The Olympians - Clark University

314 Pages·2007·0.86 MB·English

by  Paul Burke

PREFACE
This volume grew out of several separate projects which I have undertaken over
the last several years, including a set of encyclopedia articles on Greek gods and
goddesses, and a series of lectures which I delivered in 1996 at the Centre
Universitaire de Luxembourg to an extraordinarily receptive and encouraging
audience. My goal in expanding the articles and lectures into the current book
has been to express in a single volume of manageable size what I have come to
regard as the most useful and illuminating modern and not-so-modern
commentary on the divinities of the Classical world, supplemented by my own
remarks and evaluations. In order to render the book as readable and useful as
possible, I have not encumbered the text with footnote numbers; references to
primary and secondary sources may be checked in the General Bibliography and
Chapter Bibliographies.
I am grateful to many people for their assistance and encouragement. My good
friend and colleague Charles Marie Ternes of the Centre Universitaire de
Luxembourg first suggested that I transform my lectures and articles into a
book; he then encouraged me to submit it for publication in Luxembourg. Mark
T. Riley of California State University at Sacramento read a preliminary draft of
this book, making detailed and helpful suggestions for the production of the
current text; faults and failings which remain are more than likely a result of my
having ignored his good advice. I owe a particularly large debt of gratitude to
my friend and colleague, Prof. Charles Marie Ternes of the Centre Alexandre-
Wiltheim, Luxembourg, and the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg. Dr. Ternes
encouraged me to write this book and offered many helpful suggestions during
its composition; he wrote the admirable French and German chapter summaries
and he guided the completed manuscript through the publication process.
Errors and omissions are, of course, solely my responsibility. My students at
Clark University in a series of courses on Classical mythology and ancient
religion over nearly 25 years have been a constant source of inspiration and
renewed enthusiasm; their eminently sensible questions in and out of class have
kept me thinking about the issues which I hope this book clarifies in some small
way. Finally, Sarah K. Burke proofread the final typescript with meticulous
attention, catching many errors and stylistic infelicities.
INTRODUCTION: THE TWELVE GODS
A brief comment on the Twelve Olympians and the twelve chapters
of this book is in order. The Greeks assembled their gods into
a company of twelve and I have chosen to supply twelve chapters
on each of the members of one of various alternative lists of
the Twelve. The number twelve is fixed in the various ancient
lists which have come down to us; some names vary, Dionysus
being frequently substituted for Hestia. Other lists of twelve
differ quite drastically from that upon which this volume is
based. I have followed here the selection of Twelve made for the
central group of the Parthenon Frieze, leaving Hestia out and
including Dionysus: Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena,
Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Poseidon, and Zeus.
Burkert regards these Twelve “quite simply as the gods of the
Greeks;” without going quite this far, I would defend my choice
of twelve divinities as being those gods who are not only
enshrined in the Parthenon, the archetypal symbol of Classical
Greek culture, but also those who are likely to be of most
interest to modern readers.
Hestia, then, is not accorded a full chapter here. As the
hearth, she is the physical manifestation of the center of the
home, of the sacrificial fire of the temple (that is, the hearth
of the gods), and of fire itself as one of the core
prerequisites of civilized life. Plutarch (Life of Aristides,
20.4) refers to the ever-burning sacrificial fire at Delphi as
being “the public hearth”; Hestia tends the shrine of Apollo at
Delphi according to one of the two Homeric Hymn to Hestia (HH
24). Without Hestia, “mortals hold no banquet” (HH 29.5-6). As
the hearth of the gods Hestia is, of course, a major divinity
but she may by definition never leave home, nor can she have
lovers, family, interesting adventures, and so on. The Homeric
Hymn to Aphrodite, perhaps the least Hestia-like of the Twelve
Gods, amplifies this point:
Nor yet does the pure maiden Hestia love Aphrodite’s works.
She was the first-born child of wily Kronos and youngest
too, by will of Zeus who holds the aegis , a queenly maid
whom both Poseidon and Apollo sought to wed. But she was
wholly unwilling, nay, stubbornly refused; and touching the
head of father Zeus who holds the aegis, she, that fair
goddess, swore a great oath which has in truth been
fulfilled, that she would be a maiden all her days. So
Zeus the Father gave her a high honor instead of marriage,
and she has her place in the midst of the house and has the
riches portion. In all the temples of the gods she has a
share of honor, and among all mortal men she is chief of
the goddesses. (Loeb translation)
Hestia is, then, a major divinity, both oldest and youngest of
the children of Kronos in that she was the first to be born and
swallowed, and the last to be regurgitated (cf. Hesiod, Theogony
454). Beyond this, however, she is somewhat uninteresting.
