The Greek Myths, Volume 1 (6 page)

5
. Pausanias’s statement that Pelasgus was the first of men records the continuance of a neolithic culture in Arcadia until Classical times.

2

THE HOMERIC AND ORPHIC CREATION MYTHS

S
OME
say that all gods and all living creatures originated in the stream of Oceanu which girdles the world, and that Tethys was the mother of all his children.
¹

b
. But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe,
²
was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion. Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night, who named him Ericepaius and Protogenus Phaëthon,
³
lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order, and Justice. Before this cave sat the inescapable mother Rhea, playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man’s attention to the oracles of the goddess. Phanes created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her sceptre passed to Uranus.
⁴

1
. Homer:
Iliad
xvi. 201.

2
.
Ibid
.: xiv. 261.

3
.
Orphic Fragments
60, 61, and 70.

4
.
Ibid
.: 86.

1
. Homer’s myth is a version of the Pelasgian creation story (see
1.
2
), since Tethys reigned over the sea like Eurynome, and Oceanus girdled the Universe like Ophion.

2
. The Orphic myth is another version, but influenced by a late mystical doctrine of love (
Eros
) and theories about the proper relations
of the sexes. Night’s silver egg means the moon, silver being the lunar metal. As Ericepaius (‘feeder upon heather’), the love-god Phanes (‘revealer’), is a loudly-buzzing celestial bee, son of the Great Goddess (see
18.
4
). The beehive was studied as an ideal republic, and confirmed the myth of the Golden Age, when honey dropped from the trees (see
5.
b
). Rhea’s brazen drum was beaten to prevent bees from swarming in the wrong place, and to ward off evil influences, like the bull-roarers used in the Mysteries. As Phaëthon Protogenus (‘first-born shiner’), Phanes is the Sun, which the Orphics made a symbol of illumination (see
28.
d
), and his four heads correspond with the symbolic beasts of the four seasons. According to Macrobius, the Oracle of Colophon identified this Phanes with the transcendent god Iao: Zeus (ram), Spring; Helius (lion), Summer; Hades (snake), Winter; Dionysus (bull), New Year.

Night’s sceptre passed to Uranus with the advent of patriarchalism.

3

THE OLYMPIAN CREATION MYTH

A
T
the beginning of all things Mother Earth emerged from Chaos and bore her son Uranus as she slept. Gazing down fondly at her from the mountains, he showered fertile rain upon her secret clefts, and she bore grass, flowers, and trees, with the beasts and birds proper to each. This same rain made the rivers flow and filled the hollow places with water, so that lakes and seas came into being.

b
. Her first children of semi-human form were the hundred-handed giants Briareus, Gyges, and Cottus. Next appeared the three wild, one-eyed Cyclopes, builders of gigantic walls and master-smiths, formerly of Thrace, afterwards of Crete and Lycia,
¹
whose sons Odysseus encountered in Sicily.
²
Their names were Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, and their ghosts have dwelt in the caverns of the volcano Aetna since Apollo killed them in revenge for the death of Asclepius.

c
. The Libyans, however, claim that Garamas was born before the Hundred-handed Ones and that, when he rose from the plain, he offered Mother Earth a sacrifice of the sweet acorn.
³

1
. Apollodorus: i. 1–2; Euripides:
Chrysippus
, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, p. 751; Lucretius: i. 250 and ii. 991 ff.

2
. Homer:
Odyssey
ix. 106–566; Apollodorus: iii. 10. 4.

3
. Apollonius Rhodius : iv. 1493 ff.; Pindar :
Fragment
84, ed. Bergk.

