Greek Gods and Their Effect on Greek Culture - Essay Example

goes here goes here 27 February Greek Gods and their Effect on Greek Culture The gods were important to Greeks in multiple ways. Not only did they symbolize religion and faith but also played key roles in answering Greeks’ questions abut daily life. Why do seasons change? How do crops grow plentiful vs. scarce? What is ‘weather’? All of these questions and more can be linked to a story about the gods in order for society to make sense of the world, but also the afterlife. All of the tales that are told portray the birth of the gods and their relationships to one another, which enables the Greeks to make sense of their culture and understand what happens to them once they pass on. Arguably no one knows the origin and relationships of the gods better than Hesiod, in his Theogony on ‘Origin of the Gods,’ besides Homer. “He [Hesiod] collected and retold many of the myths of the birth of the universe, the creation and the coming of the gods” (Greek par. 4). It all began with Chaos. Next came Gaea or Earth, then heaven and hell, night and day. Gaea lay with Heaven and they birthed multiple children such as Oceanus, Rhea, Themis, and above all, Cronos, who they feared because of his hateful nature (Hesiod ll. 116-138). The issue with them stemmed from their father’s hate. They were forced to lie in hiding away from any source of light. Gaea decided to give her children the means to defy their father. It was Cronos who accepted the challenge. He cut away Heaven’s reproductive organs and the rest of the giants on earth whose parts turned into foam and drifted at sea for a long time until out sprang Aphrodite, the goddess of love (Hesiod ll. 188-206). Hesiod’s poem explained how earth, heaven, hell, day, and night were formed. Since the citizens of Greece lacked modern science, this was the only means by which the Greeks could decipher their environment and imagine what life would be like in heaven or hell. The renowned gods the Greeks portrayed in their lives were the children of the Titans (specifically Rhea and Cronos). The eldest Olympians, first generation, were as follows: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Hestia was a virgin goddess who did not marry and stood for hearth and home (Hestia par. 1). Demeter stood for ‘mother earth’ and is associated with her daughter, Persephone, who was kidnapped by Hades (Demeter par. 2). She is the goddess whom the Greeks deemed to be in charge of changing the seasons according to which Persephone spends time on earth, i.e. Spring/Summer vs. Autumn/Winter. Hera is most notably the queen of the gods and Zeus’s wife. A jealous goddess, she stands for marriage and is worshipped as a masculine, formidable figure by kings and warriors (Hera par. 2-4). In fact, she bore Ares, the god of war. Hades, Poseidon and Zeus are regarded as the three prime brothers who ruled over mortals. Hades became the god of the underworld (Hades par. 1) and Poseidon, the god of the sea (Poseidon par. 2). Zeus, of course, became the king of the gods when he overthrew his father, Cronos (Zeus par. 2): And he set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father/ Sons of Heaven whom his father in his foolishness had bound/ And they remembered to be grateful to him for his kindness/ And gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt and lightening:/ For before that, huge Earth had hidden these/ In them he trusts and rules over mortals and immortals. (Hesiod ll. 492- 506) Once he overthrew Cronos, Zeus freed his brothers and sisters and created man. These are some of the reasons why he is worshipped as the king of the gods by Greek society. The second generation of gods came about by various pairings between Zeus and Hera, or Zeus and other goddesses or mortal women, etc. Some gods were born by no pairings at all. Athena, for example, sprouted from Zeus’s brain. Hesiod describes the various lovers of Zeus in lines 901-1022 of the Theogony. One of the affiliations is illustrated as such: “And Leto was joined in love with Zeus who holds the aegis/ and bare Apollo and Artemis delighting in arrows/ children lovely above all the sons of Heaven” (ll. 918-920). Hesiod even says that Zeus takes Hera as his wife, “Lastly, he made Hera his blooming wife:/ and she as joined in love with the king of the gods and men/ and brought forth Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia” (Hesoid ll. 921-923). This, of course, is not the end of the tales of the gods as they participate in a more significant role to Greek culture. Every god’s personality behaves as a stepping-stone or backdrop to the reason behind how (or why) they interact. This is important because without personalities, it would be difficult for a Greek to understand an action performed by a god or especially by so many gods. Why did the Trojans and patroness of Athens lose the great war to the Greeks? Athena, goddess of wisdom and superb strategist, aided the Greeks to win because a Trojan started the war that she tried to prevent. Without acknowledging her