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169-412: In Ancient Greek religion and mythology , Cronus , Cronos , or Kronos ( / ˈ k r oʊ n ə s / or / ˈ k r oʊ n ɒ s / , from Greek : Κρόνος , Krónos ) was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans , the divine descendants of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age until he
338-464: A gadfly to bite the cattle, irritate them and scatter them. Hera then sent a flood which raised the water level of a river so much that Heracles could not ford the river with the cattle. He piled stones into the river to make the water shallower. When he finally reached the court of Eurystheus, the cattle were sacrificed to Hera. Eurystheus also wanted to sacrifice the Cretan Bull to Hera. She refused
507-404: A symposium . One rite of passage was the amphidromia , celebrated on the fifth or seventh day after the birth of a child. Childbirth was extremely significant to Athenians, especially if the baby was a boy. One ceremony was pharmakos , a ritual involving expelling a symbolic scapegoat such as a slave or an animal, from a city or village in a time of hardship. It was hoped that by casting out
676-712: A bride by Callimachus , as well as the matronly standing Hera. Hera was also worshipped as a virgin : there was a tradition in Stymphalia in Arcadia that there had been a triple shrine to Hera the Girl (Παις [Pais]), the Adult Woman (Τελεια [Teleia]), and the Separated (Χήρη [Chḗrē] 'Widowed' or 'Divorced'). In the region around Argos , the temple of Hera in Hermione near Argos was to Hera
845-482: A certain city. Athena was associated with Athens , Apollo with Delphi and Delos , Zeus with Olympia and Aphrodite with Corinth . But other gods were also worshipped in these cities. Other deities were associated with nations outside of Greece; Poseidon was associated with Ethiopia and Troy , and Ares with Thrace . Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cultus ; the Greeks themselves were well aware that
1014-499: A chance, and thus the two had their first sexual intercourse. According to a version attributed to Plutarch , Hera had been reared by a nymph named Macris on the island of Euboea , but Zeus stole her away, where Mt. Cithaeron "afforded them a shady recess." When Macris came to look for her ward, the mountain-god Cithaeron drove her away, saying that Zeus was taking his pleasure there with Leto. According to Callimachus , their wedding feast lasted three hundred years. The Apples of
1183-451: A chariot to lead the procession like a bride, and then ritually burned. According to Diodorus Siculus , Alcmene , the mother of Heracles, was the very last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with; following the birth of Heracles, he ceased to beget humans altogether. Hera is the stepmother and enemy of Heracles . The name Heracles means "Glory of Hera". In Homer's Iliad , when Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles, Zeus announced to all
1352-421: A company of Curetes , armored male dancers, shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea , who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still, other versions of the tale say that Zeus
1521-449: A dignified, matronly figure, upright or enthroned, crowned with a polos or diadem , sometimes veiled as a married woman. She is the patron goddess of lawful marriage. She presides over weddings, blesses and legalises marital unions, and protects women from harm during childbirth. Her sacred animals include the cow , cuckoo , and peacock . She is sometimes shown holding a pomegranate as an emblem of immortality. Her Roman counterpart
1690-552: A disembodied soul. Some Greeks, such as the philosophers Pythagoras and Plato , also embraced the idea of reincarnation , though this was only accepted by a few. Epicurus taught that the soul was simply atoms which were dissolved at death, so one ceased to exist on dying. Greek religion had an extensive mythology . It consisted largely of stories of the gods and how they interacted with humans. Myths often revolved around heroes and their actions, such as Heracles and his twelve labors , Odysseus and his voyage home, Jason and
1859-455: A festival called Kronia was held in honour of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as a patron of the harvest . Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity with the Roman deity Saturn . In an ancient myth recorded by Hesiod 's Theogony , Cronus envied the power of his father, Uranus ,
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#17328443785402028-422: A few gods, and supported a statue of the particular deity. Votive deposits were left at the altar, such as food, drinks, as well as precious objects. Sometimes animal sacrifices were performed here, with most of the flesh taken for eating and the offal burnt as an offering to the gods. Libations , often of wine, would be offered to the gods as well, not only at shrines, but also in everyday life, such as during
2197-482: A form of the "Mycenean goddess of the palace" and became the spouse of Zeus. Modern scholars suggest that Hera is not only the Olympian sky-goddess, but in some cults she may be identified with the earth-goddess. Her ancient connection with her sacred animal, the cow, still existed in historical times. She is probably related to Near-Eastern forms of cow-goddesses such as Hathor or Bat . The Greek earth-goddess Gaia
2366-472: A free path. RV 6 .47.4 varṣmāṇaṃ divo akṛṇod he cut [> created] the loftiness of the sky. This may point to an older Indo-European mytheme reconstructed as *(s)kert wersmn diwos "by means of a cut he created the loftiness of the sky". The myth of Cronus castrating Uranus parallels the Song of Kumarbi , where Anu (the heavens) is castrated by Kumarbi . In the Song of Ullikummi , Teshub uses
2535-459: A good deal about cult but very little about creed, in no small measure because the Greeks in general considered what one believed to be much less importance than what one did. The Greeks believed in an underworld inhabited by the spirits of the dead. One of the most widespread areas of this underworld was ruled by Hades, a brother of Zeus, and was also known as Hades (originally called 'the place of Hades'). Other well-known realms are Tartarus ,
2704-572: A major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine. It has been suggested that the Chthonic deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native Pre-Hellenic religion, and that many of the Olympian deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of
2873-423: A male-dominated Indo-European hierarchy, has been proposed for Greece as for Minoan Crete and other regions, but has not been in favor with specialists for some decades, though the question remains too poorly evidenced for a clear conclusion; at the least the evidence from Minoan art shows more goddesses than gods. The Twelve Olympians , with Zeus as sky father , certainly have a strong Indo-European flavor; by
3042-679: A map to the afterlife , a communal worship, and a band of spiritual fellowship. Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace , were ancient and local. Others were spread from place to place, like the mysteries of Dionysus . During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire , exotic mystery religions became widespread, not only in Greece, but all across the empire. Some of these were new creations, such as Mithras , while others had been practiced for hundreds of years before, like
3211-616: A monstrous version of Hephaestus , and whelped in a cave in Cilicia . She gave the creature to Python to raise. In the Temple of Hera, Olympia , Hera's seated cult figure was older than the warrior figure of Zeus that accompanied it. Homer expressed her relationship with Zeus delicately in the Iliad , in which she declares to Zeus, "I am Cronus ' eldest daughter, and am honourable not on this ground only, but also because I am your wife, and you are king of
3380-403: A perceived whim of the deity. In some places visitors were asked to show they spoke Greek; elsewhere Dorians were not allowed entry. Some temples could only be viewed from the threshold. Some temples are said never to be opened at all. But generally Greeks, including slaves, had a reasonable expectation of being allowed into the cella . Once inside the cella it was possible to pray to or before
3549-659: A pillar in Argos and as a plank in Samos." At Argos in a Greek myth the priestess of Hera Phoronis ties her mistress to an aniconic pillar. At Samos Hera's plank was tied on a willow tree to ensure fertility. Hera is the daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea , and the sibling of Hestia , Demeter , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus . Cronus was fated to be overthrown by one of his children; to prevent this, he swallowed all of his newborn children whole until Rhea tricked him into swallowing
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#17328443785403718-466: A place of torment for the damned, and Elysium , a place of pleasures for the virtuous. In the early Mycenaean religion all the dead went to Hades, but the rise of mystery cults in the Archaic age led to the development of places such as Tartarus and Elysium. A few Greeks, like Achilles , Alcmene , Amphiaraus , Ganymede , Ino , Melicertes , Menelaus , Peleus , and a great number of those who fought in
