The First Gods

In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,,
But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,
Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,
And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,
And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who
Makes their bodies (and men’s bodies) go limp,
Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.

From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.
And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse
With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.

Earth’s first child was Ouranos, starry Heaven,
Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.
And a firm foundation for the blessed gods.
And she bore the Mountains in long ranges, haunted
By the Nymphs who live in the deep mountain dells.
Then she gave birth to the barren, raging Sea
Without any sexual love. But later she slept with
Ouranos and bore Ocean with its deep currents,
And also: Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetos,
Theia, Rheia, Themis, Mnemosyne,
Gold-crowned Phoibe and lovely Tethys.
After them she bore a most terrible child,
Kronos, her youngest, an arch-deceiver,
And this boy hated his lecherous father.

She bore the Cyclopes too, with hearts of stone,
Brontes, Steropes and ponderous Arges,
Who gave Zeus thunder and made the thunderbolt
In every other respect they were just like gods,
But a lone eye lay in their foreheads’ middle.
They were nicknamed Cyclopes because they had
A single goggle eye in their foreheads’ middle.
Strong as the dickens, and they knew their craft.

And three other sons were born to Gaia and Ouranos,
Strong, hulking creatures that beggar description,
Kottos, Briareos, and Gyges, outrageous children.
A hundred hands stuck out of their shoulders,
Grotesque, and fifty heads grew on each stumpy neck.
These monsters exuded irresistible strength.
They were Gaia’s most dreaded offspring,
And from the start their father feared and loathed them
Ouranos used to stuff all of his children
Back into a hollow of Earth soon as they were born,
Keeping them from the light, an awful thing to do,
But Heaven did it, and was very pleased with himself.

Vast Earth groaned under the pressure inside,
And then she came up with a plan, a really wicked trick.
She created a new mineral, grey flint, and formed
A huge sickle from it and showed it to her dear boys.
And she rallied them with this bitter speech:

“Listen to me, children, and we might yet get even
With your criminal father for what he has done to us.
After all, he started this whole ugly business.”

They were tongue-tied with fear when they heard this.
But Kronos, whose mind worked in strange ways,
Got his pluck up and found the words to answer her:

“I think I might be able to bring it off, Mother.
I can’t stand Father; he doesn’t even deserve the name.
And after all, he started this whole ugly business.”

This response warmed the heart of vast Earth.
She hid young Kronos in an am bush and placed in his hands
The jagged sickle. Then she went over the whole plan with him.
And now on came great Ouranos, bringing Night with him.
And, longing for love, he settled himself all over Earth.
From his dark hiding-place, the son reached out
With his left hand, while with his right he swung
The fiendishly long and jagged sickle, pruning the genitals
Of his own father with one swoop and tossing them
Behind him , where they fell to no small effect.
Earth soaked up all the bloody drops that spurted out,
And as the seasons went by she gave birth to the Furies
And to great Giants gleaming in full arm or, spears in hand,
And to the Mėliai, as ash-tree nymphs are generally called.

The Birth of Aphrodite

The genitalia themselves, freshly cut with flint, were thrown
Clear of the mainland into the restless, white-capped sea,
Where they floated a long time. A white foam from the god-flesh
Collected around them , and in that foam a maiden developed
And grew. Her first approach to land was near holy Kythera,
And from there she floated on to the island of Kypros.
There she came ashore, an awesome, beautiful divinity.
Tender grass sprouted up under her slender feet.

Aphrodite is her name in speech human and divine,
since it was in foam she was nourished.
But she is also called Kythereia since
She reached Kythera, and Kyprogenes because she was born
On the surf-line of Kypros, and Philommedes because she loves
The organs of sex, from which she made her epiphany.
Eros became her companion, and ravishing Desire waited on her
At her birth and when she made her debut among the Immortals.
From that moment on, among both gods and humans,
She has fulfilled the honored function that includes
Virginal sweet-talk, lovers’ smiles and deceits
And all of the gentle pleasures of sex.

But great Ouranos used to call the sons he begot
Titans, a reproachful nickname, because he thought
They had over-reached themselves and done a monstrous deed
For which vengeance later would surely be exacted.

