338 Macedonia, led by Philip, takes control of Greece, ending independence of city-states.

336 Philip of Macedonia is assassinated. Alexander the Great, Philip's son, begins his conquests, extending Greek rule from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas.

335 Aristotle (384322) founds the Lyceum.

332 Zeno founds the Stoic school of philosophy-based on the idea that virtue is the only good.

323 Death of Alexander in Babylon after a drunken feast. His empire is broken up into kingdoms controlled by Greek generals, such as the Ptolemies, who rule Egypt as Greek-speaking pharaohs.

229 First Roman incursion into Greece.

146 Romans defeat Greek rebellion. In the city of Corinth, all men are killed and women and children sold as slaves.

80 The Roman general Sulla pillages Olympia during the civil wars fought in Greece.

31 Battle of Actium off the west coast of Greece: Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, defeats Mark Antony and Cleopatra, ending Rome's civil wars.

27 Octavian proclaims himself "first citizen," and takes the name Augustus. Begins a new era of Pax Romana, and Greek culture spreads throughout Roman Empire.

Common Era (CE) 312 Emperor Constantine's Christian vision before Battle of Milvian Bridge.

313 Constantine's Edict of Milan permits Christianity.

337 Constantine is baptized on his deathbed.

330 Byzantium becomes capital of the Roman world and is renamed Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey).

393 Last official Olympic Games.

394 Theodosius II, the Christian Roman emperor, bans all pagan festivals, including the Olympics. The statue of Zeus at Olympia is carted to Constantinople, where it is later destroyed in a fire.

426 The Temple of Zeus is burned on the orders of Theodosius II; Christian fanatics destroy the rest of the sanctuary at Olympia.

I.

f your introduction to Greek history and classic mythology came from watching the opening-night ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, you may be understandably befuddled. The panoramic view of these myths and the achievements of one of history's most remarkable civilizations unfolded in a sort of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade merged with a "toga party." In a badly costumed pageant of gods and warriors, centuries of myth and some of the most significant moments in Western history rolled by on floats. Above it all floated the figure of Eros, god of love, suspended like an awkward Peter Pan wishing he were somewhere else. Those opening Olympic moments may be blissfully forgotten. But set against the magnificent remains of Athens' Golden Age, the 2004 Olympic games did provide a stunning reminder of an extraordinary moment in world history-a breathtaking glimpse of the glory that had been Greece. Those marble ruins in downtown Athens and the modern Olympic games are vestiges of that glory. The remnants of the Parthenon pulse with what was once the heart of Athens, a magnificent temple celebrating its patron goddess, Athena. And while they barely resemble their ancient predecessors, the modern Olympics are a bloated version of the competitions once dedicated to Zeus, king of the gods of Mount Olympus. The ancient world's longest-running show, the original Olympics-which, like the modern Super Bowl, attracted thousands of spectators for several days of sports, drinking parties, and whoring-took place every four years for more than twelve hundred years. And you thought Cats had a long run!

Yet the pinnacle of Greek civilization that produced those exquisite ruins on that hill in Athens was but a passing moment in human history some 2,500 years ago. It was a relatively brief episode in the march of humanity, but one that changed everything. Ancient Greece had a profound, unique, and lasting impact on the Western world. Like it or not, Western civilization was born in Greece.

As Greek-born writer Nicholas Gage described it in The Greek Miracle, "In the fifth century before Christ, an unprecedented idea rose from a small Greek city on the dusty plains of Attica and exploded over the Western Hemisphere like the birth of a new sun. Its light has warmed and illuminated us ever since.... The vision-the classical Greekidea-was that society functions best if all citizens are equal and free to shape their lives and share in running their state: in a word, democracy.... The concept of individual freedom is now so much a part of our spiritual and intellectual heritage that it is hard to realize exactly how radical an idea it was. No society before the Greeks had thought that equality and freedom of the individual could lead to anything but disaster."

The Greek-or more precisely, Athenian-concepts of government by the people, trial by jury, and the first real notion of human equality (limited, to be sure; women and slaves, for the most part, didn't count) mark the true beginnings of the Western democratic tradition. What we call science and the humanities-including biology, geometry, astronomy, history, physics, philosophy, and theology-were also essentially invented by the Greeks. In the spoken and written arts, these ancient people introduced and perfected epic and lyric poetry, as well as tragic drama. In their art and architecture, the Greeks created an ideal of beauty that has dominated the Western world. And these ideals of beauty were reflected in the mythology they created.

"The world of Greek mythology was not a place of terror for the human spirit. It is true that the gods were disconcertingly incalculable. One could never tell where Zeus's thunderbolt would strike. Nevertheless, the whole divine company...were entrancingly beautiful with a human beauty, and nothing humanly beautiful is really terrifying."

These are the words of Edith Hamilton, perhaps the greatest promoter of Greek myth in our lifetime. Largely due to generations of students having had her book Mythology on their school reading lists, many people instinctively think of Greek myths when they hear the word "myths." Hamilton's 1942 introduction to these classic stories provided the standard for a long time.