3887-596: A processional ceremony from ancient times. The myth of the premarital approach of Hera by Zeus is early mentioned by Homer . It is possible that the myth has its origins to an old custom of the European country population, the premarital intercourse of the engaged couple. According to Walter Burkert the "Mediterranean goddess of nature" becomes the bride of the Greek sky-god. He notices that "the disappearance and retrieval of Hera has parallels with other fertility cults" . Hera
4056-436: A reasonable explanation of the ritual and replicate its structural form. This is accurate for "aitia" related to initiation rituals from youth to maturity. Ancient accounts refer to the retirement of Hera after a quarell with Zeus. Hera's wrath may indicate the wrath and jealousy of the Greek wife. Other accounts refer to cultic trees or pillars. and rituals of the goddess of vegetation. Some accounts are related to rituals of
4225-549: A single transcendent deity . The worship of these deities, and several others, was found across the Greek world, though they often have different epithets that distinguished aspects of the deity, and often reflect the absorption of other local deities into the pan-Hellenic scheme. The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor , to Magna Graecia ( Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in
4394-474: A stone instead of her youngest child, Zeus. Zeus grew up in secret and when he grew up he tricked his father into regurgitating his siblings, including Hera. Zeus then led the revolt against the Titans, banished them, and divided the dominion over the world with his brothers, Poseidon and Hades. Other traditions, however, appear to give Hera different upbringings. Pausanias states that she was nursed as an infant by
4563-458: A temple was ever built there. The tenemos might include many subsidiary buildings, sacred groves or springs, animals dedicated to the deity, and sometimes people who had taken sanctuary from the law, which some temples offered, for example to runaway slaves. The earliest Greek sanctuaries probably lacked temple buildings, though our knowledge of these is limited, and the subject is controversial. A typical early sanctuary seems to have consisted of
4732-468: A tenemos, often around a sacred grove, cave, rock ( baetyl ) or spring, and perhaps defined only by marker stones at intervals, with an altar for offerings. Many rural sanctuaries probably stayed in this style, but the more popular were gradually able to afford a building to house a cult image, especially in cities. This process was certainly under way by the 9th century, and probably started earlier. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since
4901-436: A term for lesser attendants. As priestesses, they gained social recognition and access to more luxuries than other Greek women who worked or stayed in the home. They were mostly from local elite families; some roles required virgins, who typically only served for a year or so before marriage, while other roles went to married women. Women who voluntarily chose to become priestesses received an increase in social and legal status to
5070-742: A tree. Robert Graves interprets this as a representation of the new moon ( Hebe ), full moon (Hera), and old moon ( Hecate ), respectively personifying the Virgin (Spring), the Mother (Summer), and the destroying Crone (Autumn). The marriage of Zeus with Hera is the main theme in most Greek festivals celebrated in honour of the goddess. In the cults of Hera the dances and rites are performed by young married women. These choral dances reenacted early myth and ritual. Burkert notices that "the disappearing and retrieval of Hera in some cults has parallels with other fertility cults". The Greek aetiological myths ( aitia ) give
5239-535: A type of museum. Some sanctuaries offered oracles , people who were believed to receive divine inspiration in answering questions put by pilgrims. The most famous of these by far was the female priestess called the Pythia at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi , and that of Zeus at Dodona , but there were many others. Some dealt only with medical, agricultural or other specialized matters, and not all represented gods, like that of
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5408-563: A typical human. They interacted with humans, sometimes even spawning children—called demigods —with them. At times, certain gods would be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad , Aphrodite , Ares , and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera , Athena , and Poseidon support the Greeks (see theomachy ). Some gods were specifically associated with
5577-407: Is Juno . The name Hera (Hēra or Hērē) has several possible and mutually exclusive etymologies. One possibility is to connect it with Greek ὥρα hōra , season, and to interpret it as ripe for marriage and according to Plato ἐρατή eratē , "beloved" as Zeus is said to have married her for love. According to Plutarch , Hera was an allegorical name and an anagram of aēr (ἀήρ, "air"). So begins
5746-585: Is always translated "cow-eyed". In this respect, Hera bears some resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian deity Hathor , a maternal goddess associated with cattle. Hera absorbed the cult of her heifer-priestess Io and may be related to the Vedic earth-goddess Prithvi . Scholar of Greek mythology Walter Burkert writes in Greek Religion , "Nevertheless, there are memories of an earlier aniconic representation, as
5915-429: Is attached/coupled' or (b) 'the female who attaches herself'... both socially and physically or emotionally." Many theophoric names such as Heracles , Heraclitus , Herodotus , Herodicus , derive from Hera. Hera bore several epithets in the mythological tradition and in literature. In the historical times the majority of the Greeks recognized Hera as the consort of Zeus. Hera is the protector of marriage and of
6084-557: Is attested by the large building projects undertaken in her honor. The temples of Hera in the two main centers of her cult , the Heraion of Samos and the Heraion of Argos in the Argolis , were the very earliest monumental Greek temples constructed, in the 8th century BCE. At Argos the Dorian "Heraion" was built on the hill of Prosymna near Mycenean hero-tombs. At Samos the cult activity near
6253-613: Is consonant with Hera's common epithet βοῶπις ( boōpis , "cow-eyed"). R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. Her name is attested in Mycenaean Greek written in the Linear B syllabic script as 𐀁𐀨 e-ra , appearing on tablets found in Pylos and Thebes , as well as in the Cypriotic dialect in the dative e-ra-i . The PIE ... could be originally either (a) 'the female who
6422-451: Is mainly the "Argeiē" (Ἀργείη), a name given by Homer which describes her not as Greek, but as an Argive goddess. She is the protectress of the citadel. In literature Argos is called "dōma Hēras" (the house of Hera) and the Argives are called her people by Pindar . Homer in Iliad uses the formula "boōpis potnia Hērē)" (cow-eyed, mistress Hera), which probably relates her to a form of
6591-609: Is mentioned in the Sibylline Oracles , particularly in book three, wherein Cronus, 'Titan,' and Iapetus , the three sons of Uranus and Gaia, each receive a third of the Earth, and Cronus is made king overall. After the death of Uranus, Titan's sons attempt to destroy Cronus's and Rhea's male offspring as soon as they are born. However, at Dodona , Rhea secretly bears her sons Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades and sends them to Phrygia to be raised in
6760-449: Is occasionally identified with Hera. Gaia may be related to the Vedic earth-goddess Prithvi , who was also associated with the cow. An inscription in Linear B on a tablet found at Pylos mentions offerings "to Zeus-Hera-Drimios".(Drimios is the son of Zeus) . Hera was the tutelary goddess of Argos and it is possible that she had Mycenean origin. Martin P. Nilsson suggested that Hera
6929-598: Is related to "horned", assuming a Semitic derivation from qrn . Andrew Lang 's objection, that Cronus was never represented horned in Hellenic art, was addressed by Robert Brown, arguing that, in Semitic usage, as in the Hebrew Bible , qeren was a signifier of "power". When Greek writers encountered the Semitic deity El , they rendered his name as Cronus. When Hellenes encountered Phoenicians and, later, Hebrews, they identified
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7098-515: Is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the gods' favor. For example, in the Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. But in the Iliad , which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice. These sacrificial practices share much with recorded forms of sacrificial rituals known from later. Furthermore, throughout
