The Theogony - Softcover

Hesiod, Hesiod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617208515 ISBN 13: 9781617208515

Publisher: SMK Books, 2012

Synopsis

Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered as a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared.

Theogony is a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing.

About this title

About the Author

He is one of the oldest Greek poets born in Askra of Boeotia in the 8th century. He wrote two great poems: "Works and Days" and "Theogony". In "Theogony" is an Epic which consists of 1022 lines and his author treats the birth and the history of the Greek gods as well as the creation of the Universe. According to him Chaos was out there first, then Earth, Tartarus - in the depth of Earth -, and last of all Eros (Love). Eros is the natural power which caused the union of the identical parts of matter resulting in the formation of several bodies, and by keeping them united it kept the whole Universe in order. These four elements are mentioned as self made elements and not as coming from each other. By "chaos" Hesiod means the dark which dominated everywhere (or water). From Chaos came forth Erebus and Night and then night bare Aether and Day. And Earth first gave birth to Uranos (Heaven), then Mountains and Pontus. After laying with Uranos she begat six sons: Oceanus, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, Cronus (they were called Titans), and six daughters: Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys (called Titanides). According to Hesiod, then, Earth could be said to be the centre of the Universe and the matter by which the other bodies were formed. And again the Earth gave birth to Cyclopes -they had only one eye in the middle of their forehead- and then the Hundred-handed were born, Cottus and Briarus and Gyes, with a hundred arms springing from their shoulders. Uranus hid them all away in the depths of the earth to the great sorrow of his wife Earth who tried to rouse Titans against their father. Cronus, of all the Titans, hated his father most and undertook to punish him. After he punished his father he became the King but because he learnt from Earth that he was destined to be overthrown by his own son he swallowed down his children at birth.

Edition details

• Publisher: SMK Books
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1617208515
• ISBN 13: 9781617208515
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32