In those two words-"human beauty"-Edith Hamilton may have best summarized what we consider the Greek ideal. But Hamilton's romanticized notion of Greek myth, as well as the traditional vision of Greek culture and history, have undergone serious revision of late. Recent scholarship has shone a light on some other aspects of the classical world. And Edith Hamilton's worshipful tone ignores some nasty realities. The Greek gods of Olympus may have been "entrancingly beautiful," as Hamilton wrote. But their stories were filled with as much cruelty, violence, incest, adultery, sibling rivalry, and venality as any of the earlier myths of Egypt or Mesopotamia-myths which the Greeks clearly borrowed and then revised to suit their needs.

The vision of idealized Greek marble figures, perfectly painted urns, and beautiful gods and goddesses delighting in cups of ambrosia is only part of the picture. It overshadows a more complex view of Greece, in which war and conquest, human sacrifice and slavery all played a part. This dark underbelly of the Greek past shows up in its myths, just as it does in the great Greek literature that emerged from them.

There is, however, another reality reflected in the story of Greece and its myths. More than in any other ancient culture, the mythic tradition in Greece is a grand story in which, in the words of Voltaire, "men passed from barbarism to civilization." The Greek poets and playwrights reshaped and recast the brooding, violent ancient stories of feuding, spiteful gods and flawed heroes into the poetic epics and drama of an emerging social order that profoundly influenced Western civilization. The Greek myths permeated the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, which form the core of the Western literary tradition. Also based largely in the Greek mythic traditions were the great Greek dramas, highlighted by the three playwrights of the Athenian Golden Age-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, whose works have influenced writers for more than 2,500 years and are still staged around the world.

Before the "Greek Miracle"-as this extraordinary period of cultural and social ferment is called-sculpture in such places as Egypt and Mesopotamia mostly showed stiff, unapproachable gods and kings, often on a monumental scale. But in the hands of Greek sculptors, the divine became human, for example, in the form of a discus thrower perfectly frozen in action. On pottery and vases, Greek painters depicted not only the gods and heroes, but ordinary women of delicacy and beauty serving food and drinks. (They also made an art of obscenely painted drinking cups, of a sort not usually displayed in modern museums, portraying the popular wine-and-sex parties called symposia. But that's another story.) Greek architects created a classical sense of scale and beauty still considered the standard for great and important buildings. These poets, playwrights, and sculptors transformed Greek arts, and in doing so, changed the basic view of humanity, elevating the human form to the nearly divine.

At the same time, their philosophers and early scientists, rooted in the same ancient ideas of gods and religion, pushed the envelope of what human reason could discern. In this Greece, humanity was no longer helplessly trapped in a world in which people existed to serve the gods. At this unique moment in human history, the gods were glorified. But the Greeks also realized that, as the philosopher Protagoras put it, "Man is the measure of all things."

That was the glory of Greece.

Where did the Greeks get their myths?

Two of the most famous goddesses in Greek myth make their debuts on the mythical stage as fully formed and perfect adults-one usually naked, and the other in battle armor. Aphrodite-you know, the one on the half-shell-is the goddess of love, and she emerges full-blown from the sea, au naturel but with strategically placed long locks, in one of the most famous artistic depictions of her birth. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, is born in full battle regalia, emerging from the head of her father Zeus when another god hits him on the head with an ax.

People seem to have the same idea about Greek myths-that somehow, they were created full-blown, in just the form we know them today, crafted from the genius of some anonymous poet or philosopher. But ancient myths, as their history in Egypt and Mesopotamia prove, aren't that simple. Over the course of centuries, myths are invented, told, and then start to travel. As they make the rounds, they are borrowed, reshaped, and retold-often to fit a very local agenda. Like old wine in new bottles, or reality shows that originate in England and get picked up by American networks, ancient myths sometimes resurfaced with a different name and a changed face. It was no different in Greece, where the origins of the myths-and the religion they spawned-serve as a fascinating reflection of Greek history.

Recent discoveries from the worlds of archaeology and literature make it clear that what evolved into Greek mythology was a melange-like some fusion cuisine-of some existing local stories with bits and pieces borrowed from other Near Eastern civilizations, including the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and the Phoenicians-from whom the Greeks also appropriated a writing system, later adapted as the Greek alphabet. Forced by their geography to turn to the sea, the Greeks had early on mastered trade and travel. As they ventured out around the Mediterranean ports of call, they encountered these other ancient neighbors. Eventually they brought back not souvenirs but samples of these foreign cultures and religions to what was then Greece-the hilly, rocky, northern mainland jutting out into the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Ionian Seas; a southern peninsula called the Peloponnesus; the many islands that dotted the surrounding waters; and the west coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey).

These "foreign influences" found their way into a Greece that was already a mythological melting pot. Beginning around 2000 BCE, waves of conquering invaders had swept into Greece and merged the stories of their gods with those that were already established on the Greek mainland. These bloody invasions go back to a time long before the brief Golden Age of Greece that so many students falsely equate with Greek history. The story of Greece actually plays out over a much longer span, and its civilization and mythology can be separated into five distinct periods.