In discussing the Twelve Gods (ofl d≈deka yeo€ or simply ofl
d≈deka), Guthrie points out in The Greeks and their Gods that
they can be shown to have been conceived in Classical times as a
kind of corporate body; this is shown in several ways, for
example in the erection of the single Athenian altar to them
which we shall discuss below, and in the common oath “By the
Twelve!” (cf. Aristophanes’ Knights, 235). Thucydides (6.54)
and Herodotus (6.108; 2.7) both mention the altar to the Twelve
at Athens, which according to Thucydides was set up in the agora
by Peisistratus the Younger (grandson of the tyrant) and later
enlarged. Six altars, each dedicated to a pair of gods, existed
at Olympia, where Pindar (Olympian 10.50ff.) says that their
cult was founded by Heracles.
O. Weinreich (“Zwölfgötter,” in W.H. Roscher, Ausführliches
Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, Hildesheim,
1936) suggests that the twelve gods to whom the Athenian altar
was dedicated in 522-521 BC were the canonical twelve of the
time of the archon Peisistratus the Younger: Zeus, Hera,
Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes,
Athena, Hephaestus, and Hestia. On the east frieze of the
Parthenon (dedicated in 438), a slightly different set of twelve
is depicted; Dionysus has replaced Hestia. Though a “late
intruder and hardly of Olympian status,” as Guthrie
characterizes him, Dionysus could hardly be refused a place so
close to his own theater. Hestia is displaced here and
elsewhere with little surviving comment by ancient writers other
than Plato’s description of a procession of the gods; Hestia
remains at home and the canonical number of twelve is made up
without her presence (Phaedrus, 246e; R. Hackforth trans.):
And behold, there in the heaven Zeus, mighty leader, drives
his winged team. First of the host of gods and daimons he
proceeds, ordering all things and caring therefor, and the
host follows after him, marshaled in eleven companies. For
Hestia abides alone in the gods’ dwelling place, but for
the rest, all such as are ranked in the number of the
twelve as ruler gods lead their several companies, each
according to his rank.
We shall see that other variations from the Peisistratean Twelve
are attested. At Olympia, the Titans Kronos and Rhea, plus the
river-god Alpheus, take their place among the twelve gods,
probably sometime between 470 and 400 BC, replacing Hephaestus,
Demeter and Hestia. The change may have been made to pay
particular honor to the parents of Zeus, the god to whom the
site was primarily sacred, as well as to the god of the local
river. In Laws (828), Plato suggests linking the twelve gods
with the months of the year; he would set the twelfth month
apart from the others by devoting it to Pluto so that this
portion of the year could be sacred to chthonic powers, as
opposed to the celestial gods honored by the remainder of
Plato’s annual round of observances.
Weinreich collects an enormous amount of literary and
archaeological data on altars and inscriptions dedicated to the
Twelve Gods, from all parts of the Greek-speaking world:
mainland Greece, Crete, Asia Minor, Sicily and Italy, including
even some references to India. He follows U. Von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorf (Glaube der Hellenen, Berlin, 1931) in concluding
that the cult of the Twelve originated in Ionia. In fact, the
earliest cults of the Twelve Gods which can be dated with
certainty are indicated by the 6th-century altars at Olympia and
Athens mentioned above. Weinreich suggests that the Twelve
served as guardian spirits of the twelve months and of the signs
of the zodiac; as we shall see below, this association is late
and based on the purely coincidental similarity between the
Olympian Twelve and the twelve Egyptian gods of the months and
of the zodiac. Weinreich maintains, probably correctly, that
the Twelve were Olympian gods from the very beginning; A.E.
Raubitschek challenges this conclusion, maintaining that the
Twelve were originally local heroes or daimones (“Die Attische
Zwölfgötter,” in Opus Nobile: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von
Ulf Jantzen, Wiesbaden, 1969).
Charlotte R. Long, in The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome (New
York, 1987), follows Weinreich to the extent of agreeing that
the Attic Twelve “seem to have been major, named Greek gods from
the start.” She engages in a long-needed, comprehensive
reassessment of the literary and epigraphical evidence for the
Olympian Twelve. Long points out that, while Greek texts
frequently mention the number twelve, they seldom name the gods
included in that number. While the figure twelve is firmly
fixed in surviving sources, the actual composition of the
company of major gods, when in fact it is revealed at all, may
vary widely. In about 400 BC, for example, Herodorus named the
six pairs of divinities to whom the altars at Olympia were
dedicated: Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and
Apollo, the Charites and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus, Kronos
and Rhea. These are by no means, as Long indicates, the twelve
Olympian gods but “they could be regarded as the chief gods of
Olympia,” since the last three have cults virtually nowhere
else. Long cites an Attic black-figure kyathos, approximately
contemporary with the founding of the Peisistratean altar to the
Twelve in Athens, which displays six pairs of gods: Zeus and
(perhaps) Nike, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, Heracles and Athena,
Dionysus and Hermes, Poseidon and Demeter, Ares and (probably)
Hera. Even if, with Long, we equate the Charites with
Aphrodite, the two sets of twelve have only seven members in
common. The Athenian set of twelve on the kyathos is closer
than the Olympian group to the Twelve of the Parthenon frieze,
but it includes Nike and Heracles instead of Apollo and Artemis.