7267-454: Is that Rhea and Cronus were given names of streams: Rhea from ῥοή (rhoē) "river, stream, flux" and Cronus from χρόνος (chronos) "time". Proclus (5th century), the Neoplatonist philosopher, makes in his Commentary on Plato's Cratylus an extensive analysis of Cronus; among others he says that the "One cause" of all things is "Chronos" (time) that is also equivalent to Cronus. In addition to
7436-551: Is the Olympia , Queen , Anassa , the Queen of heaven. The royal quality of her was preserved by the monuments of Greek art. Hera may have been the first deity to whom the Greeks dedicated an enclosed roofed temple sanctuary, at Samos about 800 BCE. It was replaced later by the Heraion of Samos , one of the largest of all Greek temples (altars were in front of the temples under the open sky). There were many temples built on this site, so
7605-451: Is the consort of the sky-god Horus . In the Vedic tradition the earth-goddess Prithvi is the consort of the sky-god Dyaus and she is associated with the cow. Prithvi may be identified with the Greek goddess Gaia . Pherecydes of Syros in his cosmogony describes the mating of two divine principles: The marriage of Zas with Chthonie . Geoffrey Kirk notices that after the marriage "Cthonie" becomes Ge who probably takes charge of
7774-483: Is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology , she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Olympus , sister and wife of Zeus , and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea . One of her defining characteristics in myth is her jealous and vengeful nature in dealing with any who offended her, especially Zeus's numerous adulterous lovers and illegitimate offspring. Her iconography usually presents her as
7943-421: Is threatening and violent to her. In the Iliad , Zeus implies their marriage was some sort of elopement, as they lay secretly from their parents. Pausanias records a tale of how they came to be married in which Zeus transformed into a cuckoo to woo Hera. She caught the bird and kept it as her pet; this is why the cuckoo is seated on her sceptre. According to a scholion on Theocritus ' Idylls , when Hera
8112-458: The Balkan Peninsula in the late third millennium BCE. Various religious festivals were held in ancient Greece. Many were specific only to a particular deity or city-state. For example, the festival of Lykaia was celebrated in Arcadia in Greece, which was dedicated to the pastoral god Pan . Like the other Panhellenic Games , the ancient Olympic Games were a religious festival, held at
8281-631: The Epic Cycle and supposedly ending up in Rome, was one of these. The sacred boulder or baetyl is another very primitive type, found around the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East . Many of the Greek statues well known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini , can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example,
8450-571: The Gerarai or the venerable ones. There were segregated religious festivals in Ancient Greece; the Thesmophoria , Plerosia, Kalamaia, Adonia , and Skira were festivals that were only for women. The Thesmophoria festival and many others represented agricultural fertility, which was considered to be closely connected to women. It gave women a religious identity and purpose in Greek religion, in which
8619-532: The Heraion of Samos , in the Greek mainland Hera was especially worshipped as "Argive Hera" ( Hera Argeia ) at her sanctuary that stood between the former Mycenaean city-states of Argos and Mycenae , where the festivals in her honor called Heraia were celebrated. "The three cities I love best," she declares in the Iliad , book iv, "are Argos, Sparta and Mycenae of the broad streets." There were also temples to Hera in Olympia , Corinth , Tiryns , Perachora and
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#17328443785408788-487: The Hesperides that Heracles was tasked by Eurystheus to take were a wedding gift by Gaia to the couple. After a quarrel with Zeus, Hera left him and retreated to Euboea, and no word from Zeus managed to sway her mind. Cithaeron, the local king, then advised Zeus to take a wooden statue of a woman, wrap it up, and pretend to marry it. Zeus did as told, claiming "she" was Plataea, Asopus 's daughter. Hera, once she heard
8957-890: The Homeric hymns (regarded as later productions today), Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days , and Pindar 's Odes were regarded as authoritative and perhaps inspired; they usually begin with an invocation to the Muses for inspiration. Plato even wanted to exclude the myths from his ideal state described in the Republic because of their low moral tone. While some traditions, such as Mystery cults, upheld certain texts as canonic within their praxis, such texts were respected but not necessarily accepted as canonic outside their circle. In this field, of particular importance are certain texts referring to Orphic cults : multiple copies, ranging from between 450 BCE and 250 CE, have been found in various parts of
9126-514: The Lernaean Hydra , she sent a crab to bite at his feet in the hopes of distracting him. Later Hera stirred up the Amazons against him when he was on one of his quests. When Heracles took the cattle of Geryon , he shot Hera in the right breast with a triple-barbed arrow: the wound was incurable and left her in constant pain, as Dione tells Aphrodite in the Iliad , Book V. Afterwards, Hera sent
9295-546: The Mycenaean civilization . Both the literary settings of some important myths and many important sanctuaries relate to locations that were important Helladic centers that had become otherwise unimportant by Greek times. The Mycenaeans perhaps treated Poseidon, to them a god of earthquakes as well as the sea, as their chief deity, and forms of his name along with several other Olympians are recognizable in records in Linear B , while Apollo and Aphrodite are absent. Only about half of
9464-626: The Renaissance , Cronus was conflated with the name of Chronos , the personification of " Father Time ", wielding the harvesting scythe. As a result of Cronus's importance to the Romans, his Roman variant, Saturn, has had a large influence on Western culture . The seventh day of the Judaeo-Christian week is called in Latin Dies Saturni ("Day of Saturn"), which in turn was adapted and became
9633-418: The hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially Homer 's epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat
9802-412: The sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them, at altars within the wider precinct of the sanctuary, which might be large. As the centuries passed both the inside of popular temples and the area surrounding them accumulated statues and small shrines or other buildings as gifts, and military trophies, paintings and items in precious metals, effectively turning them into
9971-505: The year in Athens included some 140 days that were religious festivals of some sort, though they varied greatly in importance. The main Greek temple building sat within a larger precinct or temenos , usually surrounded by a peribolos fence or wall; the whole is usually called a "sanctuary". The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous example, though this was apparently walled as a citadel before
10140-405: The "first fruits" were harvested. The libation , a ritual pouring of fluid, was part of everyday life, and libations with a prayer were often made at home whenever wine was drunk, with just a part of the cup's contents, the rest being drunk. More formal ones might be made onto altars at temples, and other fluids such as olive oil and honey might be used. Although the grand form of sacrifice called
10309-477: The "sickle with which heaven and earth had once been separated" to defeat the monster Ullikummi , establishing that the "castration" of the heavens by means of a sickle was part of a creation myth , in origin a cut creating an opening or gap between heaven (imagined as a dome of stone ) and earth enabling the beginning of time ( chronos ) and human history. A theory debated in the 19th century, and sometimes still offered somewhat apologetically, holds that Κρόνος
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#173284437854010478-456: The 5th century BCE, traced many Greek religious practices to Egypt . Robert G. Boling argues that Greek and Ugaritic / Canaanite mythology share many parallel relationships and that historical trends in Canaanite religion can help date works such as Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey . The Great Goddess hypothesis , that a Stone Age religion dominated by a female Great Goddess was displaced by
10647-511: The Aegean goddesses were associated with "their" bird, was the cuckoo , which appears in mythic fragments concerning the first wooing of a virginal Hera by Zeus. Her archaic association was primarily with cattle, as a Cow Goddess, who was especially venerated in "cattle-rich" Euboea . On Cyprus , very early archaeological sites contain bull skulls that have been adapted for use as masks (see Bull (mythology) ). Her familiar Homeric epithet Boôpis ,