The earliest known civilization to flourish in what came to be thought of as Greece was not actually Greek but a sophisticated and rather extraordinary culture called Minoan. Based on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the Minoan Period may have begun as early as 3000 BCE-around the same time as Mesopotamia and Egypt-and then suddenly and somewhat mysteriously disappeared from history around 1400 BCE. In the early twentieth century, the long-abandoned capital of Crete's early civilization was discovered by English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in one of the most dramatic finds in history. At Knossos (or Cnossus), Evans uncovered the remains of a huge, luxurious, and graceful palace, whose walkways were paved with cobblestones. The palace was complete with ceramic bathtubs and fully functioning, flushable indoor plumbing serviced by an elaborate system of drains. Its walls were decorated with brightly painted frescoes depicting handsome, naked young men and women somersaulting over the backs of bulls, an ancient Mediterranean "rodeo" that was clearly tied into the worship of an elaborate bull cult, a vestige of the Minoans' origins in Asia Minor. The palace may have also provided the source of one of the most significant myths in Greece, the story of the Minotaur, a fearsome half-man, half-bull that demanded human sacrifices.

Although the Minoan written language, Linear A, has not yet been fully deciphered, we know it was most likely used-as the early cuneiform was in Mesopotamia-for keeping track of trade and commercial accounts. The Minoans were among the first seagoing traders, and their ships sailed to Egypt to do business in the land of the pharaohs. Most likely the Minoan deities included a sea god whom the Greeks later called Poseidon, and an earth goddess who later became the Greek goddess Rhea.

The Minoan Age flourished until about 1400 BCE, when it more or less disappeared from history, perhaps partially crippled by a devastating volcanic eruption nearby, or conquered by new arrivals, known as the Mycenaeans. These Aryan, or Indo-European, warlords had swept into mainland Greece about five hundred years earlier, presumably coming from the steppes of the Caucasus Mountains (between the Black and Caspian Seas). A warrior race, the Mycenaeans rolled over the existing inhabitants of the Greek mainland-whose own origins are similarly mysterious-and began to fuse their own stories and beliefs with those of the people they conquered, as well as those of the Minoans they encountered on Crete. This era is called the Mycenaean Age, after Mycenae, one of the most significant cities of the period-first excavated by the famed Troy-discoverer Heinrich Schliemann in the late nineteenth century. The Mycenaean Age lasted from 1600 to about 1110 BCE, and is generally considered to be the period in which the small Greek kingdoms and the events described by Homer in the Iliad may have taken place. Apparently, the "Mycenaeans" may have called themselves "Achaeans," one of the names used by Homer to describe the men who attacked Ilium-or Troy. Most scholars place the destruction of Troy around 1230 BCE, but there is considerable disagreement on that date-others argue for a later destruction, around 1180 BCE.

More widely accepted is the idea that these war-loving, chariot-driving Mycenaeans were responsible for what the modern business world might call a "hostile takeover." When they came crashing into the Greek mainland, they apparently brought with them a set of their own, very old gods, such as the sky father, Zeus; the Earth Mother, Demeter; and Hestia, the virgin goddess of the hearth. The local farmers they encountered and subdued on mainland Greece probably worshipped an ancient Earth Mother, who became Hera. And the very stormy marriage of Zeus, the conquerors' sky god, and Hera, the fertility goddess of the conquered locals, may actually symbolize the merger of these two ancient mythologies. The concentration of power in such cities as Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes, all of which are featured prominently in Greek myths, is another clue that many of the Greek myths and legends may have originated in their familiar form during this Mycenaean Period.

Mycenae and most other settlements on the Greek mainland were destroyed sometime after 1200 BCE, ushering in a Greek Dark Age, the third major period in Greek history, which lasted until about 800 BCE. Historians do not know why Mycenaean Greece fell into chaos. Perhaps climate change led to famine. Suspicion also falls on the invasion of another group, Greek-speakers called Dorians, from northern Greece, who moved south into the region, forcing many Mycenaeans to flee to Asia Minor. One reason the lights went out during this Dark Age was that somehow Greek knowledge of writing (which used a form called Linear B adapted from the Minoans) was lost, and the Greeks only began to write again sometime after 800 BCE.

That is about the time that someone familiar with Phoenician writing invented the Greek alphabet. Phoenician writing only had signs for consonants; some clever but anonymous Greek added indications for vowel sounds. For the first time-experts generally agree-writing could approximate the sound of the human voice (and that system is the basis for the writing you are now reading). With that development, the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were presumably written down for the first time sometime after 800 BCE, along with the works of a Greek poet named Hesiod, who conveniently catalogued the history and exploits of the gods.

The Dark Ages gave way to a fourth historical period, called the Archaic Age (800490 BCE), with the emergence of the written Greek language, the return of those who had moved away, and the spreading of colonies in the west-in Southern Italy and Sicily. This period marked the beginnings of the polis, or Greek-city states, which would usher in the greatest developments in Greek history. Established as centers of trade and religion, each city-state was surrounded by walls to protect it against invasion. Within the city, there was usually a fortified hill-an acropolis-and at the center of each city was the agora-an open area that served as a market area and city center.

