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Notes on the Book Mythology by Edith Hamilton
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Mythology Notes Part 1: They Gods, The Creation, and the Earliest Heroes Chapter 1: The Titans and the Twelve Great Olyimpians The gods of the Greeks and Romans did not create heaven and earth; heaven and earth gave birth to the Titans, the first gods. The most important of these deities were Cronus, Atlas and Prometheus. Ocean was also a Titan. The twelve Olympians were the gods that followed the titans: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hermes, Ares, Hephaestus, and Hestia. There were many other lesser gods of both generations. Chapter 2 : The Two Great Gods of Earth Two gods important to the day to day lives of men are Demeter and Dionysius. Demeter is the older divinity because corn and wheat are planted before the grape vine, the gods' earthly manifestations. The grain divinity is a woman because the harvest became a woman's job with the increasing frequency of warfare. Fields and the threshing floor became holy. Demeter's chief festival occurs at harvest time and became known as the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece. These unknown rituals were held every five years for nine days. Dionysius also came to be worshipped in this ritual. Neither of the Earth gods are truly alive in the winter. Demeter had a daughter, Persephone, who embodied the spring time. When she walked the earth, spring was eternal. The world began to waste away when Hades stole her. Demeter looked for her for nine days but no one would tell her the truth. The Sun admitted to her that "Persephone was down in the world beneath the earth" Chapter 2, pg. 57. She wandered to the earth until she came to Eleusis. Four virgin sisters found her and took her home for shelter. She asked for barley water flavored with mint. She nursed their brother to give him eternal youth. She exposed herself to the mother, Metaneira, and asked for a temple to be built. Demeter returned when the temple was built and pined for her lost daughter. The world was caught in an eternal winter, and Zeus sent Hermes to make Hades release Persephone. Hades made her eat a pomegranate seed before she left. Persephone rejoined her mother, but Demeter knew that her daughter would soon die from the pomegranate seed, and return to the underworld. Zeus sent his mother Rhea to talk to Hades and make him give up Persephone. Demeter accepted the compromise of Persephone spending part of the year in the land of the dead and a part of the year among the living. This story explains the four seasons. In the city of Thebes, Zeus fell in love with a woman named Semele. She manipulated him into letting her see his full splendor. The sight killed her. Before she died, Zeus saved their child, Dionysius, and hid him from Hera (his wife). He was cared for by nymphs and nursed by the rain to learn how to culture a vine. Pirates seized him but could not bind him. Only the helmsman guessed that he was a god. The ship filled with wine and dolphins carried Dionysius to safety. He passed through Thrace and went to Crete where he rescued Ariadne from her abandonment on Naxos. He never forgot his mother. He went to the underworld and carried her to Olympus. Dionysius is known as a kind, but at times, cruel god. He drives Maenads wild with wine. They would rush through towns and forests destroying anything in their way. They have no temples and they worship him in the forest. He went to Thebes to establish his worship officially. Pentheus feared this and told his guards to seize the women. Teiresias warned him, but Pentheus proceeded and Dionysius came before him. All the Maenads escaped. "Pentheus by now was blind to everything except his anger and his scorn. He spoke roughly to Dionysius, who answered him with entire gentleness, seeming to try to reach his real self and open his eyes to see that he was face to face with divinity." Chapter 2, pg. 70 Dionysius escaped from his chains and asked Pentheus to yield to the divine. Maenads pursued Pentheus into the forest. The Theban women joined them and tore him limb from limb. Dionysius is simultaneously joyful and brutal. Just as wine can produce joy or sorrow, Dionysius produces ruin and fruit. In his dual nature, he is closer to men than other gods. While Demeter's mysteries were closed, the festival of Dionysius was an open five days of poetry and plays, out of which the most famous of the Greek tragedies and comedies emerged. Just as a grapevine must be cut back and left dead for the winter, Dionysius was believed to be dead in the snow. Every year he submits to the gruesome death of being torn to pieces. His soul, however, lives on and in his resurrection, life overcomes death. Chapter 3: How the World and Mankind Were Created Chaos existed before everything. Night and Erebus are children of this chaos. From this void, love was somehow born and it created light and day. From this, earth emerged. Earth was simultaneously geography and an entity, as was heaven. Earth (Gaia) and Sky (Ouranos) gave birth to monsters that were terrible. First came hundred handed beasts, then the Cyclopes and their last children, the Titans. Ouranos hated the Titans. Gaia appealed to them and Cronus castrated his father. From his blood the Erinyes were born. Cronus ruled with his sister Rhea. He ate his children as they were born because he had learned that one would overcome him. Rhea rescued the sixth child and hid him on Crete. She had fed her husband a rock wrapped in cloth, instead of a baby. This child, Zeus, forced his father to disengorge his siblings and together they fought the Titans. Zeus won by joining with the hundred-handed monsters. He bound many of the Titans. Atlas was condemned to bear the weight of the sky and the earth forever. Zeus was not completely victorious, however. There were many times afterward when he had to struggle with the giants. The gods of Olympus overwhelmed the gods of earth, enforcing the supremacy of heaven over earth. "As yet there were no human beings, but the world now cleared of monsters was ready for mankind." Chapter 3, pg. 83 The earth was a disc of land divided by water and surrounded by the ocean. On the sides of the ocean were mysterious people who lived near the Muses. According to some sources, the dead also lived on this far edge. There is more than one account for the creation of man. This job was given to Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus. Their names mean forethought and afterthought respectively. Epimetheus gave all the good traits to animals first. Neither speed nor strength was left for humans. He gave the botched job to his brother. Prometheus made men in the image of the gods and gave them fire as the best protection against the animals of the world. In another account, the gods made men together. The first race was a golden race that had neither work nor pain. The next race was an inferior silver race. The following was the brass, who were terrible and followed by a race of heroes that fought glorious wars and went on to blessed lands. The fifth race was that of iron, modern man. This race grows more wretched with each generation, and someday Zeus will have to destroy them. Both stories agree that there were no women in the early age. Zeus created them as revenge because Prometheus tricked the gods into accepting fat wrapped around bones instead of real meat for sacrifice. Zeus swore by Styx to keep this sacrificial procedure and made women as a punishment. He created Pandora. In one story she was evil but in another she was naive and her curiosity made her open a box that held all the evils that came to men. The only good thing that came out of the box was hope. After punishing men, Zeus had Prometheus bound to a rock because he wanted him to disclose a secret only he knew. Prometheus knew which woman would bear a son greater than Zeus. He hung in torture for many years. Chiron one day offered himself as a substitute, but Hercules ultimately released the Titan. Another account is that men descended from a race of stone. They grew so wicked that Zeus sent a flood to drown them all and only one peak was uncovered. A son of Prometheus and a daughter of Epimetheus survived on this peak.
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Paper Information
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Title: Notes on the Book Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Words: 7168
Rating: None
Pages: 28.7
submitted by: BiologuSux
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