The Birth of the Olympians

Later, Kronos forced himself upon Rheia,
And she gave birth to a splendid brood:

Hestia and Demeter and gold-sandalled Hera,
Strong, pitiless Hades, the underworld lord,
The booming Earth-shaker, Poseidon, and finally
Zeus, a wise god, our Father in heaven
Under whose thunder the wide world trembles.

And Kronos swallowed them all down as soon as each
Issued from Rheia’s holy womb onto her knees,
With the intent that only he among the proud Ouranians
Should hold the title of King among the Immortals.
For he had learned from Earth and starry Heaven
That it was fated for him, powerful though he was,
To be overthrown by his child, through the scheming of Zeus.
Well, Kronos wasn’t blind. He kept a sharp watch
And swallowed his children.

Rheia’s grief was unbearable.
When she was about to give birth to Zeus our Father
She petitioned her parents, Earth and starry Heaven,
To put together some plan so that the birth of her child
Might go unnoticed, and she would make devious Kronos
Pay the Avengers of her father and children.
They listened to their daughter and were moved by her words,
And the two of them told her all that was fated
For Kronos the King and his stout-hearted son.
They sent her to Lyktos, to the rich land of Crete,
When she was ready to bear the youngest of her sons,
Mighty Zeus. Vast Earth received him when he was born
To be nursed and brought up in the wide land of Crete.
She came first to Lyktos, travelling quickly by night,
And took the baby in her hands and hid him in a cave,
An eerie hollow in the woods of dark Mount Aigaion.
Then she wrapped up a great stone in swaddling clothes
And gave it to Kronos, Ouranos’ son, the great lord and king
Of the earlier gods. He took it in his hands and rammed it
Down into his belly, the poor fool! He had no idea
That a stone had been substituted for his son, who,
Unscathed and content as a babe, would soon wrest
His honors from him by main force and rule the Immortals.
It wasn’t long before the young lord was flexing
His glorious muscles. The seasons followed each other,
And great devious Kronos, gulled by Earth’s
Clever suggestions, vomited up his offspring,
Overcome by the wiles and power of his son,
The stone first, which he’d swallowed last.
Zeus took the stone and set it in the ground at Pytho
Under Parnassos’ hollows, a sign and wonder for men to come.
And he freed his uncles, other sons of Ouranos
Whom their father in a fit of idiocy had bound.
They remembered his charity and in gratitude
Gave him thunder and the flashing thunderbolt
And lightning, which enormous Earth had hidden before.
Trusting in these he rules mortals and Immortals


The Titanomachy

When their father Ouranus first grew angry
With Obriareus, and with his brothers,
Kottos and Gyges, he clamped down on them hard.
Indignant because of their arrogant maleness,
Their looks and bulk, he made them live underground.
So there they lived in subterranean pain,
Settled at the outermost limits of earth,
Suffering long and hard, grief in their hearts.
But the Son of Kronos, and the other Immortals
Born of Rheia and Kronos, took Earth's advice
And led them up back into the light, for she
Told them the whole story of how with their help
They would win glorious honor and victory.

For a long time they fought, hearts bitter with toil,
Going against each other in the shock of battle,
The Titans and the gods who were born from Kronos.
The proud Titans fought from towering Othrys,
And from Olympos the gods, the givers of good
Born of rich-haired Rheia after lying with Kronos.
They battled each other with pain in their hearts
Continuously for ten full years, never a truce,
No respite from the hostilities on either side,
The war's outcome balanced between them.
Then Zeus gave those three all that they needed
Of ambrosia and nectar, food the gods themselves eat,
And the fighting spirit grew in their breasts
When they fed on the sweet ambrosia and nectar.
Then the father of gods and men addressed them:

"Hear me, glorious children of Earth and Heaven,
While I speak my mind. For a long time now
The Titans and those of us born from Kronos
Have been fighting daily for victory and dominance.
Show the Titans your strength, the invincible might
Of your hands, oppose them in this grisly conflict
Remembering our kindness. After suffering so much
You have come back to the light from your cruel dungeon,
Returned by my will from the moldering gloom."

Thus Zeus, and the blameless Kottos replied:

"Divine One, what a thing to say. We already realize
That your thoughts are supreme, your mind surpassing,
That you saved the Immortals from war's cold light.
We have come from under the moldering gloom
By your counsel, free at last from bonds none too gentle,
O Lord, Son of Kronos, and from suffering unlooked for.
Our minds are bent therefore, and our wills fixed
On preserving your power through the horror of war.
We will fight the Titans in the crush of battle."