Finally, Greece flowered spectacularly in the Classical Period (490323 BCE). This Golden Age was centered in Athens and had its earliest flowering with the Athenian lawmaker Solon's democratic reforms in 594 BCE. It continued to grow over the next few centuries, bursting into full bloom in the Greece many of us think of when we think of the ancient world. A key moment came with the defeat of the Greeks' great foreign rivals, the Persians, in a series of wars fought between 490 and 479 BCE. Shared religion, language, and culture played a central role in Greek life, and served the Greeks well when the Persian Empire threatened. The usually fiercely independent city-states joined under Athenian leadership to defeat two separate Persian invasions in one of the most fascinating turning points in Western history.* These wars were the central subject of Herodotus's Histories, in which he proudly wrote, "This proved, if there were need of proof, how noble a thing is freedom." Freedom is a good thing, but so is heavy, bronze armor-helmet, shield, and breastplate. Which is what was worn by the hoplites, the citizen-soldiers who were the Greek city-states' version of the National Guard and who fought in tight, well-organized formations-another key to the victory over the lighter-armored Persians.

With the victory over Persia by a united Greece, Athens emerged as Greek's leading city and reached its pinnacle. Over the next century and a half, the great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle walked the streets of Athens, the agora, or marketplace, and established their schools-the model for the university-in which the ideas that form the basis of Western philosophy were discussed and debated. This was also the time of voting-rights experiments and the flourishing of the great trio of playwrights-Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides-whose tragedies were performed in front of tens of thousands of Athenians in a dramatic competition that had its roots in a religious festival honoring the agricultural god, Dionysus, who was also credited with the invention of wine.

In all of these periods, myths played a central role in Greek life and society; they were at the core of religious observances and entertainment. Along with language and a common culture, myths provided a bond that no central Greek government ever could. But clearly, sometime around 800 BCE, as the so-called Dark Ages began to give way, something changed. A switch was thrown. And from then on, some Greeks began to abandon the notion that the gods controlled the universe. It was perhaps a singular moment in human history. Before this tipping point, most other ancient civilizations viewed life as the work of the gods, who needed to be served and worshipped, and their divine representatives on earth, kings and pharaohs-who also demanded to be served and worshipped.

Suddenly, in Greece, the fundamental understanding of the universe and man's place in it was transformed through a revolution in thinking. A range of Greek thinkers began to search for natural explanations-a humanistic mind-quest to discover a rational system of creation in which order was not dependent on sacrificing animals to the gods and invoking magical oracles.

Of course, not everyone liked those notions, which challenged the status quo. That was one reason that the philosopher Socrates would eventually be placed on trial and sentenced to death in 399 BCE. His concepts were actually not so much antireligious as they were threatening the Athenian powers-that-be. But there was no turning back the sweeping tide of change. An unstoppable series of ideas had been set in motion, and history would never be the same.

MYTHIC VOICES.

The continual buzz of conversation, the orotund sounds of the orators, the shrill shouts from the symposia-this steady drumbeat of opinion, controversy, and conflict could everywhere be heard. The agora (marketplace) was not just a daily display of fish and farm goods; it was an everyday market of ideas, the place citizens used as if it were their daily newspaper, complete with salacious headlines, breaking news, columns, and editorials.

-THOMAS CAHILL, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea Was Greece ever a theocracy?

Unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greece never produced a heavy-handed, monolithic central government ruled by divine kings. Even in Greece's earliest times, there is no evidence that Minoan or, later, Greek kings ruled with the sort of divine sanction that Egyptian and Mesopotamian rulers claimed-and Rome's emperors would later attempt to claim. Over the course of its history, Greek civilization had developed chiefly in small city-states, like Athens and Sparta, consisting of a city or town and the surrounding villages and farmland. Small, fiercely independent, and often quarrelsome, these city-states were strongly patriotic, and full of citizens-free and male, that is-who made that great leap into participating proudly in public affairs, both as a ready army of hoplites, and then as participants in the decision-making. The ancient Greek city-states were never united as a "nation" in the modern sense of the word. More to the point, they were never "nations under gods," or theocracies.

Even so, a shared "public" religion played a central role in Greek life. The cult practices and deities among the different Greek communities had enough in common to be seen as one system. Herodotus later characterized this shared religion as "Greekness," by which he referred to common temples and rituals. Chief among these rituals were various forms of sacrifice. (There is some evidence of human sacrifice in prehistoric Greece and on Crete, but the practice disappeared.) And a typical ritual was the "libation"-the pouring of water, wine, olive oil, milk, or honey-in honor of the gods, heroes, or the dead, usually before a meal.

With temples dedicated to the favorite patron god or goddess in every city-state, the Greeks believed that certain deities actively watched over them and directed daily events. Both priests and priestesses served in the temples to perform rituals. Families tried to please household deities with gifts and ceremonies that included animal sacrifice and offerings of food. Like Athens, which was protected by its namesake, Athena, each city-state honored one or more deities as the patron deity of the community, and held annual festivals in their honor.

Large crowds also gathered in ancient Greece for religious festivals that included feasts, colorful processions, and choral performances, which evolved into the first Greek drama. In Athens, for instance, there was a great civic festival called the Panathenea in late summer, during which there were sacrifices and a large procession by groups representing the different segments of Athenian society.* Every four years there was "greater Panathenea," which included major athletic and musical competitions open to all Greece. Athletic festivals were also popular, and the Olympic games, the most famous of these festivals, involved all of the Greek city-states. Held in honor of Zeus, the first recorded Olympics took place in 776 BCE and continued every four years for more than a thousand years. Even wars were usually-but not always-halted during the Olympic festival.

