Everyone knows: Greek mythology is, first of all, a lot of names. This is for us; and for the Greeks themselves there were even more. Almost every town or village had its own local deities; and even about those that were common, in each city they spoke in their own way. Those who lived all their lives in one place and knew little about others, those were little worried. But who often moved from city to city and from region to region, such as roaming singers, there were many inconveniences from this. In order to sing, mentioning the many gods and heroes, it was necessary to coordinate local traditions and at least agree on who is his son and who is his husband. And in order to remember better, state these genealogies in folding verses and say that these verses are dictated by the Muses themselves, the goddesses of reason, words and songs.
This was done by the singer Hesiod from under the Twisted Mountain - Helikon, where it is as if the Muses were leading their round dances. From this, the poem “Theogony” (or “Theogony”) came to be, which in Greek means “On the Origin of the Gods” - from the very beginning of the universe until the time when mortal heroes began to be born from immortal gods. On thirty pages, more than three hundred names are named and linked to each other. All of them fit into three mythological epochs: when the most ancient gods led by Uranus ruled; when the elder gods ruled - the Titans led by Cronus; and when the younger gods began to rule and rule - the Olympians, led by Zeus.
At first there was Chaos ("gaping"), in which everything was merged and nothing was divided. Then, Night, Earth-Gaia, and Dungeon-Tartarus were born from it. Then Day was born from Night, and Sky-Uranus and Sea-Pont from Earth-Gay. Sky-Uranus and Gaia-Earth became the first gods:
the starry Sky lay on the wide Earth and impregnated it. And around the first creatures of the gods swirled - sometimes ghostly, then monstrous.
From the Night, Death, Sleep, Sorrow, Labor, Lies, Revenge, Execution were born, and most importantly, Rock: the three goddesses of Moira ("Fractions"), which measure life for each person and determine unhappiness and happiness. From the Sea were born the eldest - sea god, the good Nereus, his two brothers and two sisters, and from them - many, many monsters. These are the Gorgons that kill with a look; Harpies abducting human souls; underground Echidna - in front of the maiden, behind the snake; fire-breathing Chimera - “in front of a lion, behind a dragon and a goat in the middle”; the insidious Sphinx, a female lioness who was destroying people with cunning riddles; three-body giant Gerion; the many-headed hellish dog Kerber and the many-headed marsh snake Hydra; the winged horse Pegasus and many more. Even for Gaia and Uranus, the first creatures were monstrous: three hundred-armed fighters and three one-eyed blacksmiths - Cyclops, the inhabitants of the black dungeon - Tartarus.
But they were not the main ones. The main ones were the Titans - the twelve sons and daughters of Uranus and Gaia. Uranus was afraid that they would overthrow him, and did not allow them to be born. One by one, they inflated the womb of mother Earth, and now she became unbearable. “From gray iron” she fettered a magic sickle and gave it to the children; and when Uranus again wanted to connect with her, the youngest and most cunning of the Titans, by the name of Cronus, cut off his child-bearing member. With a curse, Uranus leaped high, and a severed member fell into the sea, whipped white foam, and the goddess of love and desire Aphrodite - “Foamy” - came out of this foam.
The second kingdom began - the kingdom of the Titans: Cronus and his brothers and sisters. One of them was called Ocean, he became related to old Nereus, and all streams and rivers were born from him. The other was called Hyperion, from him were born the Sun-Helios, Luna-Selena and Dawn-Eos, and from Dawn - winds and stars. The third was called Iapetus, from him were born the mighty Atlas, which stands in the west of the earth and holds the sky on its shoulders, and the wise Prometheus, who is chained to a pillar in the east of the earth, and for which we will discuss this later. But the main one was Kron, and his dominion was alarming.