10816-475: The Artemis worshipped at Sparta , the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus . Though worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities had temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with different places remained strong to the end. Ancient sources for Greek religion tell
10985-624: The Blessed , having been released from Tartarus by Zeus. This version of Cronus's fate is also found in Pindar . In a fragment of an Orphic cosmogony, Zeus intoxicates Cronus with honey, sending him to sleep, and then castrates him. In a Libyan account related by Diodorus Siculus (Book 3), Uranus and Titaea were the parents of Cronus and Rhea and the other Titans. Ammon, a king of Libya , married Rhea (3.18.1). However, Rhea abandoned Ammon and married her younger brother Cronus. With Rhea's incitement, Cronus and
11154-561: The Bronze Age before the splitting of the "Mistress of the animals" into separate goddesses. In Hellenistic imagery, Hera's chariot was pulled by peacocks, birds not known to Greeks before the conquests of Alexander . Alexander's tutor, Aristotle , refers to it as "the Persian bird." The peacock motif was revived in the Renaissance iconography that unified Hera and Juno. A bird that had been associated with Hera on an archaic level, when most of
11323-679: The Cyclopes who gifted him his thunderbolts. In a vast war called the Titanomachy , Zeus and his older brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus . However, Oceanus , Helios , Atlas , Prometheus , Epimetheus , and Astraeus were not imprisoned following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore
11492-602: The Egyptian mysteries of Osiris . Mainstream Greek religion appears to have developed out of Proto-Indo-European religion and although very little is known about the earliest periods there are suggestive hints that some local elements go back even further than the Bronze Age or Helladic period to the farmers of Neolithic Greece . There was also clearly cultural evolution from the Late Helladic Mycenaean religion of
11661-453: The Geometric style (900–750 BCE), but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter were established earlier. The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviors as showing this. Divination by examining parts of the sacrificed animal
11830-454: The Greek pantheon. This equation is particularly well attested in Tebtunis in the southern Fayyum : Geb and Cronus were here part of a local version of the cult of Sobek , the crocodile god. The equation was shown on the one hand in the local iconography of the gods, in which Geb was depicted as a man with attributes of Cronus and Cronus with attributes of Geb. On the other hand, the priests of
11999-533: The Greek world. Even the words of the oracles never became a sacred text. Other texts were specially composed for religious events, and some have survived within the lyric tradition; although they had a cult function, they were bound to performance and never developed into a common, standard prayer form comparable to the Christian Pater Noster . An exception to this rule were the already named Orphic and Mystery rituals, which, in this, set themselves aside from
12168-485: The Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs." Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses — Zeus , Hera , Poseidon , Demeter , Athena , Ares , Aphrodite , Apollo , Artemis , Hephaestus , Hermes , and either Hestia or Dionysus —although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume
12337-433: The Mediterranean goddess of nature is the bride of the Greek sky-god . In her fest Daedala Hera is related to the nymph Plataia (consort of Zeus ), an old forgotten form of the Greek earth-goddess. Plataia may be related to Gaia who is occasionally identified with Hera. According to Homeric Hymn II to Delian Apollo , Hera detained Eileithyia to prevent Leto from going into labor with Artemis and Apollo , since
12506-409: The Mediterranean goddess of nature. The epithet Qo-wi-ja ( boōpis) appears in a Linear B inscription. Walter Burkert notices that it is difficult to confirm that the epithet "bowpis" corresponds to a Greek belief. However it is possible that Hera was conceived as a cow in her archaic cults. Hera exists as a spouse of Zeus and their "sacred marriage" was celebrated in many Greek festivals in
12675-586: The Mycenaean pantheon seems to survive the Greek Dark Ages . The archaeological evidence for continuity in religion is far clearer for Crete and Cyprus than the Greek mainland. Greek religious concepts may also have absorbed the beliefs and practices of earlier, nearby cultures, such as Minoan religion , and other influences came from the Near East, especially via Cyprus and Phoenicia . Herodotus , writing in
12844-438: The Roman equivalent of Cronus, is still referred to as "Cronus" (Κρόνος) in modern Greek. "Cronus" was also a suggested name for the dwarf planet Pluto , but was rejected and not voted for because it was suggested by the unpopular and egocentric astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See . Ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals , and mythology , in
13013-502: The Semitic El , by interpretatio graeca , with Cronus. The association was recorded c. 100 AD by Philo of Byblos ' Phoenician history, as reported in Eusebius ' Præparatio Evangelica I.10.16. Philo's account, ascribed by Eusebius to the semi-legendary pre- Trojan War Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon , indicates that Cronus was originally a Canaanite ruler who founded Byblos and
13182-485: The Thesmophorion, where women could perform their rites and worship. Those who were not satisfied by the public cult of the gods could turn to various mystery religions that operated as cults into which members had to be initiated in order to learn their secrets. Here, they could find religious consolations that traditional religion could not provide: a chance at mystical awakening, a systematic religious doctrine,
13351-634: The Titans", and in another poem (476 BC), Pindar has Cronus released from Tartarus and now ruling in the Isles of the Blessed , a mythical land where the Greek heroes reside in the afterlife: Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus's road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to
13520-666: The Titans, who then gave birth to the first Olympians. The mythology largely survived and was expanded to form the later Roman mythology . The Greeks and Romans were literate societies, and much mythology, although initially shared orally, was written down in the forms of epic poetry (such as the Iliad , the Odyssey and the Argonautica ) and plays (such as Euripides ' The Bacchae and Aristophanes ' The Frogs ). The mythology became popular in Christian post- Renaissance Europe, where it
13689-498: The Trojan and Theban wars, were considered to have been physically immortalized and brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, heaven, the ocean, or beneath the ground. Such beliefs are found in the most ancient Greek sources, such as Homer and Hesiod . This belief remained strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there was, however, no hope of anything but continued existence as
13858-404: The Virgin. At the spring of Kanathos , close to Nauplia , Hera renewed her virginity annually, in rites that were not to be spoken of ( arrheton ). In her fire-festival Daedala at Plataia the puppet of the goddess was bathed in the river Asopos before the wedding ceremony. In the festival "Toneia" at Samos the image of the goddess was purified, bounted in willows and then probably hanged on
14027-565: The Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille). Early Italian religions such as the Etruscan religion were influenced by Greek religion and subsequently influenced much of the ancient Roman religion . "There was no centralization of authority over Greek religious practices and beliefs; change was regulated only at the civic level. Thus, the phenomenon we are studying is not in fact an organized "religion". Instead we might think of
14196-552: The age of puberty . Some priestly functions, like the care for a particular local festival, could be given by tradition to a certain family. To a large extent, in the absence of "scriptural" sacred texts, religious practices derived their authority from tradition, and "every omission or deviation arouses deep anxiety and calls forth sanctions". Greek ceremonies and rituals were mainly performed at altars , which were never inside temples, but often just outside, or standing by themselves somewhere. These were typically devoted to one or
14365-425: The ages and gorges. The Greek historian and biographer Plutarch (1st century AD) asserted that the Greeks believed that Cronus was an allegorical name for χρόνος (time). The philosopher Plato (3rd century BC) in his Cratylus gives two possible interpretations for the name of Cronus. The first is that his name denotes κόρος (kóros), "the pure" ( καθαρόν ) and "unblemished" (ἀκήρατον) nature of his mind. The second