He spoke, and the gods who are givers of good
Heard him and cheered, and their hearts yearned for war
Even more than before. They joined grim battle again
That very day, all of them, male and female alike,
The Titans and the gods who were born from Kronos,
And the three Zeus sent from the underworld to light,
Dread and strong, and arrogant with might.
A hundred hands stuck out of their shoulders,
Grotesque, and fifty heads grew on each stumpy neck.
They stood against the Titans on the line of battle
Holding chunks of cliffs in their rugged hands.
Opposite them, the Titans tightened their ranks
Expectantly. Then both sides' hands flashed with power,
And the unfathomable sea shrieked eerily,
The earth crashed and rumbled, the vast sky groaned
And quavered, and massive Olympos shook from its roots
Under the Immortals' onslaught. A deep tremor of feet
Reached misty Tartaros, and a high whistling noise
Of insuppressible tumult and heavy missiles
That groaned and whined in flight. And the sound
Of each side shouting rose to starry heaven,
As they collided with a magnificent battle cry.

And now Zeus no longer held back his strength.
His lungs seethed with anger and he revealed
All his power. He charged from the sky, hurtling
Down from Olympos in a flurry of lightning,
Hurling thunderbolts one after another, right on target,
From his massive hand, a whirlwind of holy flame.
And the earth that bears life roared as it burned,
And the endless forests crackled in fire,
The continents melted and the Ocean streams boiled,
And the barren sea. The blast of heat enveloped
The chthonian Titans, and the flame reached
The bright stratosphere, and the incandescent rays
Of the thunderbolts and lightning flashes
Blinded their eyes, mighty as they were,
Heat so terrible it engulfed deep Chaos.

The sight of it all
And its sound to the ears was just as if broad Heaven
Had fallen on Earth: the noise of it crashing
And of Earth being crushed would be like the noise
That arose from the strife of the clashing gods.
Winds hissed through the earth, starting off tremors
And swept dust and thunder and flashing bolts of lightning,
The weapons of Zeus, along with the shouting and din,
Into both sides. Reverberation from the terrible strife
Hung in the air, and sheer Power shone through it.

And the battle turned. Before they had fought
Shoulder to shoulder in the crush of battle,
But then Kottos, Briareos, and Gyges rallied,
Hungry for war, in the front lines of combat,
Firing three hundred stones one after the other
From their massive hands, and the stones they shot
Overshadowed the Titans, and they sent them under
The wide-pathed earth and bound them with cruel bonds-
Having beaten them down despite their daring-
As far under earth as the sky is above,
For it is that far from earth down to misty Tartaros.

A bronze anvil falling down from the sky
Would fall nine days and nights and on the tenth hit earth.
It is just as far from earth down to misty Tartaros.
A bronze anvil falling down from earth
Would fall nine days and nights and on the tenth hit Tartaros.
There is a bronze wall beaten round it, and Night
In a triple row flows round its neck, while above it grow
The roots of earth and the unharvested sea.

There the Titans are concealed in the misty gloom
By the will of Zeus who gathers the clouds,
In a moldering place, the vast earth's limits.
There is no way out for them. Poseidon set doors
Of bronze in a wall that surrounds it.
There Gyges and Kottos and stouthearted Briareos
Have their homes, the trusted guards of the Storm King, Zeus.


