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At this point in the course, we are about
to make a pivot.

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We are leaving behind Homer's world and
this wonderfully rich set of stories that

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get told in, in, in Homer's epic poetry.
And we are moving into some different

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genres of writing.
We are going to look at things in the next

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couple of weeks that are going to get us
up close and personal with the gods.

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We are going to spend some time in their
temples , we are going to get to know them

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or we are going to get to know what they
like, what they don't like.

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We are going to get to know them in a kind
of up close and personal way.

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We've got a sense of them from Homer, but
our main character, always, always there

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was a human being a male gender version of
the human being at the center and that's

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what we really focused on.
The gods were kind of there, they seemed

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mostly attached to the action by focusing
on what humans cared about.

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That's not going to be true where we turn
to next.

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What we're going to do now is go to an
epic by this poet Hesiod named The

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Theogony, and also look after, the week
after that, at a collection of hymns known

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by tradition as The Homeric Hymns.
Each of these poems is going to get us

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inside of a god's world.
We're going to have a chance to watch what

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it's like to be them.
If we go in with the expectations that

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we're going to find all powerful, all
knowing and all good creatures we're going

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to not be satisfied.
In fact, the Greek gods are not all like

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that.
They're flawed and strange, and they have

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their own ways of doing things.
They don't actually know everything.

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They know lots of stuff but they don't
know everything.

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They have tremendous powers.
They're much more powerful than you and I

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but they're not all powerful.
And they're surely not all good.

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They do some bad things.
They're in fact maybe it's something like

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what you and I are like, if only we didn't
die and we're massively powerful.

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That's kind of, I think, how the Greeks
have their vision of their gods.

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In addition to the other things that they
do that we've talked about, they suffer,

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they go through trials and tribulations
they try to find their place among their

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peers they try to get set up in life and
for those of you who, who pay attention to

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your etymologies, you'll already know in
looking at the title of the work we're

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going to turn to in this coming week,
Hesiod's Theogony that the gods are also

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born.
Yes, indeed, and the gods might not die,

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but according to Hesiod and rich parts of
the tradition, the gods are indeed born,

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there's a time before which they don't
exist.

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He Greek title of Hesiod's epic,
Theogonia, comes from two words, thaos,

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and gonia thaos being God and gonia
meaning a birth, a coming into being

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through birth.
So, we're going to get into this other

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kind of world through Hesiod and through
the Homeric Hymns.

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We're going to be in a world that's very
early, early on much prior to the kind of

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Homeric stories that we've been seeing in
what happens in the Trojan War and

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afterwards.
We're back in the early days of creation

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in kinda protozoon before the world was
formed.

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This early time humans and gods spend time
face to face.

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We're going to see that's happening.
And as you run into it it's quite striking

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from a Homeric perspective but it's the
world we're going into next.

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So, we are going to get to know their gods
in these coming lectures.

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We're going to see them face to face and
spend some time with their trials and

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their tribulations as they try to find
their places.

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Hesiod's Theogony is coming this week, and
the Homeric Hymns coming in the week