14534-453: The altar begun in late Mycenean period and a big altar was built in the 9th century BC. According to Walter Burkert , both Hera and Demeter have many characteristic attributes of Pre-Greek Great Goddesses . In the same vein, British scholar Charles Francis Keary suggests that Hera had some sort of " Earth Goddess " worship in ancient times, connected to her possible origin as a Pelasgian goddess (as mentioned by Herodotus). In Greece
14703-504: The ancestor and eponym of the Aphroi, i.e. the native Africans . In some accounts, Cronus was also called the father of the Corybantes . Cronus is featured in one of the works of satirical writer Lucian of Samosata , Saturnalia , where he talks with one of his priests about his festival Saturnalia, with a central theme being the mistreatment of the poor by the rich during festival-time. In
14872-520: The ancient Kourotrophos figure is almost absent in Crete , and the nomination Mother Goddess was not the underlying principle in the Minoan religion. Hera was most known as the matron goddess, Hera Teleia , but she presided over weddings as well. In myth and cult, fragmentary references and archaic practices remain of the sacred marriage of Hera and Zeus. At Plataea , there was a sculpture of Hera seated as
15041-408: The beliefs and practices of Greeks in relation to the gods as a group of closely related "religious dialects" that resembled each other far more than they did those of non-Greeks." Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic , based on the assumption that there were many gods and goddesses, as well as a range of lesser supernatural beings of various types. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus ,
15210-441: The bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 m (7.7 ft) high, including a helmet). The image stood on a base, from the 5th century often carved with reliefs. It used to be thought that access to the cella of a Greek temple was limited to the priests, and it was entered only rarely by other visitors, except perhaps during important festivals or other special occasions. In recent decades this picture has changed, and scholars now stress
15379-506: The bull was associated with religious practices. In the legend of the Minotaur the Queen of Knossos is hidden inside an artificial hollow cow and she is mating with a bull-form god in a sacred ceremony. The hieros gamos indicates a ritual of fertility magic, which was probably introduced from Near East in the Aegean region. The "hieros gamos" of Zeus with the earth goddess (finally named Hera)
15548-452: The care of three Cretans. Upon learning this, sixty of Titan's men then imprison Cronus and Rhea, causing the sons of Cronus to declare and fight the first of all wars against them. This account mentions nothing about Cronus either killing his father or attempting to kill any of his children. In Hesiod's Theogony , and Homer's Iliad , Cronus and his Titan brothers are confined to Tartarus, apparently forever, but in other traditions Cronus and
15717-401: The concealed knife led the way. After various rituals, the animal was slaughtered over the altar. As it fell, all the women present "[cried] out in high, shrill tones". Its blood was collected and poured over the altar. It was butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat was removed to be prepared for
15886-408: The conquests of Zeus is rendered as Hera's "jealousy", the main theme of literary anecdotes that undercut her ancient cult . However, it remains a controversial claim that an ancient matriarchy or a cultural focus on a monotheistic Great Goddess existed among the ancient Greeks or elsewhere. The claim is generally rejected by modern scholars as insufficiently evidenced. Walter Burkert notices that
16055-499: The cult image, and sometimes to touch it; Cicero saw a bronze image of Heracles with its foot largely worn away by the touch of devotees. Famous cult images such as the Statue of Zeus at Olympia functioned as significant visitor attractions. In addition to the role that women performed in sacrifices, the only public roles that Greek women could perform were priestesses ; either hiereiai , meaning "sacred women", or amphipolis ,
16224-415: The deed was done, Cronus cast his sickle into the waves, and it was concealed under the island of Corfu , which had been noted since antiquity for its sickle-like shape, and gave it its ancient name, Drepane ("sickle"). While Hesiod seems to imply Cronus never set them free to begin with, Pseudo-Apollodorus says that after dispatching Uranus, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes and set
16393-542: The dialogue, Cronus rejects the Hesiodic tradition of him eating his children and then being overthrown, and instead claims that he peacefully abdicated the throne in favour of his youngest son Zeus, although he still resumes rulership for seven days each year (his festival) in order to remind humanity of the plenteous, toil-free and luxuriant life they enjoyed under his reign before the Olympians took over. During antiquity, Cronus
16562-471: The dragon Campe to guard them. He and his older sister Rhea took the throne of the world as king and queen. The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age , as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent. In some authors, a different divine pair, Ophion and Eurynome , a daughter of Oceanus, were said to have ruled Mount Olympus in
16731-527: The early age of the Titans. Rhea fought Eurynome and Cronus fought Ophion, and after defeating them they threw them into the waves of the ocean, thus becoming rulers in their place. After securing his place as the new king of gods, Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own children, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter , Hestia , Hera , Hades , and Poseidon by Rhea, he devoured them all as soon as they were born to prevent
16900-504: The evidence is somewhat confusing, and archaeological dates are uncertain. The temple created by the Rhoecus sculptors and architects was destroyed between 570 and 560 BCE. This was replaced by the Polycratean temple of 540–530 BCE. In one of these temples, we see a forest of 155 columns. There is also no evidence of tiles on this temple suggesting either the temple was never finished or that
17069-474: The father was Zeus . The other goddesses present at the birthing on Delos sent Iris to bring her. As she stepped upon the island, the divine birth began. In the myth of the birth of Heracles , it is Hera herself who sits at the door, delaying the birth of Heracles until her protégé, Eurystheus , had been born first. The Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo makes the monster Typhaon the offspring of archaic Hera in her ancient form, produced out of herself, like
17238-409: The form of both popular public religion and cult practices . The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic . The ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in the modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer known to us classifies either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of
17407-452: The formula "boōpis potnia Hērē)" (cow-eyed, mistress Hera), suggesting that they may have been syncretized. The worship of Hera was sparse in Thessaly , Attica , Phocis and Achaea . In Boeotia she is related to the fest Daedala . The main center of her cult was North-Eastern Peloponnese , especially Argolis . ( Argos , Tiryns , Corinth , Sicyon , Epidaurus and Hermione ). She
17576-421: The gods that on that day a child by Zeus himself, would be born and rule all those around him. Hera, after requesting Zeus to swear an oath to that effect, descended from Olympus to Argos and made the wife of Sthenelus (son of Perseus) give birth to Eurystheus after only seven months, while at the same time preventing Alcmene from delivering Heracles. This resulted in the fulfillment of Zeus's oath in that it
17745-551: The gods were certainly not all-good or even all-powerful . They had to obey fate , known to Greek mythology as the Moirai , which overrode any of their divine powers or wills. For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus ' fate to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War , and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for him, not stop him. The gods had human vices and many behaved with arguably less morality than
17914-507: The gods." There has been considerable scholarship, reaching back to Johann Jakob Bachofen in the mid-nineteenth century, about the possibility that Hera, whose early importance in Greek religion is firmly established, was originally the goddess of a matriarchal people, presumably inhabiting Greece before the Hellenes . In this view, her activity as goddess of marriage established the patriarchal bond of her own subordination: her resistance to
18083-409: The hero Trophonius at Livadeia . The temple was the house of the deity it was dedicated to, who in some sense resided in the cult image in the cella or main room inside, normally facing the only door. The cult image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, typically roughly life-size, but in some cases many times life-size. In early days these were in wood, marble or terracotta , or in
18252-415: The islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. The poet Pindar , in one of his poems (462 BC), wrote that although Atlas still "strains against the weight of the sky ... Zeus freed
