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Hello everyone and welcome in this new type of video I created to talk about
anything in connection with myths and legends. Today, in this video,
a quick insight in greek mythology.
Before approaching in the big picture the huge tale that is the greek mythology
it's necessary, to be absolutely honest, to clear a few points. First of all, there are many
versions or interpretations of the texts, and, consequently, of the mythology in the overall. Though the similitaries are
numerous, the origin of the world or the role of some gods will totaly change
depending on the land the cult was practised. If Homer's tale
is noteworthy, we will only broach the most common and well-known version
which was the one described by the poet Hésiod in his book "The Theogony". This text dating from
the 8th century BC, is the eldest religious poem of greek civilisation
found so far. It will allow us to a certain extent to put back together
the believes of the différent greek cities while using other mythologies, such as the babylonian one.
At the beginning, there was only chaos.
Therefore, the two first divinities arose, Gaia, personification of The Earth and Eros of love.
Chaos caused then the emergence of Nyx, the night, and his brother Erebos, the darkness. Both of them
got together to give birth to the day, depicted by Hemera, and the light, depicted
by Ether. Then, Gaia brought by herself Pontos, the sea, Ourea, the mountains
and Ouranos, the sky and life. These first divinities, called "primodial deites",
personify clearly the world around us. They defined the setting within
the other Gods and Men evolved.
The second generation of divinities was conceived by Ouranos and is own
mother Gaia. Together, they gave birth to the Cyclop we all know and
to the Hecatonchires, huge monsters armed with a hundred arms and fifty head
breathing fire. However, Ouranos, afraid of his children, locked them up in
what we call "Tartarus", the deepest region of hell. The union of the two lovebirds
led afterwards to the birth of Titans, twelve giant divinities,
six of each sex, though some say there were over fourty of them.
Ouranos bewared of them too, fearing that one of them
might take his place. For that reason, he kept them from getting out of their mother's belly.
The latter, attempted to push her sons and daughters into rebellion against their father.
But only the youngest Titan, Cronus, decided to take control.
You can say that again. Gaia crafted for him a sickle,
which he cut off his father's génitalia with. From that hurtful incident,
several creatures and divinities were born. That was the case, for example, for the giants, rising
from the blood of Ouranos falling on the Earth.
After Ouranos's downfall, Cronus was designated sovereign by his brothers
However, before giving in to his progeny, Ouranos warned his.
If even him was defeated by his son, it would be the same for the latter. So Cronus,
who just took his sister Rhéa as his wife, started to swallow every one of his
children to preempt that prophecy. But Rhea had a heavy heart, and with
her mother Gaia's advice, she subsituted her sixth child, Zeus, for
a swaddled stone. Cronus fell right into the trap, swallowing the stone and Rhea was able to put the child
safe in a cave in Crete where he was suckled by a goat.
The future king of Olympus grew up and planned to overthrow his father. To this end, he invented
a subterfuge to get Cronus to swallow a beverage that would make him vomit, and therefore
free his brothers and sisters he swallowed. Releasing also the Cyclops and the
Hecatonchires in order to wage war against Cronus and a few Titans who
joined him, Zeus launched what we call the Titanomachy.
After a violent confrontation, Zeus won the battle and locked Cronus and the Titans up in Tartarus,
where he posted the Hecatonchires at the gates to keep an eye on the
prisonners. He then shared the kingdom with his brothers Poseidon and Hades. Poseidon ruled
over the sea, Hades over the underworld and Zeus over the sky.
Would it be the end of the conflicts ? Gaia wouldn't let that happen. Unhappy about the destiny
of the Titans, she talked the Giants into revolting against Zeus. The latter,
with the help of his brothers and sisters, will initiate the second great war : the Gigantomachy.
And once more, the thunder god came out a winner. Gaia risked
it all, in union with Tartarus to conceive a Monster reaching
for the stars : Typhon. Followed the hardest duel Zeus ever had to win
a the end of which, thanks to the power of thunder, he incarcerated Typhon, once again
in Tartarus.
Although hystory narrates other setbacks from the king of Olympus,
we can consider that from this point that the kingdom of gods stabilized, and that Zeus
definitely took the lead, keeping the power.
