Hesiod (Theog. 117) describes Earth as “the ever-sure foundation of all,” a divine progenitor who also plays an instrumental role in bringing about the lasting rule of Zeus. At first portrayed as the enemy of the status quo, she eventually comes to support the hegemony of the Olympians. In the mythic imagination, Earth’s primordial status and uncontrolled powers were necessarily superseded by a male-dominated regime representing order and stability. The same idea is expressed in the myth of Gaia’s prominence at Delphi as the “first prophet” of the oracle, which was taken over by Apollo (e. g. Aesch. Eum. 1-2).5
While the Earth is often named Gaia in poetry, in cult she is usually given the more prosaic name of Ge. Her cults were widespread yet rarely prominent at the civic level. She is frequently paired with Zeus, a combination that reflects the age-old partnership of sky god and earth goddess. Sacrificial calendars from the Attic towns of Erchia and the Marathonian Tetrapolis, inscribed in the fourth century, provide us a glimpse of the rural contexts in which Ge was typically worshiped, presumably in connection with agriculture. The Erchian calendar specifies that on a certain day the nymphs, Acheloos, Alochos (a birth goddess), and Hermes will each receive a sheep, while Ge will receive a pregnant sheep. In the Tetrapolis calendar, Ge is given a pregnant cow “in the fields” and a black ram “at the oracle (manteion).” The offering of a pregnant animal has obvious symbolism, while a black animal is standard for deities who are associated with the underworld.6
Ge was depicted anthropomorphically, but never fit comfortably into the cadre of Olympians or exhibited as distinct a personality as they did. Her dual ontological status as “Earth” and “Earth goddess” hindered such development. Reflecting this uncertainty, vase painters show her as a woman whose head and torso are rising from the ground.7 In her cosmic aspect as one of the three great domains (heaven, earth, and underworld), she appears in oaths. In the Iliad (3.103-4, 276-80) she is invoked with Zeus, Helios, the rivers, and the underworld deities to witness the oath attending the single combat of Paris and Menelaos. Two lambs, a white male and a black female, are sacrificed for the Sun and Earth. The group of Zeus, Ge, and Helios as witnesses to oaths and other official business is also widely attested in Greek inscriptions.
Although Helios, whose name is clearly of Indo-European origin, was an oath deity, occasionally cited as an ancestor (particularly in myths connected with Korinth) and recognized everywhere as divine, worship of the Sun was limited among the Classical Greeks, who tended to associate purely astral cults with the barbarians. Helios began to be syncretized with Apollo as early as the fifth century in philosophical speculation, but widespread identification of Apollo with the Sun god was a later phenomenon.8 Just as Ge at Delphi was considered a primordial deity who yielded to Apollo, Helios was the original possessor of the Akrokorinthos, the citadel of Korinth, but gave the land to Aphrodite. The scattering of minor cults in the Peloponnese (Sikyon, Argos, Hermione, Epidauros, Mt. Taleton in Lakonia) and the holy flocks of Helios at Tainaron mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (3.410-13) suggest that this worship was deeply rooted in Greece. Thus it may be that Helios’ cult was carried to Rhodes by Dorian settlers in the seventh century, although Farnell holds that the Sun worship there was prehellenic in origin. Against these theories of early Rhodian cult stands the lack of evidence for worship of Helios on the island before the late fifth century. In spite of this gap, Helios clearly held a privileged place in the pantheon during the Archaic period. Pindar’s seventh Olympian ode (54-75) conveys the unique relationship between the Rhodians and their patron god, who chose the island as his portion and fathered the seven Heliadai to whom the Rhodian elite traced their ancestry.9 With the founding of Rhodes city in 408, the annual festival of the Heliaia drew athletes and musicians from around the Greek world, and the cult gained even more fame when the bronze statue of Helios known as the Colossus of Rhodes, some 33 m in height, was erected in 282.
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