18421-701: The king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not almighty. Some deities had dominion over certain aspects of nature . For instance, Zeus was the sky-god, sending thunder and lightning, Poseidon ruled over the sea and earthquakes , Hades projected his remarkable power throughout the realms of death and the Underworld , and Helios controlled the sun. Other deities ruled over abstract concepts; for instance Aphrodite controlled love. All significant deities were visualized as "human" in form, although often able to transform themselves into animals or natural phenomena. While being immortal,
18590-459: The local main temple identified themselves in Egyptian texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Geb", but in Greek texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Cronus". Accordingly, Egyptian names formed with the name of the god Geb were just as popular among local villagers as Greek names derived from Cronus, especially the name "Kronion". A star ( HD 240430 ) was named after him in 2017 when it was reported to have swallowed its planets. The planet Saturn , named after
18759-503: The monster Typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans. Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ. The most popular account is that found in the Iliad , Hesiod's Theogony , and Apollodorus, all of which state that he was imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus. In two papyrus versions of a passage from Hesiod's Works and Days , however, Kronos rules over the Isle of
18928-409: The name Cronus, portraying the deity as a great ruler over others within the aeons . During the Renaissance , the identification of Cronus and Chronos gave rise to " Father Time " wielding the harvesting scythe. H. J. Rose in 1928 observed that attempts to give the name Κρόνος a Greek etymology had failed. Recently, Janda (2010) offers a genuinely Indo-European etymology of "the cutter", from
19097-528: The name, the story of Cronus eating his children was also interpreted as an allegory to a specific aspect of time held within Cronus's sphere of influence. As the theory went, Cronus represented the destructive ravages of time which devoured all things, a concept that was illustrated when the Titan king ate the Olympian gods—the past consuming the future, the older generation suppressing the next generation. The Gnostic text Pistis Sophia (3rd–4th century) references
19266-426: The news, disrupted the wedding ceremony and tore away the dress from the figure only to discover it was but a lifeless statue, and not a rival in love. The queen and her king were reconciled, and to commemorate this the people there celebrated a festival called Daedala . During the festival, a re-enactment of the myth was celebrated, where a wooden statue of Hera was chosen, bathed in the river Asopus and then raised on
19435-451: The now freed Titans are not individually identified. In one version of Typhon's origins, after the defeat of the Giants , Gaia in anger slandered Zeus to Hera, and she went to Cronus. Cronus gave his daughter two eggs smeared with his own semen and told her to bury them underground, so that they would produce a creature capable of dethroning Zeus. Hera did so, and thus Typhon came to be. Cronus
19604-566: The one-eyed giant Cyclopes , the sea beast Scylla , whirlpool Charybdis , Gorgons, and the half-man, half-bull Minotaur . There was no set Greek cosmogony , or creation myth. Different religious groups believed that the world had been created in different ways. One Greek creation myth was told in Hesiod's Theogony . It stated that at first there was only a primordial deity called Chaos , after which came various other primordial gods, such as Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, who then gave birth to more gods,
19773-473: The other Titans made war upon Ammon, who fled to Crete (3.71.1–2). Cronus ruled harshly and Cronus in turn was defeated by Ammon's son Dionysus (3.71.3–3.73) who appointed Cronus's and Rhea's son, Zeus, as king of Egypt (3.73.4). Dionysus and Zeus then joined their forces to defeat the remaining Titans in Crete, and on the death of Dionysus, Zeus inherited all the kingdoms, becoming lord of the world (3.73.7–8). Cronus
19942-478: The other imprisoned Titans are eventually set free by the mercy of Zeus. Two papyrus versions of a passage of Hesiod's Works and Days mention Cronus being released by Zeus, and ruling over the heroes who go to the Isle of the Blessed; but other editions of Hesiod's text make no mention of this, and most editors agree that these lines of text are later interpolations in Hesiod's works. And they live untouched by sorrow in
20111-511: The participants to eat; the leading figures tasted it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin to sell to tanners. That humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity did not escape the Greeks, and was often the subject of humor in Greek comedy . The animals used were, in order of preference, bulls or oxen, cows, sheep (the most common sacrifice), goats, pigs (with piglets being the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish). Horses and asses are seen on some vases in
20280-469: The poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of gods as members of society, rather than external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played
20449-495: The prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus , was born, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children. Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete , and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son. According to one Roman author, when Rhea presented
20618-478: The protection of marriage. Hera is occasionally identified with "Ge". In a fragment of Euripides the Aether of Zeus is the sky-god who is the father of men and gods, and the earth-goddess Ge is the mother of all life. It seems that Io the priestess of Hera at Argos and consort of Zeus, was another form of Hera. In a Greek myth "Io" is transformed into a cow . This seems to be correlated to how Homer in Iliad uses
20787-588: The public, and after death, they received a public burial site. Greek priestesses had to be healthy and of a sound mind, the reasoning being that the ones serving the gods had to be as high-quality as their offerings. This was also true of male Greek priests. It is contested whether there were gendered divisions when it came to serving a particular god or goddess, who was devoted to what god, gods and/or goddesses could have both priests and priestesses to serve them. Gender specifics did come into play when it came to who would perform certain acts of sacrifice or worship. Per
20956-588: The quest for the Golden Fleece and Theseus and the Minotaur . Many species existed in Greek mythology. Chief among these were the gods and humans, though the Titans (who predated the Olympian gods) also frequently appeared in Greek myths. Lesser species included the half-man-half-horse centaurs , the nature-based nymphs (tree nymphs were dryads , sea nymphs were Nereids ) and the half-man, half-goat satyrs . Some creatures in Greek mythology were monstrous, such as
21125-402: The reputation which this sanctuary of Hera enjoyed, and the large influx of pilgrims. Compared to this mighty goddess, who also possessed the earliest temple at Olympia and two of the great fifth and sixth-century temples of Paestum , the termagant of Homer and the myths is an "almost... comic figure," according to Burkert . Though the greatest and earliest free-standing temple to Hera was
21294-446: The rest of the Greek religious system. Finally, some texts called ieri logi ( Greek : ιεροί λόγοι ) (sacred texts) by the ancient sources, originated from outside the Greek world, or were supposedly adopted in remote times, representing yet more different traditions within the Greek belief system. The lack of a unified priestly class meant that a unified, canonic form of the religious texts or practices never existed; just as there
21463-419: The righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys , whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Prometheus Lyomenos ( Prometheus Unbound ), an undated lost play by the playwright Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 455 BC), features a chorus composed of freed Titans as witnesses of Prometheus's freeing from the rock, perhaps including Cronus himself, although
21632-402: The rights of the married women. In some cults she has some functions of the earth goddess. She is occasionally related to warfare as tutelary goddess. In historical times, the majority of the Greeks recognized Hera as the consort of Zeus . Zeus was the protector of rights and mores, and his partner Hera became the protector of legal marriage and the rights of married women . Hera emerged from
21801-427: The ritual scapegoat, the hardship would go with it. Worship in Greece typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, was decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar; a girl with a basket on her head containing
