1 00:00:04,086 --> 00:00:08,039 But before we get to this massive war between Zeus and Chronos. 2 00:00:08,039 --> 00:00:12,649 New generation of gods and old generation of gods, there's a long digression that's 3 00:00:12,649 --> 00:00:15,069 built in. Hesiod talks to us about the arrival of 4 00:00:15,069 --> 00:00:18,078 human beings. All of a sudden they're just there in the 5 00:00:18,078 --> 00:00:21,008 story. Now, some of us as we read this are 6 00:00:21,008 --> 00:00:24,039 thinking to ourselves, Where did the human beings come from? 7 00:00:24,039 --> 00:00:29,005 There's no drum roll, there's no clash of cymbals, there's no rhetorical flourish to 8 00:00:29,005 --> 00:00:32,025 say ta-da here comes the human beings. They're just there. 9 00:00:32,025 --> 00:00:36,041 Hesiod's story, they're just kind of there, pretty much in order to worship the 10 00:00:36,041 --> 00:00:38,077 gods. We meet them in the context of sacrifice, 11 00:00:38,077 --> 00:00:42,052 and the worship of the gods. I think we can draw from this a couple of 12 00:00:42,052 --> 00:00:46,168 different conclusions. For Hesiod, it's definitely not a big 13 00:00:46,168 --> 00:00:48,058 deal, that a human should arrive on the scene. 14 00:00:48,074 --> 00:00:53,000 The gods is the story he's telling now. And then also, the point of human beings 15 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:57,011 and their relationship with the rest of the, of the cosmos, is in order to keep 16 00:00:57,011 --> 00:01:00,011 things functioning. They give the gods what the gods want 17 00:01:00,011 --> 00:01:03,037 through sacrifice. The story of human beings emerges out of 18 00:01:03,037 --> 00:01:06,084 this figure of Prometheus, and it happens at a place called Mekone. 19 00:01:06,084 --> 00:01:11,097 We learned about Prometheus, via digression on genealogy connected to. 20 00:01:11,097 --> 00:01:17,030 Everything is connected to genealogy in Hesiod, a genealogy connected to a titan 21 00:01:17,030 --> 00:01:21,021 named Iapetos. Iapetos has offspring, Prometheus is one 22 00:01:21,021 --> 00:01:26,075 of them, and Prometheus gets involved in a mischievous way in a sacrificial ritual 23 00:01:26,075 --> 00:01:31,576 that human beings, who just happen to already be around, are given in honor of 24 00:01:31,576 --> 00:01:35,072 the gods. Zeus is there, and he gets to witness the 25 00:01:35,072 --> 00:01:40,084 sacrifice being made, and Prometheus makes two piles of the animal sacrifice. 26 00:01:40,084 --> 00:01:44,085 One of them is just the bones of the animal covered with fat to make them look 27 00:01:44,085 --> 00:01:47,044 attractive. And the other is a heap of the choicest 28 00:01:47,044 --> 00:01:50,023 meats, that he covers over with fur to try to hide that. 29 00:01:50,023 --> 00:01:54,038 He then gives Zeus the opportunity, and says Zeus, choose which one you like. 30 00:01:54,055 --> 00:01:58,080 The, the one that's showing glistening with fat is the one that Zeus goes for. 31 00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:01,090 In Hesiod's version of the tale, Zeus is not deceived. 32 00:02:01,090 --> 00:02:05,614 He knows what's happening, but he's going to go out and do this so that he can 33 00:02:05,614 --> 00:02:09,036 punish Prometheus later. He takes the bones, and goes and gobbles 34 00:02:09,036 --> 00:02:12,000 them up. Leaving the choicest piece of meats for 35 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:15,046 the human beings to eat. Some people when they read this say to 36 00:02:15,046 --> 00:02:18,048 themselves, well, this is a very strange sounding ritual. 37 00:02:18,048 --> 00:02:22,038 Why should this be happening? Very strange sounding thing to need an 38 00:02:22,038 --> 00:02:25,023 explanation. Well, it just so happens that what we're 39 00:02:25,023 --> 00:02:28,075 seeing here is the typical way that Greek sacrifice is executed. 40 00:02:28,091 --> 00:02:32,059 When a Greeks, when the Greeks do sacrifice, they'll kill the animal 41 00:02:32,059 --> 00:02:35,006 ritually. They'll take its bones, wrap them in 42 00:02:35,006 --> 00:02:38,836 glistening fat, and they'll send those up, burn them up in a fire and send them up to 43 00:02:38,836 --> 00:02:41,095 the gods. The gods presume they like that smoke. 44 00:02:41,095 --> 00:02:45,033 That's the part they like. This is the kind of story that we hear 45 00:02:45,033 --> 00:02:47,532 from Homer. Hesiod gives us a further story saying, 46 00:02:47,532 --> 00:02:51,000 this whole thing emerged out of an original deception. 47 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,390 The gods were actually, Hesiod says Prometheus was trying to trick them. 48 00:02:54,390 --> 00:02:58,540 Zeus wasn't really tricked. Prometheus was trying to trick them, Zeus 49 00:02:58,540 --> 00:03:03,945 went along with it and he's, now takes the bad parts of the sacrifice leaving all the 50 00:03:03,945 --> 00:03:08,050 best parts for the human being. It seems like what we have here is an 51 00:03:08,050 --> 00:03:12,722 example of humans who were engaged in sacrifice, did this as a normal ritual 52 00:03:12,722 --> 00:03:17,577 activity and at some point asked themselves, my gosh you know just give the 53 00:03:17,577 --> 00:03:21,196 bones to the Gods and keep all the good meat for ourselves. 