Theogony

The Theogony is an epic poem by the archaic Greek poet Hesiod. It is both a theogony—or account of the origins of the gods—and a cosmogony, an explanation of the origins of the universe. At just over a thousand lines in length, the Theogony is among the earliest surviving works of Greek literature, dating to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. It is an epic poem, a genre defined by its meter (dactylic hexameter) and its subject matter: Mighty works of men and gods and the founding of civilizations. The Theogony’s focus on praising the king of the gods, Zeus, encourages comparison to similar celebrations of Zeus, including Cleanthes’s third century BCE “Hymn to Zeus” (Cleanthes. “Hymn to Zeus.” Translated by E.H. Blakeney, 1921).

Greco-Roman myth is famously slippery; there are many versions of various stories, and these versions sometimes contradict each other. That being said, Hesiod’s rendition of the creation myth in his Theogony made a substantial and continuous impact on Greek literature and, in turn, on the western canon as a whole. It is hard to overstate the impact of Hesiod’s works on Greek culture. The classical Greek historian Herodotus claimed in Book 2, Chapter 53 of Histories that Hesiod—along with his rough contemporary, Homer—taught the Greeks “the descent of the gods, and gave the gods their names, and determined their spheres and functions, and described their outward forms” (Herodotus. Histories. Translated by A.D. Godley, Harvard University Press, 1920).

The Theogony is a complex and extended genealogical catalogue of the universe’s earliest gods and heroes. It explores power dynamics between men and women, ultimately suggesting that the transition of power from men to women enabled stability and order in the universe. Succession and kingship also loom large in this creation story, with each generation progressing from chaotic violence to peaceful civilization.

This guide refers to Stanley Lombardo’s 1993 dual translation of Works and Days and the Theogony.

Poet Biography

According to his own writings and to other sources from antiquity, Hesiod was an epic poet of archaic Greece and a rough contemporary of the author who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer. Modern scholars generally date Hesiod’s activity period between 750 and 650 BCE, making his poems some of the oldest surviving works of western literature. Hesiod has two confirmed works: Works and Days and the Theogony. Other poems, including the Shield of Hercules and the Catalogue of Women, were (perhaps erroneously) attributed to him later.

In Works and Days, Hesiod says that his father was born in Asia Minor but migrated to the village of Askra in Boeotia, the fertile heartland of Greece which Hesiod famously described as “bad in winter, / godawful in summer, / nice never” (Works and Days, Lines 707-10). There, Hesiod enjoyed an idyllic pastoral childhood on the family farm. In Theogony, Hesiod claims to have met the Muses face-to-face on nearby Mount Helikon, their sacred mountain, while pasturing sheep as a youth. With their support, he successfully competed in a poetry competition at the funeral games of Amphidamus, a local warrior. In Works and Days, Hesiod describes a legal dispute over inheritance of the farm with his lazy brother, Perses, after the death of their father.

Hesiod is considered the first writer to use the authorial “I.” He speaks in the first person and presents his accounts as historical reality, facts rooted firmly in geographical specificity. While readers throughout history—ancient and modern—have assumed that the autobiographical details in Hesiod’s poetry were genuine, some scholars now treat Hesiod as an authorial persona. Even his conveniently poetic name—its Greek form, Hesiodos, means “he who casts his voice”—suggests a character rather than a real-life individual. Others emphasize that debating the truth of Hesiod’s identity is an unhelpful distraction from the literary and traditional merits of his poetry.

Poem Text

Hesiod. Works and Days and Theogony. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis, Indiana, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993.

Summary

Hesiod begins his poem with a lengthy prologue (or proem) from Lines 1-115. He opens with epic poetry’s traditional invocation of the Muses (“Begin our singing with the Helikonian Muses,” Line 1). These nine goddesses of the arts dance on violet petals around the altar of their father, Zeus (called “Kronion” here, Line 4); bathe in nearby springs (Lines 5-6); and sing on their home of Mount Helikon (Lines 7-110). Their songs celebrate the Greek pantheon (Lines 11-22).

Next, Hesiod identifies himself. The Muses, he claims, taught him the art of singing verse when he was pasturing lambs on their mountain (Lines 23-26). Addressing him and other pastoral figures as “Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds,” the Muses told him “We know how to tell many believable lies, / But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth” (Lines 28-29). They gave Hesiod a laurel branch and “breathed” (Line 32) a divine voice into his body, encouraging Hesiod to sing of the gods, but always address the Muses first and last.