personality as an intelligent warlord, it would be hard-pressed to believe that Athena helped the Greeks, even gave them the idea of the wooden horse. Hesiod believed that the relationships between the Gods were more important than their origin (Greek par. 3). The relationships are what gave his poems substance and life. What is a story without plot and conflict? The definition of characters and the description of their environment is not enough to produce a tale. The interesting aspects arise from the interaction between those characters, i.e., the gods and their environment. Hesiod tells his audience in his prelude that the gods issued him the ability to tell their story: “…and breathed into me a divine voice to? celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime;/ ?and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are? eternally/ but ever to sing of themselves both first and last” (Hesiod ll. 33-35). Another explanation to why the gods’ relationships were the center of Hesiod’s focus is that it allowed new questions- proposed by the Greeks- to be answered. An example question would be, why did the crops fail this year, but last year they were plentiful? These questions are not based on a stabilized event and can be answered due to the ever-evolving interaction between gods. The crops could have failed due to the lack of proper prayer to a god, or a conflict between two gods. For instance, when Zeus went into battle, it explained dangerous weather: “Also the winds brought rumbling earthquake and duststorm, thunder and lightning and the lurid thunderbolt, which are the shafts of great Zeus, and carried the clangour and the warcry into the midst of the two hosts” (Hesiod l. 711). If a citizen of Greece can attain an answer this way then he or she can attempt to learn from it and change the situation next time. It enables a sense of control to the Greeks as well as an understanding of the world they live in and their afterlife. Hesiod went into detail about many of the most vital interactions and relationships between the gods. Prometheus is a prime example of a key circumstance that occurred between man and Zeus. Prometheus was ordered to construct man out of clay by Zeus, but Prometheus took it too far by giving man the best part of the feast of the gods as well as the most critical element: fire. The Greeks understood this to be the reason why they are intelligent over the common mammal. It is also the reason they believed that misfortune befell them in the form of fear, hate and famine because of Pandora who was created by Zeus to reprimand mankind for Prometheus’s actions. Zeus literally targeted men by giving them a representation of women through Pandora. All women are evil or can be the source of it, and manipulating, but men will suffer if they do not marry them. Hesiod explains this when he says, “And he gave them a second evil to?be the price for the good they had:/ whoever avoids marriage and?the sorrows that women cause/ and will not wed/ reaches deadly?old age without anyone to tend his years…” (Hesiod ll. 599-604). The message that Hesiod clarified through these defying acts is man is superior to woman. Women must be not to be trusted because they are the weakness of the race. How did Hesiod feed that notion? By discussing Pandora’s actions in opening the infamous box that released horror into the world despite being told never to open it. “For from her is the race of women and female kind:/?of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst?mortal men to their great trouble” (Hesiod ll. 590-591). Not only did the relationships between gods help define the world for the Greeks, it enabled them to forge variations of the truth and even form sexist ideas in similar fashion that Eve was represented in the Bible. Hesiod unearthed understanding and knowledge to his fellow man through his poems, most notably the Theogony. He showed the Greeks that because the gods favored him to tell their tale, he is to be trusted to provide them with the truth. The truth, that is, of how the world and the afterlife work by depicting who the gods are and how they interact with each other. The descriptions enabled Greek society to conduct themselves in daily livelihood and insight to their environment along with a sense of faith that promoted the feeling of identity. Works Cited "Demeter." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. "Greek Myth." Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 1996. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. "Hades." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. Hesiod, . "Origin of the Gods." Trans. M L. West. Theogony, Works and Days. USA: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print. "Hera." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. "Hestia." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. “Poseidon." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. "Zeus." Who's Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge. London: Routledge, 2002. Credo Reference. Web. 27 February 2011. Read More