modest maiden, beautiful as a goddess.
Athena clothed her in silvery garments and her face was covered with a wondrously embroidered veil. She placed on her head lovely garlands of flowers and a golden crown, beautifully made and intricately decorated by Hephaestus; and she taught her weaving. Aphrodite bestowed upon her the grace of sexual allurement and desire and their pain.
Hermes contrived in her breast wheedling words and lies and the nature of a thief and a bitch. All at the will of Zeus. The name Prometheus means forethought, but Epimetheus means afterthought. Zeus sent with Pandora a jar, urn, or box, which contained evils of all sorts, and as well hope. She herself removed the cover and released the miseries within to plague human beings, who previously had led carefree and happy lives: hard work, painful diseases, and thousands of sorrows.
Through the will of Zeus, hope alone remained within the jar, because life without hope would be unbearable in the face of all the horrible woes unleashed for poor mortals. In Hesiod, Pandora is not motivated toopen the jar by a so-called feminine curiosity, whatever later versions may imply. Aeschylus powerfully establishes Prometheus as our suffering champion who has advanced human beings, through his gift of fire, from savagery to civilization.
Furthermore, Prometheus gave us the hope denied to us by Zeus, which, however blind, permits us to persevere and triumph over the terrible vicissitudes of life. Prometheus is grandly portrayed as the archetypal trickster and culture-god, the originator of all inventions and progress in the arts and the sciences.
At the end of the play, Prometheus is still defiant, chained to his rock, and still refusing to reveal the secret of the marriage of Thetis. In that resolution, Aeschylus presumably depicted Zeus as a god of wisdom who, through the suffering of Prometheus, established himself in the end as a triumphant, almighty god secure in his supreme power, brought about through his divine plan for reconciliation.
This divine plan of Zeus for reconciliation with a defeated Prometheus entailed the suffering of IO [eye'oh], a priestess of Hera who was loved by Zeus. Hera found out and turned Io into a white cow. Zeus rescued Io by sending Hermes to lull Argus to sleep and cut off his head. Frenzied, Io in her wanderings over the world encountered Prometheus.
The fulfillment of the will of Zeus was in the end accomplished. Lycaon and the Wickedness of Mortals. In the Age of Iron, Zeus took the form of a man to find out whether reports of the great wickedness of mortals were true. Lycaon even went so far as to slaughter a man and offer human flesh as a meal for Zeus, who in anger brought the house down in flames. Lycaon fled but was turned into a howling, bloodthirsty wolf, a kind of werewolf in fact, since in this transformation he still manifested his human, evil looks and nature.
Disgusted with the wickedness that he found everywhere he roamed, Zeus decided that the human race must be destroyed by a great flood. Deucalion and Pyrrha.
When the flood subsided they found themselves in their little boat stranded on Mt. They were dismayed to discover that they were the only survivors and consulted the oracle of Themis about what they should do. The goddess ordered them to toss the bones of their great mother behind their backs. Deucalion understood that the stones in the body of earth are her bones. And so the stones that Deucalion tossed behind his back were miraculously transformed into men, while those cast by Pyrrha became women.
In this way the world was repopulated. Hellen and the Hellenes. It cannot escape notice that many Greek myths that explain the creation of the world have been influenced by Near Eastern forerunners.
Commercial contact between the Greeks and the Near East seems the most likely conduit.
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