This third génération of gods, with Zeus as the incontested leader, for the most part, occupied
the mount Olympius. A place we physically locate
on Earth in northern Greece, but also in a more abstract place, far, far away up in
the sky, hidden by the clouds. However, not all of them lived there, spread
across the five great region of the Earth.
And there were many gods and godess,
so many... We will therefore focus on the twelve main
Olympus gods, who will serve as a base. Firstly, as we talked about, Zeus, who reign
suprem among his kind and over the men he watches from the sky. The sky
that he owns, and from which he can make the thunder rumble and drop lightnings. Hesiod,
the famous poet behind a big part of this mythology passed
to us, said about Zeus : "Zeus's eye sees everything, knows everything"
It was kinda like a greek Sauron. Even though Zeus got married three times,
he was still the greatest womanizer of all time. For
a while I thougth about making a full list of his conquests, but, there are a lot.
With his first wife Metis, his gave birth to Athena, godess of wisdom,
crafts, arts, but also, as her brother Ares,
war. His last wife, Hera, who is as well
his sister, is actually on of the twelve main gods of Olympus. Jealous, she wouldn't
stop tracking him down, and pay him back for the many affair he had. She embody the godess
of mariage, guardian of women, and couple's fertility.
With Hera, Zeus had several children, including two main gods : Ares, god of
war, and Hephaestus, god of fire and industry.
Then, with one of his mistresses, Leto, he conceived Artemis, godess of hunt,
and Apollo, god of singing, music and poetry.
Finally, with another mistress, he got Hermes, messenger of the gods, watching over
travellers, roads and trade. Poseidon, Hestia and Demeter, Zeus's brothers
and sisters, also had an important role. Poseidon reigning over the seas
and oceans, Hestia over hearth and sacred fire,
and at last Demeter, godess of agriculture and harvest. Our last protagonist, Aphrodite
godess of beauty and love, is, depending on the version, either Zeus's daughter, or a
godess born from Ouranos's genitalia fallen into the sea.
Naturally, intrigues within this group, and the other gods around
them provide new stories for greek literature and the legends that results from it.
Be that as it may, gods are immortals thanks to the mix of nectar and ambrosia
they take.
They constitute, with the secondary gods, some sort of council ruling over the life of men
in exchange of cult and offerings.
Talking about men is all fine and dandy, but
where do they come from ? Though a version tells us that the gods created men themselves
and that they were eras of men, as the golden age, the silver age or the iron age,
Prometheus's version is the most famous.
Prometheus is a titan, himself being the son of a titan, Japet. Though, originally, creating
men was his brother Epimetheus's task, the latter, who created animals before them,
and gave them appropriate abilities, couldn't manage to create a man
able to survive in the nature. So he called for Prometheus's help, who decided, thanks
to clay, remodel men in order to give them an appearance close to
the gods. Aware that it wouldn't be enough to make them a superior species,
he got, with the help of Athena, in Hephaestus's forge in order
to stealthe fire and give it to the men, enabling them to grow.
Maintaining an atmosphere of mistrust regarding the gods, Prometheus didn't stop
there, and developt a new plan to give men the ability to live
in better conditions. He killed a bull and separated the good meat from bones and
bad flesh. He hid the worst meat under the most beautiful skin
of the bull, and the best meat under the ugliest. He then asked Zeus
to choose a piece, and offered the second one to men. Naturally, Zeus fell
into the trap and chose to take the part with the bones and scraps.
In this way, men could keep the good meat to eat and only
offer the bones and the unedible parts to the gods.
However, Zeus, in a fury for being duped like that, decided to punish Prometheus
and the men. He chained the titan at the top of the Caucasus, inviting vultures to devour
his liver which regenerated day after day, sentencing him to an endless
suffering. As for men, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create the first woman, Pandora
She, who was given qualities, as well as flaws as inquisitiveness,
was married to Epimetheus, and sent with a mysterious
box : the famous Pandora's box. She will unfortunately give in to temptation and open the box,
which was actually holding all the evils of humanity : deseases, war, famine,
oldness and many of evils, and also, in some versions, death.
Thus, men could grow and progress on Earth, but also die. What would then happen to their souls ?