Again, Hesiod shifts the scene: “But why all this about oak tree or stone?” (Line 36), he asks. He returns to his initial subject of the Muses, who sing of “what is, what will be, and what has been” (Line 39). The Muses were born in northern Greece at Pieria, in ancient Macedonia (Line 53). There, Zeus had sex for nine days with the Titan Memory (Mnemosyne), who bore the nine Muses to be “a forgetting of troubles, / A pause in sorrow” (Lines 55-56).

Kalliope is the most important Muse, Hesiod says, because she is the companion of royalty. The Muses pour sweet dew in kings’ mouths so their words “flow like honey” when they arbitrate disputes in their kingdoms (Lines 81-93). The power of poets comes from the god of culture, Apollo; the power of kings comes from the king of the gods, Zeus—but all benefit from the love of the Muses. Song has the power to make one “[forget] his heartache” (Line 103). In the final part of this section, Hesiod asks the Muses to “Make known the eerie brood of the eternal Immortals”: That is, to help him tell the story of the origins of the gods, which will constitute the rest of the poem (Line 106). This ends the Theogony’s prologue.

Hesiod details the earliest moments of the universe. There initially existed “only Chaos, the Abyss” (Line 116). Then Gaia, or Earth, came into being, as well as Tartaros (the Underworld) and Eros, the personification of desire (Lines 119-25). Gaia’s first child is Ouranos, or Heaven. They sleep together and produce many children, but Ouranos stuffs their monstruous offspring (like the Titans and the Giants) back into Gaia when they emerge (Lines 140-59). Begrudging this treatment, Gaia enlists their youngest son, Kronos, “a most terrible child […] an arch-deceiver,” to cut off Ouranos’s genitalia with a flint knife (Lines 160-84).

Kronos succeeds; the blood from Ouranos’s wound creates the Furies. Kronos tosses Ouranos’s severed genitals into the ocean. There, contact with seafoam produces the goddess of sexual desire, Aphrodite, who “from that moment on fulfilled the honored function that includes […] all of the gentle pleasures of sex” (Lines 204-06). Ouranos will exit the narrative now, but not before Hesiod adds that his sons, the Titans, “had over-reached themselves and done a monstruous deed / For which vengeance later would surely be exacted” (Lines 209-10).

From Lines 211-455, Hesiod details the origins of other early, minor gods. One of the first goddesses, Night (Lines 123-25), produces several negative forces for humanity, including Eris (or “Strife”) and the three Fates, “Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, / Who give mortals at birth good and evil to have, / And prosecute transgressions of mortals and gods” (Lines 218-20).

At Line 233, Hesiod changes gears from the chthonic realm to Pontos, the Sea, and his descendants. Pontos’s son Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, fathers a catalogue of 50 oceanic nymphs (Lines 244-65). Many famous mythological monsters are produced in this section, including the half-bird, half-woman Harpies (Lines 268-70) and the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa and her sisters (Lines 275-83). Hesiod notes that the hero Perseus will cut off Medusa’s head in the future—the winged horse Pegasus will spring from her severed neck—but this has not happened yet (Lines 281-87). The monster Geryon makes his entrance in this section too; the hero Hercules will steal his cattle for his Tenth Labor (Lines 289-95). The monster Echidna produces more antagonists for heroes: Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the Underworld (several heroes encounter him); the Hydra (killed by Hercules as the second of his Twelve Labors); and the Chimaira (slain by the hero Bellerophon) (Lines 298-26). Before she is killed, the Chimaira mothers the Sphinx, who will riddle with the hero king Oedipus, and the Nemean Lion, which will be strangled by Hercules (Lines 328-33).

At this point, the deities of the sun and moon, Helios and Selene, are born (Line 372). Hesiod catalogues more river exotic gods (Lines 339-47). The eldest daughter, the river Styx, will sign up first to fight alongside Zeus in the upcoming battle against the Titans, and so holds a special place of honor: Going forward, the gods will swear by the Styx (Lines 384-05). Zeus also houses the children of Styx, personifications of virtue, in Olympus forever (Lines 385-89). Finally, Hesiod spotlights a minor goddess, Hekate. In Hesiod’s telling, Hekate is a generous friend of humankind. She always responds to the prayers of the faithful, providing them with everything from political power to military prowess to success in fishing (Lines 413-55).

