Gods,Heroes,Myths Greek Mythology Homer's epics,Expeditions

Once upon a time, before the World was born, there was a giant egg in the vastness of space. And one day, the egg cracked open. A winged spirit emerged from within, lifting up the top shell and pushing the other half under his feet. The upper shell is Uranus (Sky), the lower is Earth. And the first-born spirit that came into the world before all others, was Eros (Love).

With his own grace, Uranus loves the Earth, gives it light and heat, pours autumn and spring, the warm rains, which prepare the crops and flowers. And the Earth gives him her love, causing all the seeds to germinate and the sap to rise in the branches. To please him, she tirelessly changes ornaments, and the leaves are thus tender green at first with subtle shades, reaching, in autumn, the golden luminosity. The Greeks never imagined that this beauty of the world came by chance. And since humans feel it so deeply, Nature should also have a similar soul to the human one.

Creation of the Cosmos

Uranus and Earth gave birth to six gods: the Titans. The first of them was the Oceanus. He was responsible for the immensity of the liquid element, enveloping the Earth like a protective belt. Another, Hyperion, took care of the sun. Their three brothers, Coeus, Creus and Iapetus, had less clear responsibilities from birth. They are above all ancestors to future deities and races.

The male Titans had assistants in their work the six female Titans, their sisters. The firstborn, Tethya, went to mingle with Oceanus: for he is not only full of violence and anger. The sea can also smile from time to time. There are storms but there are also bright mornings. This is what Tethya brought to her brother. Something he would miss a lot without her.

Next to Hyperion stood Theia, the mother of the Sun, Moon and Eos. Euryphaessa and Phoebe mingled with Coeos, and Leto was born from their union. Two other Titans were left without a mate: Themis and Mnemocyne. Themis is Law, Order, Balance. The forces of Chaos were subjugated to her, a condition necessary for organic life to appear. Mnemocyne is the spiritual power, the memory from the Universe. Without it, the world would not know that it exists.

Among the Titans, the most important and also the youngest couple is Cronos and Rhea. From these two begins the series of gods, who later ruled the universe. The last-born Titan, Cronos dethroned his father Uranus, to reign in his place.

The Titans are not the only children of Uranus and Earth. Next to them there are other demons, such as the Celestial Cyclops. They were called that because they were sons of Uranus: Argis, Steropis and Brontes. They were the three spirits of storm, lightning and thunder, charged with making in underground workshops, the lightning for the gods to have. The workshops were located, as was said, in Lemnos, or Sicily or in the seventeen Aeolian Islands, also called Lipares, in other words in the volcanic places.

Besides these Cyclops, Uranus and Earth gave birth to the three Giants, Hundred-armed monsters with fifty heads, Cattos, Briareus, and Gyis. Later, other Giants, huge and violent, were born from the Earth. People didn't exist yet. And the Greeks imagined monstrous figures, with huge, serpentine bodies, on the easily marked soil and in the waters that were difficult to distinguish from the shores. They depicted them after many centuries on the fronts of their temples: figures that, with the posture of their heads, chests, shoulders and hands, fortell future people.

The cosmos was waiting for man. But the fiction writers do not agree on the way the mortal race was presented on Earth. Sometimes they said that the first man was indigenous, that he came out of the earth. In Argos the first man was called Foroneus. His mother was the nymph Melia and his father Inachos, the God of the river that rains the Argolis. As we know, rivers bring people coolness, water to their crops, wash and drink. So naturally people build their villages on the river banks. In the imagination of the people of Argolis, their ancestor was born from the river and from a tree.

All the river gods were sons of Oceanus. Like their father, they were immortal. The nymphs and especially the dryads were also born from the blood of Uranus. But they were not immortal. They could only live so long, as long as ten palm trees, they said. They only died the day their tree dried up and fell.

Έτσι για τους Έλληνες οι άνθρωποι δεν είναι ολότελα διαφορετικοί από τους θεούς, που τους έχουν προγόνους. Όλοι είναι από την ίδια γενιά κι από το αίμα του Ουρανού.

Gods and men are children of Uranus. But mortals are somewhat estranged relatives. They have less strength and confidence than their ancestors. They pass faster and perish while the gods remain. However, now and then, some manage to find within themselves the heavenly spark again and conquer immortality. These are the heroes. Their achievements and their worth take eternal roots in memory and when their mortal life ends, they find immortality among the gods.

There were also other legends, to explain the birth of men. Most often, with changes in name and place, the story resembles that of Foroneus. The first mortals came out of Nature, the trees, the springs, the mountains. For the ancient Greeks, this was very natural, because it seemed to them that humans are closely related to Nature. Like the animals in the woods and fields, they rejoice in the spring, become numb in the autumn, and withdraw into their homes. Like trees, they grow, grow strong, bear fruit - their children, as fruit are the children of trees - and wither to die.

At the beginning of the World, the Greeks said, people knew happiness, living in a Nature created for them. The Earth offered them by itself every delicious food, fruit and perfume, in such great abundance that no one thought of gathering riches, and there was no one poor. Peace reigned, for no one craved for what belonged to all. It was the Golden Age. Since then everything has changed. Other generations came. The Earth grew tired of producing all those goods, and mortals learned to work. After the Golden Age came the Bronze Age. Then came violence and war. Then the Iron Age which is still our time, an age full of misery.

All this creation of the World and the coming of one generation after another, came, as the ancient Greeks believed, from a dark will, stronger than the gods themselves: Fate.