In greek mythology, the afterlife
is called the Underworld. (something about the french word "enfer", refering
as well Underworld and Hell). It was consisted of several fields
where it was or not, depending on where, a good place to wander. This domain is managed by Zeus's brother,
Hades, and his wife Persephone. It's sourrounded by four rivers and is located
underground where we can acess by caves, lifts or else by
cracks on the ground. In order to access the Underworld, the deseased's soul
had to cros the first river, dividing the world of the livings with the one of the deads : the Styx. The only
way to cross the river was to pay Charon, the ferryman, so
he go for a stroll with the new arrival. That's actually why the
deads were burried avec a coin in their mouth, because if they presented themselves in front of
the ferryman without money, then he was condemned to wander at the bank of the Styx.
Once getting through the river, the soul found itself in front of Cerberus, a huge three-headed dog
keeping the Underworld's door. Despite what you might think, that dog wasn't stoping
people from entering in the Underworld, on the other hand, his task was to
disuade an hypothetical insurgent trying to get out.
Once passed the door, the deseased came in front of some sort of court where his live was
looked into and judged by three judges : Minos, Radamanthys and Aeacus. At the end of that more
or less difficult moment, the dead was invited to go into one of the three parts of the Underworld.
The Heros, who we didn't talk about yet, and I will probably broach about in another video,
as well as virtuous persons were allowed in Elysium, where they could live
a peaceful life.
Souls that didn't accomplish anything special throughout their existence were guided
to the Asphodel meadows, where was located Hades and Persephone's palace.
And there, well... nothing... They just waited... endlessly... Nice isn't it ?
Finally, murderers and other bad seeds were invited to join the Titans
in Tartarus : a place where they were constantly subject to physical and psychological tortures. We might
still notice a few different points depending on periods
and writters who describe the Underworld. For exemple, for Plato, Tartarus
wouldn't ever have any mortal within it, this one being only saved for evil divinities.
Likewise, there is nothing about reincarnation in Homer and Hesiod's versions.
But, from the 6th century, with the raise of what we call Orphism,
people start talking about it. Plato, him again, revealed for exemple that a soul
must stay a thousand years in Tartarus before being
able to reincarnate. You got it, as everything, mythology
evolves and inexorably, versions cross each other.
So we set the basis of this mythology,
but how did the men live their faith day after day ?
Men were allowed to believe watever they wanted of the gods, but in no way they were allowed to
offend them. Many temples and altars were built and a believer had to
wash his hands before a prayer. These prayers were practised in
everyday life, to do pretty much anything and everything. They
could be accompanied with offerings in order to thanks the gods. But
offerings in a much bigger scale were also organized in big
cities to ask the gods a favor or to celebrate a military victory.
This turned some temples into real banks, where the priest had to keep
a notebook that listed the goods, thus proving that he didn't serve himself.
In more specific cases, sacrifices were done. It was, most of
the time, animals, and the ritual was quite tecnical. However, since animals
were worth a certain value, it was common for men to use
fake animals by way of offering to the gods. On the face of it, humain sacrifices were
marginal acts, though some marks of it were found in the 5th century BC.
Faith also expressed itself through games and celebrations organized by communities.
That's how, to honour Dionysus, Dyonisia were organized every year,
the biggest one was set in Athens. Parades, meals, military and civic glorification,
all the city's activity stoped in this moment in a spectacular atmosphere
destined for reinforcing the social union. There was even verbal battles
contests, sort of clashes divided in two categories :
dramatics and comedies. It was the opportunity, for some people, to stand out
from the crowd, like the famous poet Aristophanes, who won the comedy contest
several years straight.
A bit later, emerged initiation ceremonies called "Mysteries"
like the famous "Eleusis Mysteries" in honor of Demeter. Thus, every year were invited
groups of people to discover secrets and revelations about the gods.
This passage was used as it were a baptism, if we can compare, in the big picture,
the practise, because it guaranteed afterlife for the soon-to-be initiated.
So, that's it, I hope you enjoyed the first episode of "Myths and
Legends". Of course I invite you to search the web to learn more on the subject, because it was there only an overall summary
of greek mythology.
In the next episodes we will approach other mythologies,
and you'll see there is similarities with greek mythology, even little parts
of legends, hystory of heros, and monsters.
Share the video, like, comment,
and most importantly, take care !
See you soon.