Alpha stage creation has been underway.
We've had our first layer of beings that come out of Earth and Sky and now it's the
turn for a new generation of gods to take over, Kronos and Rhea.
As I said earlier, after Sky has been castrated we don't hear much from him.
Interestingly though, Earth sticks around. Watch Earth as she involves herself in the
story and inserts her will at critical points in the later generations.
Sky, not so much. Kronos and Rhea now begin let's call it
generation stage beta. The first, if we thought about the first
on a software analogy as alpha, now we're turned to generation stage beta.
In the second generation, we have Kronos and Rhea reproducing and they reproduce
all kinds of things. We'll see some gods that we know.
Olympian divinities are going to come out of them.
There are other kinds of things that emerge in this layer of creation as well.
We want to keep track of that. We'll also notice that not all Olympian
divinities emerge from Kronos and Rhea. Sometimes it's though that that's the
case, but that's not really true. We've already seen Aphrodite pre-exists
this layer, she comes out of the foam, according to Hesiod, she comes out of the
foam of the severed genitals, and then later on, we'll see that Zeus goes ahead
and gives birth, himself to some of the other Olympians.
Kronos has a special place in mythological history.
He's particularly nasty. He has a tough time in life.
His mother after all, turns to a rather, presumably, impressionable age and talks
him into a terrible crime against his own father.
He goes ahead and does it. And then, later on, when it's time for him
to become the father the violence that's part of this family gets exhibited once
again. Now, in contrast to the earlier generation
or in, there's a parallel and a difference to the earlier generation.
Remember, Sky was unnerved by the reproductive power of Earth, came on top
of her every night and pressed all her issue back into her so reproduction could
not occur. Well, that didn't quite work out so well
for Sky. Kronos similarly, is going to try to
control the reproduction of Rhea, but rather than push everything back up into
her, what he does is take all the creatures that come out of her and put
them into his own mouth. Kronos, yes indeed, eats his own children.
So even, even, we were already coming away with a pretty nasty view of him for having
castrated his father now we're going to see him in even worse position, maybe,
eating his own children. Now, these children as immortals are only
digested. It's not like he can digest them, and
metabolize them so that they disappear. They're immortal so they can't die.
So, they just sit there in his stomach trapped inside of there.
You can imagine, there must have been some kind of awful indigestion.
But this lead to Kronos's, the worst part of Kronos's terrible reputation being
eater of his own children. The children are now confined in his
stomach and they sit in there waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Let's have a look at how ML West translates this important part of Hesiod's
Theogony, pages sixteen and seventeen in our translation.
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 children.
So, Kronos jumps on him, takes this theme that we already see exhibited in his
family and visits violence upon his own children, for him it's swallowing them
down, until we get to the very last case. The youngest child is one that Rhea has a
special attachment to. She's seen this awful man eat down all of
her children. She's upset by it.
She comes up with a scheme. This scheme she develops in consultation
with Earth. In fact, that she'll now hand over to
Kronus a stone wrapped in cloth instead of the actual child.
Kronos is not too bright, famously and [unknown] rather dumb.
He takes that stone and swallows it down and doesn't think twice about it.
And thinks, yes, so now all things are done, all these children are contained and
controlled inside of myself. Now, he's, thinks that he's controlled
these powerful creatures to come out. In the meantime, Zeus, the actual baby,
Zeus, is taken away and tucked into a cave in Crete.
There, he has a place where he can mature and develop away from his scheming father.
He gets his skills together and gets his strength together until he finally becomes
powerful enough when he can come back and face his father in a struggle.
Now, that struggle's going to come up soon and it occupies most of the action of the
rest of the text. There are a few digressions that we'll
keep an eye on but most of what we, we're going to see has to do now with Zeus
taking on his father and the nasty things that happen.
Before we turn to that though, there's a coda that we can attach to this story
about the stone. The stone has a name.
It's called the omphalos, and at, soon after Zeus comes of age, he goes round and
gets Kronos to vomit up his children. Earth is again involved in persuading him
to do this. The stone when it comes out, falls onto
Earth at a particular place, at the oracle site of Delphi.
It's called the omphalos because the Greek term omphalos means a navel the center of
the earth. It's thought that this actual stone was in
Kronos' belly and got regurgitated out. When it fell to Earth, it fell at Delphi
and that was the center of the universe. Some of our Penn students, hello, Eliot,
nice to see you out there, some of our Penn students have gone to Delphi to visit
this stone. It still sits there, so for those of you
who want to go visit the temple, you'll be able to find the stone that the locals
will point to it and tell you that, yes, indeed, that is the center, the navel of
the universe. Elliot and his friend went there and made
sure that it was there, touched it to make sure it was real.
Yes, indeed the omphalos is still there. So, I recommend that you go visit.
Some of my students, or students I know are all over in continental Europe, some
are actually in Greece. So, if anyone wants to go check to make
sure the stone's still there and come back and tell us on the forums we'd love to see
you.