The Greeks also believed that their deities could help them foresee the future, and people flocked to shrines called oracles to consult seers, both male and female, who played a central role in the lives of Greeks, whether highborn or common. One of these was Dodona, a sacred site where priests interpreted the sounds of the wind blowing through the leaves of a sacred oak tree. The most important shrine in ancient Greece was Delphi, home of the sacred oracle of the god Apollo, site of the omphalos, or sacred "navel stone," believed to be the center of the world. A conical stone thought to be part of the Greek Creation myth (see below, How do you get Creation from castration?), the navel stone was the mystical connection to the navel of Mother Earth. The Greeks, like other ancient civilizations, were also devoted to the possibility of magic, and sacred objects, such as amulets and household idols, and spells and other magical rituals were all part of everyday Greek life.

But as classicist Barry Powell points out, "The Greek gods had personalities like those of humans and struggled with one another for position and power. They did not love humans (although some had favorites) and did not ask to be loved by them. They did not impose codes of behavior."

Clearly that was starkly different from the state religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel, where long traditions established the nearly unbreakable connection between worship, personal conduct, and the politics of the state. The Greeks had their public and private rituals, and they were important, but no Greek ruler ever tried to elevate himself to pharaoh or introduce a single deity, as Akhenaten had done in Egypt. Nor were the Greek gods believed to be in complete control of the universe or human destiny. As historian Charles Freeman noted about the Greeks, "They never pretended that their gods were always benevolent or omnipotent in human affairs, and so bad fortune could be rationalized as a natural element of existence."

And the concept of a "natural element" would soon be viewed by many Greeks as far more important-and interesting. Judging from their extraordinary achievements across the many disciplines-literature, art, science, mathematics, philosophy-these ancient Greeks clearly came to prize a way of life that stressed the importance of the individual, encouraged creative thought, and elevated the power of observation. Greek thinkers laid the foundations of science and philosophy by seeking logical explanations for what happened in the natural world. They could see that the eclipse of the moon wasn't the capricious act of a god, but the shadow of the earth, and from that they discerned that earth was round. And although the classical Greeks had Homer and Hesiod and the great works of the tragedians, it is also important to note that they had no Bible and no Enuma Elish to dictate their lives and behavior, no strict concepts like the Egyptian maat or the Mesopotamian me rigidly ordering their existence. To them, the gods were not the source of truth, justice, and laws. Quite to the contrary, writes Barry Powell, "The Greeks invented ethics, a way to tell right from wrong without divine authority, and secular law, which together make up humanism."

MYTHIC VOICES.

Rhea, surrendering to Kronos, bore resplendent children.... The others great Kronos swallowed, as each of them reached their mother's knees from her holy womb. His purpose was that none but he of the Lordly Celestials should have the royal station among the immortals. For he learned from earth and starry Heaven that it was fated for him to be defeated by his own child, powerful though he was, through the designs of great Zeus. So he kept no blind man's watch, but observed and swallowed his own children. Rhea suffered terrible grief.

-HESIOD, Theogony A man fashions ill for himself who fashions ill for another, and the ill design is most ill for the designer.

God and men disapprove of that man who lives without working.... You should embrace work-tasks in their dueorder, so that your granaries may be full of substance in its season.

If your spirit in your breast yearns for riches, do as follows, and work, work upon work.

-HESIOD, Works and Days Who kept the "family tree" of the gods in ancient Greece?

Homer gets most of the glory, but Hesiod did the heavy lifting. When it comes to understanding the origin and genealogies of the gods, and some of the most familiar stories in Greek myth, we have a Greek shepherd to thank. Hesiod's books haven't been optioned by Hollywood like Homer's, but they are among the best sources for many of the ancient tales of the Greek gods.

Much of what is known about the Greek myths is derived from two principal sources: Homer's two epic poems, Iliad and Odyssey, and two far less famous books of poetry called Theogony (from theo, the Greek word for "god") and Works and Days. These last two were supposedly inspired by the mythical Muses, who appeared to a shepherd named Hesiod, a farmer from a region northwest of Athens called Boeotia. The Muses "breathed a sacred voice" into Hesiod's mouth, and he began to describe the creation of the world, and the succession of heavenly rulers who made up the complex genealogy of the Greek gods.

Though he probably lived around 700 BCE, shortly after or around the same time as Homer, Hesiod is far less famous and accomplished a poet than Homer is. But we do know a bit more about him, because his writings actually include some autobiographical clues. His father had been a merchant sailor, and after living in Cyme, on the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey), had moved back to mainland Greece and started a farm in a time of growing prosperity in Greece. The family's estates were small, and when Hesiod and his brother, Perses, inherited them, the brothers apparently quarreled over their shares. It also seems apparent that Hesiod was a somewhat cranky country gentleman, and no fan of women-as best represented in his telling of the familiar story of Pandora, the first woman (see below, What was in Pandora's "box"?). The ills of the world, in Hesiod's words, are all due to a female, created by the gods to torment men-"a calamity for men who live by bread."