Hesiod now moves into one of the more important parts of his text: The entrance of the Olympians. Kronos (who castrated his father, Ouranos, in Lines 175-83) rapes the goddess Rheia. Rheia bears the first six Olympians: Hestia (goddess of the hearth); Demeter (goddess of agriculture); Hera (goddess of marriage and childbirth); Hades (god of the underworld); Poseidon (god of the sea and earthquakes); and Zeus, who will become the king of the gods (Lines 456-62). But Kronos, like Ouranos, fears his children: A prophecy says his child will overthrow him. To avoid this fate, Kronos swallows his offspring as soon as they are born. Distressed, Rheia appeals to her parents, Earth and Sky (that is, Gaia and Ouranos), for help. They hide her youngest child, Zeus, and raise him in secret on the island of Crete. Rheia provides a decoy child to Kronos—a rock wrapped in baby clothes—who promptly swallows it. Once Zeus becomes an adult, he forces Kronos to regurgitate all his siblings. They reward Zeus by gifting him the kingship and his signature lightning bolts (Lines 463-08).

The next section tells the story of four Titans: Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, whom Zeus punishes for acts of insolence against him. He blasts Menoitios into the underworld for excessive violence (Lines 517-19). Atlas is forced to hold up the sky (Lines 519-22). Prometheus receives the worst punishment of all: Zeus chains him to a crag, where an eagle eats his liver every day (Lines 523-36). Prometheus had attempted to trick Zeus at a dinner. He disguised the good cuts of meat as poor ones and wrapped the unappealing bones in delicious-looking fat, then asked Zeus which portion he preferred. But Zeus saw through the trick and punished Prometheus—and humankind—by refusing to share the gift of fire. After Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humanity anyways, Zeus chained him to the crag (Lines 537-72).

Next up is the story of Pandora, the first woman (Lines 573-20). She is further punishment from Zeus for the theft of fire. Hephaestus, the craftsman of the gods, fashions Pandora from clay; the goddess of wisdom and art, Athena, dresses her up. Pandora is a “lovely evil to balance the good […] From her is the race of female women […] A great infestation among mortal men” (Lines 588-96). Hesiod uses a bee metaphor to elaborate: Men are like worker bees (that is, hard-working bread-winners), while women sit in the hive and eat the fruits of their labor (like drones). If a man refuses to marry, he is left without heirs, but if he does marry, he has “a life balanced between good and evil, / A constant struggle” (Lines 611-14). “There’s no way,” Hesiod concludes, “to get around the mind of Zeus” (Line 617).

Hesiod now moves to the centerpiece story of the work: The Titanomachy, the climactic battle between the old generation (the Titans) and the new (Zeus and the Olympians). Recall that at Lines 140-59, Ouranos had forced some of his children, the so-called “Hundred-Handers”—Obriareus, Kottos, and Gyges—into Tartaros, a prison under the earth (Lines 148-59). Zeus frees the trio from their bondage and, after feeding them, requests their assistance in the fight against the Titans (Lines 621-47). The Hundred-Handers’ leader, Kottos, acknowledges that Zeus’s “thoughts are supreme, [his] mind surpassing” (Line 660) and swears fealty. The Hundred-Handers hold the line as the final battle with the Titans begins: “Both sides’ hands flashed with power / and the unfathomable sea shrieked eerily, / the earth crashed and rumbled, the vast sky groaned / And quavered” (Lines 680-83). All the Olympians, male and female, join the fray, and Zeus unleashes the full fury of his lightning bolts. Together, they defeat the Titans and chain them deep underground in Tartaros, “As far under earth as the sky is above” (Lines 724-25).

Hesiod describes this prison of Tartaros. “A bronze anvil falling down from the sky,” he says, “Would fall nine days and nights and on the tenth hit earth. / It is just as far from earth down to misty Tartaros” (Lines 726-27). The Hundred-Handers guard the Titans there in a bronze compound built by Poseidon. It is a dark, gloomy place, populated by the dread children of Night (see Lines 211-32). Day and Night pass each other on its threshold every day; they never are in the same place at the same time. Night’s children, Death and his brother Sleep, live there too. Sleep is “a quiet spirit, and […] gentle to humans,” while Death has an iron heart and “is hateful even to the immortal gods” (763-71). The underworld gods Hades and Persephone rule this realm, which is guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus. Cerberus happily greets newcomers but eats anyone who tries to leave (Lines 772-80).