21970-460: The role of women in worshipping goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone reinforced traditional lifestyles. The festivals relating to agricultural fertility were valued by the polis because this is what they traditionally worked for; women-centered festivals that involved private matters were less important. In Athens the festivals honoring Demeter were included in the calendar and promoted by Athens. They constructed temples and shrines like
22139-595: The root *(s)ker- "to cut" (Greek κείρω ( keirō ), cf. English shear ), motivated by Cronus's characteristic act of "cutting the sky" (or the genitals of anthropomorphic Uranus). The Indo-Iranian reflex of the root is kar- , but Janda argues that the original meaning "to cut" in a cosmogonic sense is still preserved in some verses of the Rigveda pertaining to Indra 's heroic "cutting", like that of Cronus resulting in creation: RV 10 .104.10 ārdayad vṛtram akṛṇod ulokaṃ he hit Vrtra fatally, cutting [> creating]
22308-421: The ruler of the universe. Uranus drew the enmity of Cronus's mother, Gaia , when he hid the gigantic youngest children of Gaia, the hundred-handed Hecatoncheires and one-eyed Cyclopes , in Tartarus , so that they would not see the light. Gaia created a great stone sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to persuade them to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him
22477-423: The sacred island of Delos . In Magna Graecia , two Doric temples to Hera were constructed at Paestum , about 550 BCE and about 450 BCE. One of them, long called the Temple of Poseidon was identified in the 1950s as a temple of Hera. The Daedala fire festival on Cithaeron near Plataea , included an account of Hera's quarrel with Zeus and their reconciliation. Hera's importance in the early archaic period
22646-564: The sacrifice because it reflected glory on Heracles. The bull was released and wandered to Marathon, becoming known as the Marathonian Bull . Some myths state that in the end, Heracles befriended Hera by saving her from Porphyrion , a giant who tried to rape her during the Gigantomachy , and that she even gave her daughter Hebe as his bride. Whatever myth-making served to account for an archaic representation of Heracles as "Hera's man", it
22815-472: The sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia . Other festivals centered on Greek theatre , of which the Dionysia in Athens was the most important. More typical festivals featured a procession, large sacrifices and a feast to eat the offerings, and many included entertainments and customs such as visiting friends, wearing fancy dress and unusual behavior in the streets, sometimes risky for bystanders in various ways. Altogether
22984-474: The section on Hera in Walter Burkert 's Greek Religion . In a note, he records other scholars' arguments "for the meaning Mistress as a feminine to Heros , Master", with uncertain origin. John Chadwick , a decipherer of Linear B , remarks "her name may be connected with hērōs , ἥρως, 'hero', but that is no help since it too is etymologically obscure." A. J. van Windekens, offers "young cow, heifer", which
23153-557: The sickle and placed him in ambush. When Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle, castrating him and casting his testicles into the sea. From the blood that spilled out from Uranus and fell upon the earth, the Gigantes , Erinyes , and Meliae were produced. The testicles produced a white foam from which the goddess Aphrodite emerged. For this, Uranus threatened vengeance and called his sons Titenes for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act. After
23322-433: The significance of the male or female role to a particular god or goddess, a priest would lead the priestess or the reverse. In some Greek cults priestesses served both gods and goddesses; Pythia , or female Oracle of Apollo at Delphi , and that at Didyma were priestesses, but both were overseen by male priests. The festival of Dionosyus was practiced by both and the god was served by women and female priestesses known as
23491-682: The smear across the sky that can be seen to this day. Her milk also created a white flower, the lily. Unlike any Greeks, the Etruscans instead pictured a full-grown bearded Heracles at Hera's breast, a reference to his adoption by her when he became an Immortal: he had previously wounded her severely in the breast. When Heracles reached adulthood, Hera drove him mad , which led him to murder his family and this later led to him undertaking his famous labours. Hera assigned Heracles to labour for King Eurystheus at Mycenae. She attempted to make almost all of Heracles's twelve labours more difficult. When he fought
23660-483: The son of Misor and inventor of writing. While the Greeks considered Cronus a cruel and tempestuous force of chaos and disorder, believing the Olympian gods had brought an era of peace and order by seizing power from the crude and malicious Titans, the Romans took a more positive and innocuous view of the deity, by conflating their indigenous deity Saturn with Cronus. Consequently, while the Greeks considered Cronus merely an intermediary stage between Uranus and Zeus, he
23829-541: The source of the English word Saturday . In astronomy , the planet Saturn is named after the Roman deity. It is the outermost of the Classical planets (the astronomical planets that are visible with the naked eye). In Greco-Roman Egypt, Cronus was equated with the Egyptian god Geb , because he held a quite similar position in Egyptian mythology as the father of the gods Osiris , Isis , Seth and Nephthys as Cronus did in
23998-724: The specially prestigious form of a chryselephantine statue using ivory plaques for the visible parts of the body and gold for the clothes, around a wooden framework. The most famous Greek cult images were of this type, including the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , and Phidias 's Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon in Athens, both colossal statues, now completely lost. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated. Bronze cult images were less frequent, at least until Hellenistic times. Early images seem often to have been dressed in real clothes, and at all periods images might wear real jewelry donated by devotees. The acrolith
24167-452: The swaddled rock to him, Cronus asked her to nurse the infant one last time before he swallowed him. Rhea pressed her breast against the rock, and the milk that was sprayed across the heavens created the Milky Way galaxy. Cronus then ate the rock. Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete . According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea , while
24336-487: The temple was open to the sky. Earlier sanctuaries, whose dedication to Hera is less certain, were of the Mycenaean type called "house sanctuaries". Samos excavations have revealed votive offerings, many of them late 8th and 7th centuries BCE, which show that Hera at Samos was not merely a local Greek goddess of the Aegean . The museum there contains figures of gods and suppliants and other votive offerings from Armenia , Babylon , Iran , Assyria , and Egypt , testimony to
24505-504: The three daughters of the river Asterion : Euboia , Prosymna , and Akraia . Furthermore, in the Iliad , Hera states she was given by her mother to Tethys to be raised: "I go now to the ends of the generous earth on a visit to the Ocean , whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother who brought me up kindly in their own house, and cared for me and took me from Rheia, at that time when Zeus of
24674-520: The time of the epic works of Homer all are well-established, except for Dionysus , but several of the Homeric Hymns , probably composed slightly later, are dedicated to him. Hera This is an accepted version of this page In ancient Greek religion , Hera ( / ˈ h ɛr ə , ˈ h ɪər ə / ; Ancient Greek : Ἥρα , romanized : Hḗrā ; Ἥρη , Hḗrē in Ionic and Homeric Greek )
24843-588: The variety of local access rules. Pausanias was a gentlemanly traveller of the 2nd-century CE who declares that the special intention of his travels around Greece was to see cult images, and usually managed to do so. It was typically necessary to make a sacrifice or gift, and some temples restricted access either to certain days of the year, or by class, race, gender (with either men or women forbidden), or even more tightly. Garlic-eaters were forbidden in one temple, in another women unless they were virgins; restrictions typically arose from local ideas of ritual purity or
25012-427: The wide brows drove Kronos underneath the earth and the barren water." Hera is the goddess of marriage and childbirth rather than motherhood, and much of her mythology revolves around her marriage with her brother Zeus. She is charmed by him and she seduces him; he cheats on her and has many children with other goddesses and mortal women; she is intensely jealous and vindictive towards his children and their mothers; he