By this time in history, the Greeks had borrowed and adapted the Phoenician writing system. As the scholar and translator M. L. West writes, "The existence of writing now made it possible for poems to be recorded and preserved in a more or less fixed form. Hesiod and Homer were among the first to take advantage of this possibility, and that is why...they stand at the beginning of Greek literature."

After the Muses appeared to Hesiod on the sacred Mount Helicon and presented him with a staff, he was told to sing of the gods and became a poet, or a man who entertained at private gatherings and feasts, an ancient "wedding singer," reciting the familiar old stories and songs as well as composing them. Theogony was the first result of this "divine" inspiration. Relatively brief, compared to Homer's two major epics, the poem contains the names of more than three hundred gods, some of them obscure and insignificant in the Greek pantheon. Theogony also tells of the birth of the first gods, their stormy family relationships, the story of Prometheus, and ends with the marriage of Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the Greek gods.

Works and Days, Hesiod's even more popular work, was a poem addressed to his brother, Perses, in which he examined human life and set forth his moral values. Also fairly brief, it is nonetheless a rambling compendium of myths, moral philosophy, proverbial wisdom, and practical advice that makes Hesiod sound like an ancient Greek Ben Franklin, offering Farmer's Almanacstyle advice on cultivating crops, what should be sown, and when the harvest should take place. But Works and Days also expresses Hesiod's philosophy that life is difficult and people must work hard in spite of the just rule of Zeus, the king of the gods.

It may be that this advice was aimed directly at his brother, Perses, who got the larger share of the family farm, apparently after bribing some local officials Hesiod called "bribe swallowers." But Perses was not, apparently, sufficiently industrious and Hesiod constantly upbraided him for his laziness. Perhaps more curious, some of his advice went so far as to explain the proper way to relieve oneself: Do not urinate standing towards the sun; and after sunset and until sunrise, bear in mind, do not urinate either on the road or off the road walking, nor uncovered: the night belongs to the blessed ones. The godly man of sense does it squatting, or going to the wall of the courtyard enclosure.... And never urinate in the waters of rivers that flow to the sea, or at springs-avoid this strictly-nor void your vapours in them; that is not advisable."

-Works and Days, M. L. West, translator Not exactly what we have in mind when we think about the glories of Greece.

But Hesiod's two collections offer a treasure trove nonetheless, both in understanding the early stories of the gods and as a valuable source of insight into common life in the Greek world of the Archaic Age.

MYTHIC VOICES.

Great Heaven came bringing on the night, and desirous of love, stretched out in every direction. His son reached out from the ambush with his left hand; and with his right he took the huge sickle with its long row of sharp teeth and quickly cut off his father's genitals, and flung them behind him to fly where they might. They were not released from his hand to no effect, for all the drops of blood that flew off were received by Earth.... As for the genitals, just as he first cut them off with his instrument of adamant [a hard stone] and threw them from the land into the surging sea, even so they were carried on the waves for a long time. About them a white foam grew from the immortal flesh, and in it a girl formed.

-HESIOD, Theogony How do you get Creation from castration?

The Egyptians managed Creation out of masturbation. The Mesopotamians envisioned freshwater and salt water having sex. The Greeks go that one better and base their chief Creation account on a rather painful story of the violent castration of a god.

The most important Greek Creation myth, an elaborate account of the violent birth of the gods, is found in Hesiod's Theogony. It is a story filled with crude and bizarre twists, acts of outright brutality, and-as in the other Near Eastern myths-feuding families that span generations. Translator and scholar M. L. West even argues that this "succession myth" was not the "product of Hesiod's savage fancy," but a Greek version of earlier texts, including the Babylonian Enuma Elish.

Whatever its mythic origins, this Greek Creation story centered on primordial forces awakening out of Nothingness and bringing alive a succession of gods, giants, monsters, and finally, the seemingly divine figures who all possess suspiciously human failings.

The Creation begins in a state of emptiness called Chaos-literally, "a yawning (or gaping) void"-out of which the five original "elements" simply appear and are then personified as the first gods: Gaia (also Ge or Gaea), the primordial earth goddess Tartarus, both a god and the bleak, deepest region of the underworld located within the earth Eros, the force of love, later transformed into a god of love, who, in Hesiod's words, "overcomes the reason and purpose in the breasts of all gods and all men"

Erebus, the realm of darkness associated with bleak Tartarus Nyx, the female personification of night Bursting with powerful life-force, the primal goddess Gaia, or Earth, is "broad-breasted, the secure foundation of all forever" as she gives birth to Uranus, the "star-studded heaven" and the divine personification of the sky. Free from the taboo of incest, as were other ancient gods, Uranus becomes his mother's consort and "beds" her. The notion that sky and earth were once beings united in a sexual embrace is a common ancient idea, as in the Egyptian tale of earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut, or the Sumerian deities An and Ki.