1
. This patriarchal myth of Uranus gained official acceptance under the Olympian religious system. Uranus, whose name came to mean ‘the sky’ seems to have won his position as First Father by being identified with the pastoral god Varuna, one of the Aryan male trinity; but his Greek name is a masculine form of
Ur-ana
(‘queen of the mountains’, ‘queen of summer’, ‘queen of the winds’, or ‘queen of wild oxen’) – the goddess in her orgiastic midsummer aspect. Uranus’s marriage to Mother Earth records an early Hellenic invasion of Northern Greece, which allowed Varuna’s people to claim that he had fathered the native tribes he found there, though acknowledging him to be Mother Earth’s son. An emendation to the myth, recorded by Apollodorus, is that Earth and Sky parted in deadly strife and were then reunited in love: this is mentioned by Euripides (
Melanippe the Wise
, fragment 484, ed. Nauck) and Apollonius Rhodius (
Argonautica
i. 494). The deadly strife must refer to the clash between the patriarchal and matriarchal principles which the Hellenic invasions caused. Gyges (‘earth-born’) has another form,
gigas
(‘giant’), and giants are associated in myth with the mountains of Northern Greece. Briareus (‘strong’) was also called Aegaeon (
Iliad
i. 403), and his people may therefore be the Libyo-Thracians, whose Goat-goddess Aegis (see
8.
1
) gave her name to the Aegean Sea. Cottus was the eponymous (name-giving) ancestor of the Cottians who worshipped the orgiastic Cotytto, and spread her worship from Thrace throughout North-western Europe. These tribes are described as ‘hundred-handed’, perhaps because their priestesses were organized in colleges of fifty, like the Danaids and Nereids; perhaps because the men were organized in war-bands of one hundred, like the early Romans.

2
. The Cyclopes seem to have been a guild of Early Helladic bronze-smiths.
Cyclops
means ‘ring-eyed’, and they are likely to have been tattooed with concentric rings on the forehead, in honour of the sun, the source of their furnace fires; the Thracians continued to tattoo themselves until Classical times (see
28.
2
). Concentric circles are part of the mystery of smith-craft: in order to beat out bowls, helmets, or ritual masks, the smith would guide himself with such circles, described by compass around the centre of the flat disk on which he was working. The Cyclopes were one-eyed also in the sense that smiths often shade one eye with a patch against flying sparks. Later, their identity was forgotten, and the mythographers fancifully placed their ghosts in the caverns of Aetna, to explain the fire and smoke issuing from its crater (see
35.
1
). A close cultural connexion existed between Thrace, Crete, and Lycia; the
Cyclopes will have been at home in all these countries. Early Helladic culture also spread to Sicily; but it may well be (as Samuel Butler first suggested) that the Sicilian composition of the
Odyssey
explains the Cyclopes’ presence there (see 170.
b
). The names Brontes, Steropes, and Arges (‘thunder,’ ‘lightning’, and ‘brightness’) are late inventions.

3
. Garamas is the eponymous ancestor of the Libyan Garamantians who occupied the Oasis of Djado, south of the Fezzan, and were conquered by the Roman General Balbus in 19
B
.
C
. They are said to have been of Cushite-Berber stock, and in the second century
A
.
D
. were subdued by the matrilineal Lemta Berbers. Later they fused with the Negro aboriginals on the south bank of the Upper Niger, and adopted their language. They survive today in a single village under the name of Koromantse.
Garamante
is derived from the words
gara, man
, and
te
, meaning, ‘Gara’s state people’. Gara seems to be the Goddess Ker, or Q’re, or Car (see
82.
6
and
86.
2
), who gave her name to the Carians, among other people, and was associated with apiculture. Esculent acorns, a staple food of the ancient world before the introduction of corn, grew in Libya; and the Garamantian settlement of Ammon was joined with the Northern Greek settlement of Dodona in a religions league which, according to Sir Flinders Petrie, may have originated as early as the third millennium
B
.
C
. Both places had an ancient oak-oracle (see
51.
a
). Herodotus describes the Garamantians as a peaceable but very powerful people, who cultivate the date-palm, grow corn, and herd cattle (iv.174 and 183).

4

TWO PHILOSOPHICAL CREATION MYTHS

S
OME
say that Darkness was first, and from Darkness sprang Chaos. From a union between Darkness and Chaos sprang Night, Day, Erebus, and the Air.

From a union between Night and Erebus sprang Doom, Old Age, Death, Murder, Continence, Sleep, Dreams, Discord, Misery, Vexation, Nemesis, Joy, Friendship, Pity, the Three Fates, and the Three Hesperides.

From a union between Air and Day sprang Mother Earth, Sky, and Sea.

From a union between Air and Mother Earth sprang Terror, Craft, Anger, Strife, Lies, Oaths, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Treaty, Oblivion, Fear, Pride, Battle; also Oceanus, Metis, and the
other Titans, Tartarus, and the Three Erinnyes, or Furies.

From a union between Earth and Tartarus sprang the Giants.

b
. From a union between the Sea and its Rivers sprang the Nereids. But, as yet, there were no mortal men until, with the consent of the goddess Athene, Prometheus, son of Iapetus, formed them in the likeness of gods. He used clay and water of Panopeus in Phocis, and Athene breathed life into them.
¹