25181-561: Was Eurystheus rather than Heracles. In Pausanias' recounting, Hera sent witches (as they were called by the Thebans) to hinder Alcmene's delivery of Heracles. The witches were successful in preventing the birth until Historis , daughter of Tiresias, thought of a trick to deceive the witches. Like Galanthis, Historis announced that Alcmene had delivered her child; having been deceived, the witches went away, allowing Alcmene to give birth. Hera's wrath against Zeus's son continued and while Heracles
25350-520: Was a larger aspect of Roman religion . The Saturnalia was a festival dedicated in his honour, and at least one temple to Saturn already existed in the archaic Roman Kingdom . His association with the "Saturnian" Golden Age eventually caused him to become the god of "time", i.e., calendars, seasons, and harvests—not now confused with Chronos , the unrelated embodiment of time in general. Nevertheless, among Hellenistic scholars in Alexandria and during
25519-459: Was another composite form, this time a cost-saving one with a wooden body. A xoanon was a primitive and symbolic wooden image, perhaps comparable to the Hindu lingam ; many of these were retained and revered for their antiquity, even when a new statue was the main cult image. Xoana had the advantage that they were easy to carry in processions at festivals. The Trojan Palladium , famous from the myths of
25688-441: Was born first and then assisted with the birth of Apollo. Some versions say Artemis helped her mother give birth to Apollo for nine days. Another variation states that Artemis was born one day before Apollo, on the island of Ortygia and that she helped Leto cross the sea to Delos the next day to give birth to Apollo. Later, Tityos attempted to rape Leto at the behest of Hera. He was slain by Artemis and Apollo. This account of
25857-484: Was celebrated at Knossos in Crete . In Near East the solar-deity and the moon-goddess are often represented as a bull and a cow and Roscher proposed that Hera was a moon-goddess. The combination feminine divinity-cow-moon is not unusual in Crete and Near East . The relationship of Hera with the cow still existed in the historical times and this probably relates her to Near-Eastern forms of cow-goddesses like Hathor (or Bat ). The Egyptian sky-goddess Hathor
26026-414: Was forced to regurgitate his children through Gaia's cunning and Zeus's might. Cronus disgorged first the stone that he had swallowed instead of Zeus, followed by Zeus's siblings. The stone was then placed by Zeus at Pytho on Mount Parnassus . In other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children. After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires and
26195-450: Was heading toward Mount Thornax alone, Zeus created a terrible storm and transformed himself into a cuckoo who flew down and sat on her lap. Hera covered him with her cloak. Zeus then transformed back and took hold of her; because she was refusing to sleep with him due to their mother , he promised to marry her. In one account Hera refused to marry Zeus and hid in a cave to avoid him; an earthborn man named Achilles convinced her to give him
26364-475: Was much less important than in Roman or Etruscan religion , or Near Eastern religions , but was practiced , especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo . Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behavior of birds . For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of incense could be thrown on the sacred fire, and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as
26533-423: Was neither mainland nor a real island where Leto was able to give birth to her children. Afterwards, Zeus secured Delos to the bottom of the ocean. The island later became sacred to Apollo. Alternatively, Hera kidnapped Eileithyia , the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor. The other gods bribed Hera with a beautiful necklace nobody could resist and she finally gave in. Either way, Artemis
26702-412: Was no unified, common sacred text for the Greek belief system, there was no standardization of practices. Instead, religious practices were organized on local levels, with priests normally being magistrates for the city or village, or gaining authority from one of the many sanctuaries. Pausanias notes that the priest of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea was a boy, who held office only until reaching
26871-471: Was occasionally interpreted as Chronos , the personification of time. The Roman philosopher Cicero (1st century BC) elaborated on this by saying that the Greek name Cronus is synonymous to chrónos (time) since he maintains the course and cycles of seasons and the periods of time, whereas the Latin name Saturn denotes that he is saturated with years since he was devouring his sons, which implies that time devours
27040-457: Was often used as a basis for the works of artists like Botticelli , Michelangelo and Rubens . One of the most important moral concepts to the Greeks was aversion to hubris . Hubris constituted many things, from rape to desecration of a corpse, and was a crime in Athens. Although pride and vanity were not considered sins themselves, the Greeks emphasized moderation. Pride only became hubris when it went to extremes, like any other vice. The same
27209-427: Was originally a goddess of fertility in her fest "Toneia" at Samos and at Knossos in Crete . At Samos the image of Hera was hidden bounted in willows and the participants tried to discover it. At Knossos Zeus is mating with the earth goddess (finally named Hera) in a very ancient ritual. In her festival Daedala at Plataia there is an account of Hera's quarrel with Zeus and their reconciliation. In Crete
27378-452: Was overthrown by his son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus . According to Plato , however, the deities Phorcys , Cronus, and Rhea were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys . Cronus was usually depicted with a harpe , scythe , or sickle , which was the instrument he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens , on the twelfth day of the Attic month of Hekatombaion ,
27547-556: Was raised by his grandmother, Gaia. One Cretan myth relates how Cronus once went to Crete himself, and Zeus, in order to hide from his father, transformed himself into a snake, and changed his nymph nurses, Helice and Cynosura into bears, who later became the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor respectively. In another myth, Cronus transformed the Curetes into lions, but Rhea made them her sacred animals and yoked them in her chariot. According to Hesiod, once Zeus had grown up, Cronus
27716-574: Was said to be the father of the wise centaur Chiron by the Oceanid Philyra , who was subsequently transformed into a linden tree. The god consorted with the nymph, but his wife Rhea walked on them unexpectedly; in order to escape being caught in bed with another, Cronus changed into the shape of a stallion and galloped away, hence the half-human, half-equine shape of their offspring; this was said to have taken place on Mount Pelion . Two other sons of Cronus and Philyra may have been Dolops and Aphrus,
27885-419: Was still an infant, Hera sent two serpents to kill him as he lay in his cot. Heracles throttled the snakes with his bare hands and was found by his nurse playing with their limp bodies as if they were a child's toys. One account of the origin of the Milky Way is that Zeus had tricked Hera into nursing the infant Heracles: discovering who he was, she pulled him from her breast and a spurt of her milk formed
28054-402: Was subsequently deified. This version gives his alternate name as Elus or Ilus , and states that in the 32nd year of his reign, he emasculated, slew and deified his father Epigeius or Autochthon "whom they afterwards called Uranus". It further states that after ships were invented, Cronus, visiting the 'inhabitable world', bequeathed Attica to his own daughter Athena , and Egypt to Taautus
28223-478: Was thought suitable for the builders of the Heraion at Paestum to depict the exploits of Heracles in bas-relief . When Hera discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she convinced the nature spirits to prevent Leto from giving birth on terra-firma , the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun. Poseidon gave pity to Leto and guided her to the floating island of Delos , which
28392-455: Was thought of eating and drinking. Anything done to excess was not considered proper. Ancient Greeks placed, for example, importance on athletics and intellect equally. In fact many of their competitions included both. Pride was not evil until it became all-consuming or hurtful to others. The Greeks had no religious texts they regarded as "revealed" scriptures of sacred origin, but very old texts including Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey , and
28561-486: Was worshipped at the Arcadian cities Mantineia , Megalopolis , Stymphalus and at Sparta . The oldest temple at Olympia belonged to Hera. In the islands she was worshipped at Samos , Paros , Delos , Amorgos , Thera , Kos , Rhodes and Crete . The island Euboea was considered her holy place. A month was named after Hera at Delphi ( Heraios ), Olous , Laconia , Tinos ( Heraiōn ), Pergamos ( Heraos ). Hera
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