Fertile Gaia next bears the mountains, the seas, and the nymphs, who were associated with the trees, springs, rivers, and forests. Gaia and Uranus then produce a terrible trio of sons called Hecatonchires ("the hundred-handed"), monsters who each have three heads. In the next of their curious litters are three more children known as the one-eyed Cyclopes.*

Gaia and Uranus also gave birth to a dozen children known as the Titans, the first generation of gods who preceded the later gods of Olympus. Of monstrous size and strength, they provide the source of the word "titanic." They were: Oceanus, a sea god whose waters encircled the earth, and his sister/mate Tethys Hyperion, sometimes called the sun, and his mate Theia (who together produce the sun, moon, and dawn) Themis (called Law) and Rhea, two more earth goddesses Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, and Phoebe, four Titans with no specific roles Cronus, the youngest and craftiest, described as the "crooked schemer"

Siring so many extraordinary children was quite an achievement, but Uranus wasn't happy with his brood. He feared that these children might rise up and overthrow him-a common theme in Greek and other Near Eastern myths. So, Uranus made an interesting decision-perhaps the result of some deep, dark male-fantasy impulse-to lock himself in perpetual intercourse with Gaia so that nothing could emerge from their union. Pressed down upon Gaia, Uranus kept all of these children trapped in a cave within the earth's huge body.

Resentful and in pain, Gaia wants the children to "do in" dear old dad. But only Cronus, the youngest Titan, has the right stuff. Gaia gives Cronus a sickle with which to attack Uranus in a moment of treacherous surprise that may have left the men in Hesiod's audience feeling a bit uncomfortable: "From ambush Cronus' left hand seized the genital parts of his father; he reached out his right with the sickle, saw-toothed, deadly and sharp. Like a reaper, he sliced away the genitals of his own father."

As Hesiod tells it, these severed genitals were then carried out to the ocean, where sea foam magically mixed with Uranus's blood and semen, to create Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love, who emerged from the sea. (There is another, later and different, version of Aphrodite's birth.) Having emasculated his father, Cronus frees his Titan siblings from their cave inside Gaia and becomes king of the gods. (Again, this parallels the Mesopotamian Creation myth, in which the primordial sea god Apsu had been overthrown by one of his offspring, Enki.) During Cronus's reign, the work of creating the world continued and hundreds more divinities were born, including more Titans, such as Atlas and Prometheus, the gods or goddesses of death, the rainbow, the rivers, and sleep-their names meticulously catalogued by Hesiod. And as we read them, we can only imagine the singer-perhaps accompanying himself on a lyre-crooning these names at a wedding feast, in celebration of the glorious divinities.

The eager crowd is now primed. The stage is set for the entrance of some of the most pivotal and familiar figures in Greek myth-the Olympians-some of whom will descend from Cronus. Knowing how he had deposed his own father, Cronus fears that the offspring of his marriage to this sister Rhea may do the same, so he swallows his first five children as soon as their mother delivers them. To save her sixth child, Rhea tricks Cronus into swallowing a stone wrapped in baby clothes, and then hides the infant in a cave on the island of Crete, where he is raised by nymphs on goat's milk and honey.* Fearful that Cronus might hear the infant's crying, Rhea orders a group of semidivine men to dance around noisily at the entrance to the cave in which he is hidden. That child, saved by Rhea, is Zeus.

The most powerful of all the Greek deities, Zeus will rise to lord over the pantheon of Greek gods. But first he must prove himself worthy. His trials begin when he returns to challenge his father's supremacy and rescue his siblings-an instant replay of Cronus's battle with his own father, Uranus. With Rhea's aid, he first tricks Cronus into drinking a liquid that makes him vomit up all five children, plus Rhea's stone. Zeus then frees the fearsome Cyclopes, still trapped within the earth, and they make magical weapons for Zeus and his two brothers, including the great three-pronged spear, or trident, for Poseidon; a helmet of invisibility for Hades; and the thunderbolts that becomes Zeus's awesome weapon and symbol of power. Zeus also frees the fearsome Hecatonchires from the depths of Tartarus, where they have been imprisoned. Though Gaia, the Mother Earth, urges the Titans to accept Zeus as the supreme god, most of them refuse, and an epic ten-year war-the Titanomachy-follows. Ultimately, Zeus and his siblings, along with their allies, prevail over the Titans, who are exiled to the depths of Tartarus.

Of the defeated Titans, only the one named Atlas receives a different fate. He is condemned by Zeus to live at the edge of the world, where he must hold up the heavens and continue the separation of sky and earth for all eternity. (The Atlas Mountains in Morocco near the Atlantic Ocean are supposedly where Atlas is forced to stand. And when a map-maker created a collection of the maps of the known world in 1570 CE, he called it an "atlas," in his honor.) But Zeus's work is not done. Before he can fully assert his rule, Zeus must also defeat a race of Giants-born from the blood spilled by Uranus's castration. With the help of the half-human, half-god Heracles (Hercules to the Romans), Zeus and the gods defeat the Giants, who, according to legend, were then buried under volcanoes in various parts of Greece and Italy. When Greeks later unearthed the bones of prehistoric animals, they believed they had found remains of the Giants.

