Classical Myths in the Arts

First was Chaos

Hesiod, in his Theogony begins with Chaos, a yawning nothingness. Out of the void emerged Gaia (the Earth), Eros (Sexual Desire), Tartarus (the Underworld), and Erebus (Darkness).

Without male assistance, Gaia gave birth to Ouranus (the Sky) who then fertilized her. From that union were born first the Titans—six males: Coeus, Crius, Cronus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Oceanus; and six females: Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Rhea, Theia, Themis, and Tethys.

After Cronus was born, Gaia and Ouranos decreed no more Titans were to be born. They were followed by the one-eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires or Hundred-Handed Ones. Cronus ("the wily, youngest and most terrible of Gaia's children”) castrated his father and became the ruler of the gods with his sister-wife Rhea as his consort, and the other Titans became his court.

A motif of father-against-son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus. Because Cronus had betrayed his father, he feared that his offspring would do the same, and so each time Rhea gave birth, he snatched up the child and ate it.

Rhea hated this and tricked him by hiding Zeus and wrapping a stone in a baby's blanket, which Cronus ate. When Zeus was grown, he fed his father a drugged drink which caused Cronus to vomit, throwing up Rhea's other children and the stone, which had been sitting in Cronus' stomach all along.

Zeus then challenged Cronus to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes (whom Zeus freed from Tartarus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology

Tartarus

Tartarus is the lowest region of the world, as far below earth as earth is from heaven. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, a bronze anvil falling from heaven would take nine days and nights to reach earth, and an object would take the same amount of time to fall from earth into Tartarus. Tartarus is described as a dank, gloomy pit, surrounded by a wall of bronze, and beyond that a three-fold layer of night. Along with Chaos, Gaia (Earth), and Eros, it is one of the first entities to exist in the universe.

While Hades is the main realm of the dead in Greek mythology, Tartarus also contains a number of characters. In early stories, it is primarily the prison for defeated gods; the Titans were condemned to Tartarus after losing their battle against the Olympian gods, and the hecatoncheires stood over them as guards at the bronze gates. When Zeus overcomes the monster Typhus, born from Tartarus and Gaia, he hurls it too into the same abyss.

However, in later myths Tartarus becomes a place of punishment for sinners. It resembles Hell and is the opposite of Elysium, the afterlife for the blessed. When the hero Aeneas visits the underworld, he looks into Tartarus and sees the torments inflicted on characters such as the Titans, Tityos, Otus and Ephialtes, and the Lapiths. Rhadymanthus (and, in some versions, his brother Minos) judges the dead and assigns punishment.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tartarus.html

SOME TITANS AND THEIR OFFSPRING

Deities of Waters. The Titan OKEANOS was the stream of Ocean that encircles the disc of the earth in the early concept of geography. He is the father of the many spirits of waters (rivers, springs, etc.), the OCEANIDS, three thousand daughters and three thousand sons.

Gods of the Sun. The titan HYPERION, god of the sun, was father of HELIOS, also a god of the sun. Later the god APOLLO became a god of the sun as well. The sun-god dwells in the East, crosses the dome of the sky in his chariot drawn by a team of four horses, descends in the West into the stream of Oceanus, which encircles the earth, and then sails back to the East to begin a new day.

The Son of a Sun-God. PHAËTHON, son of the sun-god, whether he be called Hyperion, Helius, or Apollo, wanted to be certain that the Sun was really his father and so he went to the splendid palace of the Sun to find out. The sun-god assured Phaëthon that he was his father, swearing a dread oath that the boy could have anything that he desired. Thus Phaëthon was granted his adamant request that he be allowed to drive the sun-chariot for one day. Too inexperienced to control the horses, Phaëthon created havoc, and in answer to the prayers of Earth was hurtled to his death by the lightning of the supreme god, Zeus or Jupiter. This tale illustrates the brave folly of youth, the conflict between parents and their children, and the search for identity.

Goddesses of the Moon. SELENE, goddess of the moon, is a daughter of the titan Hyperion, and she drives a two-horse chariot. Later the goddess ARTEMIS becomes a moon-goddess. Selene (or Artemis) fell desperately in love with the hunter ENDYMION and used to abandon her duties in the heaven to visit the cave of her beloved. In the end, Endymion was granted perpetual sleep and eternal youth.

Goddess of the Dawn. EOS, goddess of the dawn, was a third child of Hyperion. She, like Selene, drives a two-horse chariot. Eos fell in love with the mortal TITHONOS and carried him off. The supreme god Zeus granted her prayer that Tithonos be made immortal and live forever. Poor Eos forgot to ask for eternal youth for her beloved. Tithonos grew older and older, finally being turned into a shriveled grasshopper, while the passion of the eternally beautiful goddess cooled to become dutiful devotion. This tragic story illustrates how our ignorant wishes may be granted to our woe and illuminates the contrast between lovely and sensuous youth and ugly and debilitating old age.

http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195397703/student/materials/chapter3/?view=usa

Erebus

Erebus was known as the embodiment of primordial darkness, the son of Chaos (who was the void from which all things developed, known also as Darkness). According to Hesiod's Theogony, Erebus was born with Nyx (Night), and was the father of Aether (the bright upper atmosphere) and Hemera (Day). Charon, the ferry-man who took the dead over the rivers of the infernal region, is also said to be the son of Erebus and Nyx.

Later legend describes Hades as split into two regions: Erebus, which the dead have to pass shortly after they have died, and Tartarus, the deepest region, where the Titans were imprisoned. Charon ferried the souls of the dead across the river Acheron, or in later texts the river Styx, upon which they entered the land of the dead..

He is often used metaphorically for Hades itself.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/erebus.html

CASTRATION OF OURANUS AND THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE

Ouranus hated his children, and as they were about to be born he hid them in the depths of Gaia, the mother earth. The mythic image is Hesiod's poetic merging of vast sky and earth imagined, at the same time, as man and woman, husband and wife. Gaia's anguished appeals for revenge were answered by the last-born, the wily Cronus. He agreed to accept the jagged-toothed sickle that his mother had fashioned and, from his ambush, he castrated his father as he was about to make love to his mother. The severed genitals of Ouranus were cast upon the sea and from them a maiden grew, APHRODITE, the powerful goddess of beauty and love.

THE TITANS CRONUS AND RHEA AND THE BIRTH OF ZEUS

CRONUS, and RHEA, two important Titans, had several children who were devoured by their father as they were born. Cronus, who had castrated and overthrown his own father, Ouranus, was afraid that he too would be overcome by one of his children. Therefore, when his son ZEUS was born, the mother, Rhea, contrived that the birth be hidden from Cronus. She bore Zeus on the island of Crete and gave her husband a stone wrapped in baby's clothes to devour. Zeus was hidden in a cave and grew up eventually to overthrow his unwitting father; he will marry his sister HERA and they will become secure as king and queen of the gods.

Classical Myths in the Arts - Creation Myths

First was Chaos

Tartarus

Tartarus

Saturn Devouring One of His Children

Cronos devouring child - Giulia Lama

SOME TITANS AND THEIR OFFSPRING

Ancient Hellenic Music - Apollonios