Gender and the divine
Hesiod’s main concern is the ruler of the cosmos and through the poem three generations of men accede to the title: Ouranos (grandfather), Kronos (father) and Zeus. Yasumura suggests that ‘ succession transpires from generational strife ’ (2003: 136). Ouranos and Kronos are succeeded by their respective sons, but Zeus is able to overcome his destiny having learnt from the mistakes of his predecessors. In this way, Hesiod displays Zeus’ pre-eminence. Ouranos is the son of Gaia (one of the protogenoi , first beings, created by Chasm, the first being in the universe). Once he begins to procreate with Gaia, their offspring causes friction between the couple: namely, Ouranos, seeing how ‘δεινοτατοι’ (most fearsome) they were, acts to imprison them within their mother, fearing their strength. He is proven right to have been afraid, as his youngest son Kronos, spurred on by Gaia, orchestrates his defeat via castration. The same fear is then shared by Kronos who, on assuming control of the world and taking his sister Rhea as a wife, ingests all of his offspring in an attempt to nullify the potential threat. Ouranos’ fear is replicated in Kronos’ response to offspring : 3 knowing not only his destiny but also firsthand the ambition of a son and the scheming of a mother, he learns the lesson Ouranos could not, choosing to conceal the children within himself. The prophecy, however, becomes Kronos’ undoing , as with the child’s name going unmentioned, he resolves to remove all threats and so misses the actual one, Zeus. From there, despite learning and acting against the lesson of maternal deception, he falls prey to Rhea’s own deception (she swaddles a stone in clothes for the blind Kronos to swallow), with Zeus then beginning a war (the Titanomachy) which ends with him casting Kronos into Tartarus. Zeus, as we know, resists destiny. As the new ruler of the cosmos, Zeus begets his first child with the Titan Metis, only to receive the prophecy from Gaia and Ouranos that he, soon to be a father, now faces dynastic threat from a son and so he swallows Metis. Already similarities emerge in the actions of the three – Zeus and his father employ the same method to avoid Ouranos’ error. In fact, Hesiod uses a doublet to describe Kronos’ and Zeus’ swallowing of threat ‘ ἑ ην ἐ σκαθετο νηδυν’ ( ‘ put it/her in his belly ’ – lines 487 & 890). Yasumura believes that the repetition accentuates the difference: ‘ Cronus spares the mother (leaving her to aid her son) while Zeus eliminates the threat of the mother for good and at the same time appropriates her intelligence ’ (2003: 145) . Moreover, Zeus’ newfound wisdom 4 allows him a cunning that results in him subverting what is fated. Gaia has acted as the kingmaker in the background of the Theogony : orchestrating Ouranos’ and assisting in Kronos’ downfall. She continues this testing process with Zeus. Following the end of the Titanomachy, Gaia births Typhoeus – the Theogony ’s ongoing tradition has been for the youngest son to supplant his father and so immediately Typhoeus, Gaia ’s youngest, becomes a threat to Zeus reign , 5 only for Zeus to overcome the dangerous situation with both his own strength and intellect. He proves to Gaia that he has the attributes of a ruler through his elimination of the threat Metis possesses: Zeus recognizes the threat of a mother, having learnt from Ouranos to take possession of the child and from Kronos to remove the mother entirely. Zeus, clever and tricksy, swallows Metis and earns the title of μητισεις. What secures Gaia’s approval is that Zeus goes further: Yasumura claims that Zeus ‘ takes over
3 Kronos (lines 463-7) and (later) Zeus (lines 891-3) will both receive prophecies from Gaia explaining how their offspring will bring about their ruin. 4 It can hardly be coincidental that the epithet which describes Zeus later on (line 457) is ‘μητισεις’ (Metis in Greek is μητις): all of her name is found inside the epithet, as she and her wisdom are now inside Zeus. 5 At Theogony 836-8, Hesiod explicitly states Typhoeus’ capacity to replace Zeus as the next ruler.
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