Kron was also afraid that the children born to him would overthrow him. He had three daughters and three sons from his sister Rei, and he took every newborn from her and swallowed him alive. Only the youngest, named Zeus, she decided to save. She allowed Cron to swallow a large stone wrapped in diapers, and Zeus hid in a cave on the island of Crete. There he grew up, and growing up, by cunning, made Crohn belch his brothers and sisters. The elder gods - the Titans and the younger gods - the Olympians converged in a struggle. "The sea roared, the earth groaned and the sky gasped." The Olympians liberated from Tartarus fighters - Storukikh and blacksmiths - Cyclops; the former struck the Titans with stones of three hundred hands, and the latter bound Zeus with thunder and lightning, and the Titans could not stand against it. Now they themselves have been imprisoned in Tartarus, to the very depths: how much from heaven to earth, so much from earth to Tartarus. The one-hundred were on guard, and Zeus the Thunderer and his brothers took power over the world.
The third kingdom began - the kingdom of the Olympians. Zeus took the heavens with the Celestial Mount Olympus as an inheritance; his brother Poseidon is the sea, where both Nereus and the Ocean obeyed him; the third brother, Hades, is the underworld of the dead. Their sister Hera became the wife of Zeus and gave birth to him the wild Ares, the god of war, the lame Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, and the bright Hebe, the goddess of youth. Sister Demeter, the goddess of arable land, bore Zeus a daughter to Persephone; Hades abducted her, and she became the Queen of the Underground. The third sister, Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, remained virgin.
Zeus was also in danger of being overthrown: the old Gaia and Uranus warned him that the daughter of the Ocean, Metis-Wisdom, should give birth to a daughter smarter than everyone and a son stronger than everyone. Zeus connected with her, and then swallowed it, as Kron had once swallowed his brothers. The smarter daughter was born from the head of Zeus: she was Athena, the goddess of reason, labor and war. And the son was left unborn most of all. From another of the daughters of the Titans, Zeus gave birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis: she is a hunter, he is a shepherd, as well as a healer, and also a diviner. From the third, Zeus was born Hermes, a crossroads watchman, patron of road travelers and merchants. From another born three Ora - the goddess of order; from one - three Harites, the goddess of beauty; from one more - nine Muses, goddesses of reason, words and songs with which this story began. Hermes invented the string lyre, Apollo plays it, and the Muses dance around him.
The two sons of Zeus were born of mortal women, but nevertheless they ascended to Olympus and became gods. This is Hercules, his beloved son, who went around the whole earth, freeing her from evil monsters: he defeated Hydra, and Gerion, and Kerber, and others. And this is Dionysus, who also went around the whole earth, working miracles, teaching people to plant grapes and make wine and admonishing them when to drink in moderation, and when without restraint.
And where did mortal people themselves come from in the world, Hesiod does not say: maybe from rocks or trees. The gods did not like them at first, but Prometheus helped them survive. People had to honor the gods, sacrificing part of their food to them. Prometheus made a tricky divide: slaughtered a bull, laid separately bones covered with fat, and meat covered with a stomach and skin, and invited Zeus to choose a share for the gods and a share for people. Zeus was deceived, chose bones and from evil decided not to give people fire for cooking meat. Then Prometheus himself stole the fire on Olympus and brought it to the people in an empty reed. For this, Zeus punished him and people. He created the first woman, Pandora, for the people “on the mountain for men”, and, as you know, a lot of evil came from women. But Prometheus, as said, he chained to a pillar in the east of the earth and sent an eagle every day to peck his liver. Only many centuries later Zeus allowed Hercules to shoot this eagle in his wanderings and free Prometheus. But it turned out that people needed gods more than gods thought. The gods had yet another struggle - with the Giants, the youngest sons of Gaia-Earth, born from drops of Uranium blood. And it was destined that the gods would defeat them only if at least one person helped them. So, it was necessary to give birth to such powerful people who could help the gods. It was then that the gods began to descend to mortal women, and the goddess to give birth to mortal men. Thus was born a tribe of heroes; the best of them was Hercules, and he saved the gods in the war with the Giants. And then this tribe died in the Theban war and the Trojan war. But before that, Hesiod did not finish: his story ends at the very beginning of the heroic age. Theogony, the genealogy of the gods, is the end.