54 00:03:21,196 --> 00:03:23,989 Is that okay? There's a kind of residual guilt built 55 00:03:23,989 --> 00:03:27,968 into this explanation, isn't there, as if the human beings needed an explanation, 56 00:03:27,968 --> 00:03:32,516 why it was okay to give just the bones to the gods and keep the meat for themselves. 57 00:03:32,516 --> 00:03:36,390 I think what [inaudible] has done is given us a, a reasoning behind that. 58 00:03:36,390 --> 00:03:40,427 He's using myth to explain a ritual practice whose logic is a little hard to 59 00:03:40,427 --> 00:03:43,125 understand. Giving us that background, we get to blame 60 00:03:43,125 --> 00:03:47,420 it all on Prometheus, and then you and I as humans, when we carry forward our 61 00:03:47,420 --> 00:03:52,001 sacrificial rituals, keep the best parts for ourselves and give the bones to Zeus, 62 00:03:52,001 --> 00:03:56,282 we're just doing what's been set up since time immemorial, back to that original 63 00:03:56,282 --> 00:04:00,039 deception of Prometheus. Zeus is highly angered and he decides to 64 00:04:00,039 --> 00:04:02,865 punish Prometheus. First he's going to punish the human 65 00:04:02,865 --> 00:04:08,042 beings by stealing fire back from them. Presumably they had fire because they were 66 00:04:08,042 --> 00:04:12,828 engaged in sacrificial rituals, so they had to have something to be able to burn 67 00:04:12,828 --> 00:04:17,012 up the sacrifices to the gods. Zeus takes it back from them and keeps it 68 00:04:17,012 --> 00:04:19,507 with, from them. Prometheus now, carrying forward with his 69 00:04:19,507 --> 00:04:23,772 mischief, worms his way back up to Zeus's lair and steals the fire again in a fennel 70 00:04:23,772 --> 00:04:27,031 stalk, and gives it to the human being so they can have it again. 71 00:04:27,055 --> 00:04:32,070 Zeus is irate and decides to punish Prometheus through eternity. 72 00:04:32,070 --> 00:04:39,063 He has now an eagle, Zeus' own bird, who goes down and eats out Prometheus' liver. 73 00:04:39,063 --> 00:04:44,008 That liver then grows back such that the bird can come back and eat it out again. 74 00:04:44,008 --> 00:04:48,065 Prometheus constantly is being tortured for all eternity by having his liver eaten 75 00:04:48,065 --> 00:04:51,017 out by a live bird and then have it grow back. 76 00:04:51,034 --> 00:04:55,079 He's one of those famous sinners that we see who does something so awful that he 77 00:04:55,079 --> 00:04:59,086 gets punished throughout all eternity. Not that many of those in antiquity. 78 00:04:59,086 --> 00:05:04,025 Prometheus is in a very small group. We met a couple of them in the underworld 79 00:05:04,025 --> 00:05:08,072 in Homer's Odyssey. Now, as our story carries on, there's more 80 00:05:08,072 --> 00:05:12,084 punishment. Zeus is not done with his punishment when 81 00:05:12,084 --> 00:05:19,980 it comes to, this episode at Mekone, and this attempted deception by Prometheus. 82 00:05:19,980 --> 00:05:26,153 He now needs to punish human beings. So what he does is create a affliction 83 00:05:26,153 --> 00:05:31,124 against humankind, as he see, puts it. It's the whole race of women. 84 00:05:31,124 --> 00:05:38,126 Female gendered human beings are brought against males as a punishment, in Hesiod's 85 00:05:38,126 --> 00:05:43,319 telling, strongly misogynistic. Character of this story, reveals, a, a, a 86 00:05:43,319 --> 00:05:48,748 strong gender affiliation of Hesiod. He sides with men clearly, talking about 87 00:05:48,748 --> 00:05:53,941 condemning the whole race of women by connecting them genealogically with men 88 00:05:53,941 --> 00:05:59,308 only in so far as they are brought down as a punishment, for all the nasty stuff that 89 00:05:59,308 --> 00:06:02,849 happened at Mekone, reveals Hesiod's view of women. 90 00:06:02,849 --> 00:06:08,557 Sadly, many of our poets don't have quite rich and very well thought out views on 91 00:06:08,557 --> 00:06:14,345 these gender relations. Hesiod's very strong and upsetting 92 00:06:14,345 --> 00:06:19,771 opinion, right there at the core of the theogony is one, that those who were 93 00:06:19,771 --> 00:06:24,040 interested in gender and antiquity. Surely, you need to take a good, strong, 94 00:06:24,040 --> 00:06:27,317 hard look at. Now after this episode at Mekone, this 95 00:06:27,317 --> 00:06:31,931 digression in which we learn about human beings, we learn about them as being 96 00:06:31,931 --> 00:06:35,035 involved with the divinities in a ritual context. 97 00:06:35,052 --> 00:06:37,502 We're going to turn from here back to Zeus. 98 00:06:37,502 --> 00:06:41,731 And we're going to hear about this story of how Zeus goes ahead and conquers the 99 00:06:41,731 --> 00:06:43,081 earlier generation of Titans.