Variations continue in the composition of the Twelve throughout
ancient history, down to representations dating from the Roman
era in Pompeii and Ostia; only the number twelve is firmly
fixed.
Long acknowledges that the origin of the number twelve is
uncertain and that while numerological arguments (twelve is
chosen because “it is the product of the perfect number three
and the generative number four”) may have satisfied
Neoplatonists, they are hardly convincing, and in any case they
can have nothing to do with the origin of the traditional
company of twelve gods. She further suggests that the
resemblance between the Olympian Twelve and the Egyptian gods of
the twelve months is purely superficial and that the later Greek
assimilation of the Twelve to the months and signs of the Zodiac
was without historical basis. We will do well simply to agree
with Long in contenting ourselves with the observation that the
Greeks had a fondness for assembling many types of phenomena
into groups of twelve, of which Weinreich lists many
(“Zwölfgötter,” 767-772).
The Twelve appear in myth as a panel of judges who protect
divine order; the Peisistratean altar in the center of Athens
may be regarded as the embodiment of the desire for civic
concord. In his Laws, Plato suggests that the tribes of
citizens of the ideal state be named after the Twelve; as Long
points out (221-222), one Greek city-state actually did this.
Much later, subsequent to their disastrous defeat at the hands
of Hannibal at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, the Romans established
an official cult of the Twelve Gods, presumably in order to
ensure the safety of the state which was then at such great
risk.
APHRODITE
Introduction
Other divinities may appear paradoxical or contradictory in
their various functions and powers; Aphrodite, though,
manifests, in Harrison’s words, “not only a singular loveliness
but a singular simplicity and unity.” This unity comprises, of
course, sexuality in all its many aspects, particularly its
pleasures and its irresistibility. The undoubted and
demonstrable power of eros in human experience made it obvious
to the Greeks that Aphrodite was a particularly powerful and
therefore a potentially dangerous deity. Hesiod’s story of the
birth of Aphrodite (Theogony 154-206) describes the miraculous
emergence of the goddess from the sea. Ouranos, personification
of the vault of heaven, had been emasculated by his wily,
sickle-wielding son Cronos. The severed male organ fell into
the sea and, under the magical influence of the sea, was
transformed into the goddess (193-195):
Afterwards she came to sea-girt Cyprus, and came forth an
awful and lovely goddess, and grass grew up about her
beneath her shapely feet.
This extraordinarily close link between Aphrodite and Ouranos,
along with her title “Ourania” (Queen of Heaven) indicate to the
satisfaction of most scholars that Aphrodite should be
understood, as a Greek expression of a Middle Eastern queen of
heaven of the Astarte/Ishtar type, that is, a creating divinity
strongly linked to the power of procreation. Aphrodite was
worshipped at Corinth with orgiastic rites and through temple
prostitution on a vast scale. Similarity between the Corinthian
cult and the traditional worship of Ishtar has suggested to
Downing, among others, that the cult of Aphrodite is of Asian
origin. Gods, mortals and beasts are subject to the power of
Aphrodite; none is immune except for the perpetually virgin
goddesses Hestia, Athena, and Artemis. By an odd paradox,
Aphrodite herself is vulnerable to her own power, as the stories
of her passion for Anchises and Adonis illustrate.
Homer’s Aphrodite is a far less impressive figure, as we would
expect of a goddess of love in heroic epic. She is completely
dependent on her father Zeus; her mother, according to Homer, is
the obscure and colorless sea nymph Dione. In the Iliad,
Aphrodite presides over the erotic relationship between Paris
and Helen (Iliad 3.380ff.); later, she enters the battle, only
to be wounded and driven off in tears by a the Greek hero
Diomedes, a mere mortal (5.330ff.). Diomedes had recognized her
as a “weakling goddess” (331) and certainly no Athena. Zeus
advises Aphrodite to confine herself to “the lovely works of
marriage” and leave war to the likes of Ares and Athena (428-
430). In the Odyssey, Aphrodite is married to the crippled
artisan god Hephaestus; a story sung by the poet Demodocus
describes at length the farcical result of her adulterous union
with Ares (8.266ff.).
The cult of Aphrodite most likely entered the Greek-speaking
world through the island of Cyprus, an extremely ancient center
of trade and industry centered around the abundant copper, the
primary component of bronze, which gives the island its name.
Extremely ancient idols portraying women with exaggerated sexual
characteristics have been found in large numbers on Cyprus,
along with indications of very early Greek settlements. It is
reasonable to conclude that the first Greek traders and settlers