The river goddess Styx also lives in Tartaros. Earlier in the poem, Hesiod established that she was the first minor deity to swear fealty to Zeus in the battle against the Titans and thus holds a special honor: The immortals swear by the river Styx (see Lines 384-05). If any of the gods break their oath after swearing by the Styx, he or she enters a death-like coma for a year, then suffers exile from Olympus for nine years—the gravest punishments for immortals (Lines 781-12).

One last obstacle rises to fight Zeus: The monster Typhoeus (Lines 827-85). The last son of Gaia, Typhoeus is a terrible being “whose hands were like engines of war, / Whose feet never gave out” (Lines 830-31). His many heads bellow a cacophony of strange sounds—human speech, but also a bull snorting, a lion roaring, a puppy yapping, and more (Lines 836-43). Typhoeus would have ruled the universe, had Zeus not beaten him down in a massive, world-shaking battle and tossed him into Tartaros with his brothers. Typhoeus is the originator of poor weather on the ocean, “a great curse for mortals,” especially for the sea-faring Greeks (Line 880).

After the Titanomachy, the Olympians make Zeus their king (886-90). Hesiod then catalogues Zeus’s many wives and their children (some of whom are Olympians). Zeus’s first wife, Metis, is the goddess of wiles. She is about to give birth to their first child, the goddess Athena, when Zeus—warned by Gaia and Ouranos that his second child by Metis would overthrow him—eats Metis to avoid the prophesy and “so [Metis] would devise with him good and evil both” (Line 905).

His next marriage to Themis produces the Seasons and the Moirai, or Fates, first mentioned at Lines 218-20 as children of Night (Lines 906-11). Eurynome bears the three beautiful Graces (Lines 912-16). Zeus’s union with his elder sister, the Olympian Demeter, produces the lovely Persephone, whom Zeus allows to be kidnapped by the underworld god Hades (Lines 917-19). Zeus’s extended lovemaking with Mnemosyne (first mentioned at Lines 53-63) creates the nine Muses (Lines 920-22). He fathers the twin Olympians Apollo (god of light, music, prophecy, and medicine) and Artemis (goddess of virgins and hunters) by Leto (Lines 923-25). Finally, Zeus’s marriage to his sister Hera, his primary wife, produces Hebe, goddess of youth; Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth; and the Olympian Ares, god of war (Lines 926-28).

This brings the count of Olympians up to nine (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Aphrodite. As god of the underworld, Hades does not live on Mount Olympus and is not usually counted among them). Two more Olympians are birthed from unusual circumstances. Metis’s unborn daughter, the wise war goddess Athena, bursts fully formed from Zeus’s skull after her mother was swallowed (Lines 929-31). (Athena’s birth is first referenced at Lines 891-05.) Hera, angry at Zeus’s many infidelities, spontaneously generates her own child with no male involvement: Hephaistos, the smith god with a leg disability (Lines 932-34).

Hesiod rounds out the rest of the pantheon. The wing-footed messenger Olympian Hermes is born of Zeus and a minor goddess, Maia (Lines 944-45). Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele, produce the god of wine and madness, Dionysos (Lines 946-49).

Various unions produce the earliest generation of important mythological humans too. Hercules, for example, is born from Zeus and Alkmene (Lines 950-51). Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, becomes mother to Semele (who will in turn give birth to Dionysus) (Lines 982-86). The hero Jason seduces the granddaughter of the sun god Helios, the infamous witch Medea (Lines 962-68; 1000-010). The Iliad’s primary hero, Achilles, descends from a line of oceanic deities fathered by the Old Man of the Sea, Nereus (Lines 1011-015). A mortal man, Anchises, has sex with Aphrodite, producing an important hero for later Roman myths, Aeneas (Lines 1016-019). Finally, Hesiod describes Odysseus’s affairs with the witch goddess Circe and the sea goddess Kalypso, as Homer describes in Books 5 and 10 of his Odyssey (Lines 1019-026).