Chapter 1: The Early Gods
Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page
♠ Hesiod, Works and Days 173a-c
far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. And these last equally have honor and glory. Greek Text
♠ Hesiod, Theogony 851
and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos. Greek Text
♠ Pindar, Olympian 2.76-77
With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Greek Text
♠ Pindar, Pythian 4.289-91
And truly he, like Atlas, now strains against the weight of the sky, far from his ancestral land and his possessions. But immortal Zeus freed the Titans. Greek Text
♠ Pindar fr 35 SM – Pindarus 2, p. 10, ed. B. Snell and H. Maehler. Leipzig 1975.
The Titans having been released from those bonds under your hands, o Lord (Transl. E. Bianchelli)
♠ Aischylos, Prometheus Lyomenos (Prometheus Unbound) fr 190 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, pp. 307-8, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1985.
♠ Aischylos, Prometheus Lyomenos (Prometheus Unbound) fr 191 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, p. 308, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1985.
♠ Aischylos, Prometheus Lyomenos (Prometheus Unbound) fr 192 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, pp. 309-10, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1985.
♠ Aischylos, Prometheus Lyomenos (Prometheus Unbound) fr 193 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, pp. 310-13, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1985.
♠ Aeschylos, Eumenides 640-66
Chorus
Zeus gives greater honor to a father’s death, according to what you say; yet he himself bound his aged father, Cronus. How does this not contradict what you say? I call on you as witnesses turning to the judges to hear these things.
Apollo
Oh, monsters utterly loathed and detested by the gods! Zeus could undo fetters, there is a remedy for that, and many means of release. But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no return to life. For this, my father has made no magic spells, although he arranges all other things, turning them up and down; nor does his exercise of force cost him a breath.
Chorus
See how you advocate acquittal for this man! After he has poured out his mother’s blood on the ground, shall he then live in his father’s house in Argos? Which of the public altars shall he use? What purification rite of the brotherhoods will receive him?
Apollo
I will explain this, too, and see how correctly I will speak. The mother of what is called her child is not the parent, but the nurse of the newly-sown embryo. The one who mounts is the parent, whereas she, as a stranger for a stranger, preserves the young plant, if the god does not harm it. And I will show you proof of what I say: a father might exist without a mother. A witness is here at hand, the child of Olympian Zeus, who was not nursed in the darkness of a womb, and she is such a child as no goddess could give birth to. Greek Text
♠ Aischylos, Oreituia fr. 281 R – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 3, pp. 378-79, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1985.
Boreas: …For if I see some **ἑστιοῦκον** alone, after threading a furious flame-wreath [into it], I shall kindle the roof and burn it to cinders! As it is I have not yet sung the noble song (Transl. Aaron J. Ivey).
♠ Tertullian, De anima 46.10
I shall only laugh at all, if indeed I ought to laugh at the man who fancied that he was going to persuade us that Saturn dreamt before anybody else; which we can only believe if Aristotle, (who would fain help us to such an opinion,) lived prior to any other person. Latin Text
♠ Plutarch, Moralia 941f-42a
Greek Text and English Translation
♠ Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia (Athenian Constitution) 16.7
And in all other matters too he gave the multitude no trouble during his rule, but always worked for peace and safeguarded tranquillity; so that men were often to be heard saying that the tyranny of Peisistratus was the Golden Age of Cronos; for it came about later when his sons had succeeded him that the government became much harsher. Greek Text
♠ Plato, Politikos (Statesman) 272a-b
Nor did men possess wives or children; for they all came to life again out of the earth, with no recollection of their former lives. So there were no states or families, but they had fruits in plenty from the trees and other plants, which the earth furnished them of its own accord, without help from agriculture. And they lived for the most part in the open air, without clothing or bedding; for the climate was tempered for their comfort, and the abundant grass that grew up out of the earth furnished them soft couches. That, Socrates, was the life of men in the reign of Cronus; but the life of the present age, which is said to be the age of Zeus, you know by your own experience. Would you be able and willing to decide which of them is the more blessed? Greek Text
Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page
Tags:
Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, July 2020
1,309 total views, 1 views today