The most important general beliefs about a prior epoch, of a ‘‘more ancient’’ bios {‘‘way of life’’), genos {‘‘generation’’ or ‘‘race’’), or basileia {‘‘reign’’), in which the world was substantially different, revolved around intersecting myths concerning: (1) the succession of Zeus to Cronus; (2) the estrangement of gods from men; and (3) the origins of the human life-cycle of aging, reproduction, and death.
Zeus is often called ‘‘son of Cronus’’ and poets told of how there had once been a ‘‘reign of Cronus’’ until Cronus was overthrown by his son and banished to remote isles where he still ruled over the Blessed {Graziosi and Haubold 2005:57; Versnel 1987). The story presupposes the possibility of Zeus himself being overthrown in turn. At the start of his reign, forewarned that Metis will bear him a son who will supplant him, he swallows her, and hence himself gives birth to Athena through a crack in his skull. Much later, forewarned that his hypothetical son by Thetis will overthrow him, he arranges for her to be raped and married to a mortal, resulting in the mortal hero Achilles. These myths, very popular in both images and literature, construct the current age, the age of Zeus, as one suspended between a past and future succession, a reign the end of which has on at least two famous occasions been narrowly avoided. This notion of the contingency of the gods, their constant need to be on guard against supersession, is also reflected in the fact that their immortalness itself needs constantly to be maintained with nectar and ambrosia.
Several famous myths told of the alienation of gods from men. Tantalus had been close to the gods, sharing their feasts until he tried to feed them his son Pelops; alternatively, according to Pindar’s self-conscious rewriting of the myth, Pelops had actually lived on Olympus, serving them ambrosia and nectar, before being ejected when it appeared that some of the precious substances had been passed on to mortals, so, like Thetis’s hypothetical son, Pelops was cast down, an ex-immortal, from a world of deathlessness to one of aging, reproduction, and death {Olympians 1.35-66). Similarly, it was at a communal banquet of gods and mortals that Prometheus first tried to trick Zeus with fat-covered bones, alienating the gods and provoking Zeus to refuse men the gift of fire. Hesiod’s sequel to this episode tells how Prometheus stole fire and gave it to men, and so Zeus made woman, Pandora, a ‘‘misfortune’’ as penalty ‘‘for the fire’’ {antipuros; Works 57), a drain on his resources, forcing him to work and aging him. She it was who unleashed misfortunes {kaka), hard work {ponos), and sicknesses into the world when she opened Pandora’s ‘‘Box.’’ The myth emphasizes another feature of the anterior epoch: the invention of woman means the invention of mortal sex.
These themes of a lost world of divine intimacy and lack of toil are brought together in Hesiod’s classic account of the earlier ‘‘golden race’’ of men, ‘‘friendly with the immortal gods’’ {Works 120): ‘‘These lived in the time of Cronus, when he was ruler in heaven, and they lived like gods, with no cares in their heart, without toils or sadness. Terrible old age did not affect them either, but never changing in arms and legs they enjoyed themselves in feasting, free of all evils. And when they died it was as if they fell asleep. They had every good thing, and the fruitful earth of its own accord produced crops, full and in abundance’’ (Works 111-18). Hesiod went on to describe four more generations of mortals during the reign of Zeus - silver, bronze, heroic, and iron, our own race, which will itself be destroyed when time presses so hard upon us that even newborn babies will have gray hair. For successiveness, timefulness, is itself a feature of the age of Zeus: Cronus’ single age without age or succession(s), as unchanging as gold, is followed by an age of ages, of endless successions. It is aging, susceptibility to the ravages of time, that separates mortals from gods, rather than merely the ultimate finality of death. Nectar and ambrosia keep the gods not merely immune from extinction, but incorruptible and full of youthful vitality, heibe:.
It was at Olympia that the epochal myths were most resonant. The central enclosure or Altis was dominated by a hill which belonged to Cronus, who received sacrifices performed by the Basilae at the spring equinox. Pausanias (5.7.6-10) was told by the most learned Eleans that Cronus had actually had a temple in the sanctuary built for him by the golden race of men, and that the very first Olympic contest was a wrestling match between Zeus and his father for the throne of heaven, making Olympia the site at which the age of Zeus began. The topography could make it seem as if Zeus had kicked his father up the hill, so to speak, and the spring equinox is very early for a festival of Cronus, whose moons/festivals are normally closer to the summer solstice, making it look as if Olympian Zeus had supplanted his father in the calendar as well and pushed him back in time. The festival began, moreover, in Elis with mourning for Achilles, Zeus’ deferred successor, the hero whose death guaranteed the continuation of the reign of Zeus. At the foot of Cronus’ hill was the famous altar of Zeus, a giant mound of burnt offerings, cow-bones, and poplar ash. Every year it grew a little higher as more blood and thigh-bones were added to the pile. Moreover, once a year on a date carefully observed by the seers around the time of the festival of Cronus, the ashes from the eternal flame in the hearth of the Prytaneion were gathered and mixed with water from the Alpheius to form a muddy paste which was then applied to the great altar (Pausanias 5.13.11), this annual application ‘‘making no small contribution to the size’’ (5.15.9). With its remorseless cyclical accumulations, the altar was a kind of epochal clock, therefore, a vivid monument to the passing of time, the duration of the age of Zeus.
Pausanias noted also an altar to Themis (5.14.10), ‘‘That which is established,’’ who helped to preserve the established order by forewarning Zeus of the threat of supersession presented by Thetis’ son (Pindar, Isthmians 8.31). In fact Hesiod says she was Zeus’ second wife after Metis, and produced with him the Fates and Horai, the three Seasons or Times, named Justness (Dike), Good Order (Eunomia), and Peace (Eirene) (Theogony 901-2), who received cult in many cities. They seem to represent not so much three individualized seasons presiding over three different times of year, but the principle of seasonableness itself, cyclical (con)sequence, going around and coming around: Timely Goddesses. The Times act as Keepers of Heaven’s Gates (Iliad 5.749, 8.393), a nice illustration of the way that time itself separated mortals from immortals. This reflects a ‘‘cyclonic’’ model of time-space, with divine Olympus at its still center and mortals at its wasting rim, a construction allegorized in the different destinies of two Trojan princes, the eternally youthful Ganymede serving immortality to the immortals on Olympus behind the gates guarded by the Times, and ever-aging Tithonus living with Dawn, the Edge of Days herself, on the oceanic circumference.
World History