Finally, Zeus defeats Typhon (or Typhoeus), a monster with one hundred dragon heads, fire-blazing eyes, and many voices, using thunderbolts to blast him down to the Tartarus region, where he remained the source of hurricanes. (The word "typhoon" is actually a blending of this Greek name, adapted later in Arabic, with the Chinese words toi fung, for "big wind.") With Titans, Giants, and monsters all reduced to notches on his godly belt, Zeus is chosen to be ruler by the other gods and goddesses, who agree to live with him on Mount Olympus. The highest mountain in Greece, Olympus rises 9,570 feet (2,917 meters) in northern Greece, and divides the region of Thessaly from Macedonia. The summit is usually covered with snow and hidden in clouds, adding to its mystery as the traditional home of the gods. (The first recorded climb to the summit was not made until 1913.) The origins of Hesiod's Greek Creation tale have been a source of debate. Historically, it is believed to be part of a much older oral tradition before Hesiod set it down in poetic form. However, symbolically, it has been thought that the story of Zeus gaining supremacy was an allegory of the gradual ascent of male power over female, with the warlike male Zeus supplanting a more primitive earth goddess. Part of this suggestion was that the Mycenaeans brought their macho mythology with them when they invaded Greece and replaced the kinder, gentler goddess worship of the Minoans. But many scholars believe that these Greek stories are actually rooted in other ancient Near Eastern myths, such as the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the myths of the Indo-European Hittites who ruled central Anatolia (now Turkey) and were in place before the Mycenaeans arrived. Either way, the fact remains that the Greek myths, like many other mythic systems, were drawn from earlier sources and beliefs, but were ultimately crafted into their own unique, classic Greek form.

WHO'S WHO OF THE OLYMPIANS This list of the central gods of Mount Olympus shows their Greek name, followed in parentheses by the name used by the Romans, who later adapted much of Greek mythology as their own. Traditionally, twelve gods are called Olympians, but that list was not always the same, as some gods became more or less important at different times in Greek history. (The gods listed with a bullet are the twelve who appeared on a frieze on the Parthenon, the great temple to Athena in Athens.) While Hesiod and Homer provided much of the earliest written source for Greek mythology, other later playwrights and poets added immensely to the traditions and stories of the gods. The famous trio of Greek tragedians-Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles-took the old tales and transformed them into dramatic works of timeless power. During the Roman era, Roman poets took the Greek traditions and added new layers of complexity. Chief among these sources is Ovid (43 BCE17 CE?), best known for his witty and sophisticated love poems, including The Art of Love, which is a verse "how-to" manual on finding and keeping a lover. More significant from the perspective of mythology was the Metamorphoses, which Ovid believed was his greatest work. In this narrative poem, largely filled with stories of mythical and magical "transformations," Ovid moves from the creation of the world to his own time. The poem describes the adventures and love affairs of deities and heroes, with more than two hundred tales taken from Greek and Roman legends and myths.

The Roman poet Virgil added a Roman dimension to Greek myth by connecting the fall of Troy to the foundation of Rome (see below, Was Homer on the Romans' reading list?). Other important sources for these Greek (and, later, Roman) myths were later Roman poets and playwrights, and an Alexandrian Greek Apollodorus, who collected many of the myths in his library (usually dated to the first and second centuries CE).

In addition to these classical literary sources, recent archaeological and linguistics studies have greatly contributed to our understanding of the "historical" origins of these deities.

Aphrodite (Venus) Goddess of love and beauty, "Golden Aphrodite" supposedly emerges fully formed from the sea foam when the genitals of the castrated Uranus are cut off by Cronus and thrown into the sea. Her birth is a popular theme in art, and is perhaps most famously depicted in Sandro Botticelli's Italian Renaissance masterpiece The Birth of Venus, in which she is seen standing on a half-shell. That was Hesiod's version of the story. In Homeric versions, she is born of the union between Zeus and a goddess named Dione, again reflecting different regional traditions.

An ancient goddess who embodies overpowering sexuality and reproduction capability, Aphrodite may have been connected to other ancient Eastern fertility goddesses of Mesopotamia and Canaan, such as Inanna, Ishtar, and Astarte. In many ancient cities, Greek girls about to be married made a sacrifice to Aphrodite in the hopes that their first sexual experience would be productive. Aphrodite was also worshipped by prostitutes, of which there were two classes in Greece. The hetaerae were the "courtesans," or call girls, who entertained at the drinking-and-sex parties known as symposia, enjoyed by aristocratic Greek men; and porne were the common prostitutes. (The original Greek meaning of the word "pornography" was, literally, to "write about prostitutes.") Aphrodite was apparently highly revered in Corinth, a city of merchants famed for its prostitutes. Corinthian prostitutes were said to be especially beautiful and lived in luxury, and the city, as Thomas Cahill notes in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, became a "byword for sybaritic self-indulgence."*

In Greek myth, Aphrodite is always accompanied by Eros (Cupid), the god of carnal desire. According to Hesiod, Eros is a much older deity, who emerges from Chaos at the same time as Gaia. But in later accounts, Eros is viewed as Aphrodite's son, always armed with a bow and quiver of arrows that cause anyone struck by them to fall in love with whatever he or she sees. Greek (and, later, Roman) myths are filled with stories of Eros shooting his arrows at random, without concern for the consequences of the sexual passion he arouses.