TFBT: Why Did the Goddesses Take Up Arms?

 "In the battle (Gigantomachy)... Enceladus fled, but Athena threw on him in his flight the island of Sicily; and she flayed Pallas and used his skin to shield her own body in the fight... Artemis slew Gration. And the Fates, fighting with brazen clubs, killed Agrius and Thoas."  (Apollodorus , The Library 1.6.2)

The Gigantomachy, the war between the Giants and Gods occurred when Gaia, Mother Earth, grew angry at the imprisonment of her son and grandson Titans by the Olympians. What is unique about the Gigantomachy is that it is the first time in the Divine Wars of Greek myth, where goddesses took up arms and actively participated.  The participation of Athena, Artemis, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos is recognized in literature, but many more goddesses (almost all of them) participated according to sculptural evidence.  So, why did the goddesses participate in this the third Divine War and not the first two?

The first conflict was the Castration of Uranus, presumably involving Uranus, Cronus and all the other male Titans.

 " But these sons whom he begot himself great Heaven used to call Titans (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did  a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards." (Hesiod, The Theogony 207)

The second war is the Titanomachy, the war between the Olympians and Titans lead by the sons of Iapetus.  Based on lack of evidence from descriptions of the Titanomachy, Hera's fostering and Pindar Fragment 30¹, Aaron Astma believes that;

"During the Titan-War,  the Titanides (Titanesses) resided in the house of Okeanos along with Hera and the other goddesses." 

So why did the goddesses wait until the third conflict to take up arms?  

• This one was really serious? All hands on deck? 
• Xenia, Warrior Princess, hasn't  been born yet to set the example?  Kidding of course, but there were no humans as we know them until this point. (Men of Cronus' Golden Age didn't reproduce.) 
• Ares and Athena, deities of war hadn't existed until then?
• Is it possible that the abstractions represented by the goddesses didn't  come into play cosmically until after the arrival  of humanity?
• Did the existence of the demi-gods have something to do with the female deities taking up arms?

 

Any ideas out there?

 

1.   "First did the Moirai (Fates) in their golden chariot bring heavenly Themis, wise in counsel, by a gleaming pathway from the springs of Okeanos (Oceanus) to the sacred stair of Olympos, there to be the primal bride of the Saviour Zeus."

 

 

 

TFBT:Why the Gods Created Man

“τοῖς δὲ θεοῖς λόγιον ἦν ὑπὸ θεῶν μὲν μηδένα τῶν Γιγάντων ἀπολέσθαι δύνασθαι, συμμαχοῦντος δὲ θνητοῦ τινος τελευτήσειν.”

Apollodorus 1.6.1,  trans J. G. Frazer

 

Maya M. asked why the gods of Ancient Greek myth created man?  I asked more specifically why Cronus was the first to attempt this grand experiment that took 5 attempts under two different divine regimes? 

 

This is a sketchy proposal, but it might possible be one answer or part of the answer; “Now the gods had an oracle that none of the giants could perish at the hand of gods, but that with the help of a mortal they would be made an end of.” Apollodorus does not say which “gods”.  But the metopes of several ancient temples include virtual all the gods not just the Olympians in the Gigantomachy and in contrast to to the Titanomachy, almost all the goddess too.   Gaea seemed to be familiar with this prophecy, too..  What if all the gods knew the prophecy? Image the look on the Titans’ faces as they pondered the oracle, saying “What’s a giant?”  “More importantly what is a mortal?” 

 

So aware of the doom laying before the divine community; generation after generation of gods perfected the race that would save them.  First the golden age of man; a failed experiment without fire or women[i].  The Silver Age added then Motherhood.  Next the Bronze Age and our benefactor Prometheus; in pages 106-107  of “Hesiod’s Cosmos” Clay argues that Prometheus’ affection for humanity was more mercenary than philanthropic.  The Titan adds  fire and Pandoric wives to the blood line.  As the final moments of the Gigantomachy approach, a dash of ichor in human veins and Zeus spend three days and nights in the siring of Heracles.[ii] 

Tierasias at Heracles birth calls him the hero of the Gigantomachy to come.[iii]  According to the metopes several other demi-gods join him.  The gods win, the giants loss.  At Thebes and Troy the heroes and demi-gods battle to the death.  The gods pull the veil and are done with improving their creation.[iv]  

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[i] Page 87 “Hesiod’s Cosmos” Jenny Strauss Clay

[ii] The Preparation for the Gospel, Eusenius, page 54

[iii] Pindar  Nemean 1.67-72

[iv] This timeline follows page 63, Emma Stafford, “Herakles”

TFBT: The Event at Mecone

“to see Mecone, the seat of the blessed gods, again

Where the gods threw lots and for the first time divided

The domain among themselves after the war of the Giants”

Callimachus, frag 119 Pfeiffer

 

Hesiod says at Theogony [881] that it was after the Titanomachy that the blessed gods “pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them…So he divided their dignities amongst them.”  Presumably all the victorious gods and their allies came sort of like other divine gatherings; “There was no river that came not, save only Oceanus, nor any nymph, of all that haunt the fair copses, the springs that feed the rivers, and the grassy meadows. (Iliad 20.5)   

 

 So all the gods came to Mecone except Oceanus, (too big I presume) and Helios, who had to work as it were.  Pindar says at Olympian Ode 7. 54   "when Zeus and the immortals made division of the lands of earth …But for Helios (the Sun) no lot was drawn; for he was absent”.  Helios was given the island of Rhodes with the Fates assistance.

 

At Iliad 15.187 Poseidon attests that he casts lots with his two brothers to determine their realms  I “won for my portion the grey sea to be my habitation forever, and Hades won the murky darkness, while Zeus won the broad heaven amid the air and the clouds; but the earth and high Olympus remain yet common to us all”

 

Presumably Zeus reaffirmed the traditional honors of the elder gods like he promised Hecate at Theogony [410] and reconfirmed promised honors like those give to Styx prior to the war (Theogony 383)

 

Finally Hesiod (Theogony 545) references “For when the gods and mortal men had a dispute at Mecone.”  The dispute was over which group got which portion of the burn offerings.  Jenny Strauss Clay offers a slightly different translation “In Mekone it was decide what is a god and what a human being”

 

Clay writes well and extensively in “Hesiod’s Cosmos” and “The Politics of Olympus”