Typhoios

When Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven,
Earth,
Pregnant by Tartaros thanks to golden Aphrodite,
Delivered her last-born child, Typhoios,
A god whose hands were like engines of war,
Whose feet never gave out, from whose shoulders grew
The hundred heads of a frightful dragon
Flickering dusky tongues, and the hollow eyesockets
In the eerie heads sent out fiery rays,
And each head burned with flame as it glared.
And there were voices in each of these frightful heads,
A phantasmagoria of unspeakable sound,
Sometimes sounds that the gods understood, sometimes
The sound of a spirited bull, bellowing and snorting,
Or the uninhibited, shameless roar of a lion,
Or just like puppies yapping, an uncanny noise,
Or a whistle hissing through long ridges and hills.
And that day would have been beyond hope of help,
And Typhoios would have ruled over Immortals and men,
Had the father of gods and men not been quick to notice.
He thundered hard, and the Earth all around
Rumbled horribly, and wide Heaven above,
The Sea, the Ocean, and underground Tartaros.
Great Olympos trembled under the deathless feet
Of the Lord as he rose, and Gaia groaned.
The heat generated by these two beings-
Scorching winds from Zeus' lightning bolts
And the monster's fire--enveloped the violet sea.
Earth, sea, and sky were a seething mass,
And long tidal waves from the immortals' impact
Pounded the beaches, and a quaking arose that would not stop.
Hades, lord of the dead below, trembled,
And the Titans under Tartaros huddled around Kronos,
At the unquenchable clamor and fearsome strife.
When Zeus' temper had peaked he seized his weapons,
Searing bolts of thunder and lightning,
And as he leaped from Olympos, struck. He burned
All the eerie heads of the frightful monster,
And when he had beaten it down he whipped it until
It reeled off maimed, and vast Earth groaned.
And a firestorm from the thunderstricken lord
Spread through the dark rugged glens of the mountain,
And a blast of hot vapor melted the earth like tin
When smiths use bellows to heat it in crucibles,
Or like iron, the hardest substance there is,
When it is softened by fire in mountain glens
And melts in bright earth under Hephaistos' hands.
So the earth melted in the incandescent flame.
And in anger Zeus hurled him into Tartaros' pit.

And from Typhoios come the damp monsoons,
But not Notos, Boreas, or silverwhite Zephyros.
These winds are godsent blessings to men,
But the others blow fitfully over the water,
Evil gusts falling on the sea's misty face,
A great curse for mortals, raging this way and that,
Scattering ships and destroying sailors-no defense
Against those winds when men meet them at sea.
And others blow over endless, flowering earth
Ruining beautiful farmlands of sod-born humans,
Filling them with dust and howling rubble.

Zeus in Power

So the blessed gods had done a hard piece of work,
Settled by force the question of rights with the Titans.
Then at Gaia's suggestion they pressed broad-browed Zeus,
The Olympian, to be their king and rule the Immortals.
And so Zeus dealt out their privileges and rights.

Now king of the gods, Zeus made Metis his first wife,
Wiser than any other god, or any mortal man. But when she was about to deliver the owl-eyed goddess
Athena, Zeus tricked her, gulled her with crafty words,
And stuffed her in his stomach, taking the advice
Of Earth and starry Heaven. They told him to do this
So that no one but Zeus would hold the title of King
Among the eternal gods, for it was predestined
That very wise children would be born from Metis,
First the grey-eyed girl, Tritogeneia,
Equal to her father in strength and wisdom,
But then a son with an arrogant heart
Who would one day be king of gods and men.
But Zeus stuffed the goddess into his stomach first
So she would devise with him good and evil both.

Next he married gleaming Themis, who bore the Seasons,
And Eunomia, Dike, and blooming Eirene,
Who attend to mortal men's works for them,
And the Moirai, whom wise Zeus gave honor supreme:
Klotho, Lakhesis, and Atropos, who assign
To mortal men the good and evil they have.

And Ocean's beautiful daughter Eurynome
Bore to him the three rose-cheeked Graces,
Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and lovely Thalia.
The light from their eyes melts limbs with desire, 915
One beautiful glance from under their brows.

And he came to the bed of bountiful Demeter,
Who bore white-armed Persephone, stolen by Hades
From her mother's side. But wise Zeus gave her away.

And he made love to Mnemosyne with beautiful hair,
From whom nine Muses with golden diadems were born,
And their delight is in festivals and the pleasures of song.

And Leto bore Apollo and arrowy Artemis,
The loveliest brood of all the Ouranians
After mingling in love with Zeus Aegisholder.

Last of all Zeus made Hera his blossoming wife,
And she gave birth to Hebe, Eileithyia, and Ares,
After mingling in love with the lord of gods and men.

From his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena,
The awesome, battle-rousing, army-leading, untiring
Lady, whose pleasure is fighting and the metallic din of war.
And Hera, furious at her husband, bore a child
Without making love, glorious Hephaistos,
The finest artisan of all the Ouranians.