Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/112

90 90 HISTORY OF THE ness. Light bursting from the bosom of darkness is a beautiful image, which recurs in the cosmogonies of other ancient nations. " The Earth then first produced the starry heaven, of equal extent with herself, that it might cover her all round, so as to be for ever a firm resting-place for the gods ; and also the far-ranging mountains, the lovely abodes of the nymphs." As the hills are elevations of the Earth, so the Heaven is con- ceived as a firmament spread over the Earth •, which, according to the general notion above stated, would have proceeded, and, as it were, grown out of it. At the same time, on account of the various fertilizing and animating influences which the Earth receives from the Heaven, the Greeks were led to conceive Earth and Heaven as a married pair*, whose descendants form in the Theogony a second great generation of deities. But another offspring of the Earth is first mentioned. " The Earth also bore the roaring swelling sea, the Pontus, without the joys of mar riage.'' By expressly remarking of Pontus that the Earth produced him alone without love, although the other beings just enumerated spaing from the Earth singly, the poet meant to indicate his rough and unkindly nature. It is the wild, waste salt sea, separated at its very origin from the streams and springs of fresh water, which supply nourishment to vegetation and to animal life. These are all made to descend from Ocean, who is called the eldest of the Titans. These, together with the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, were produced by the union of Earth and Heaven ; and it is sufficient here to remark of them that the Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions of order and regularity are united into a whole. The Cyclopes de- note the transient disturbances of this order by storms, and the Heca- toncheires, or the hundred-handed giants, signify the fearful power of tlie greater revolutions of nature. The subsequent arrangement of the poem depends on its mixed genealogical and narrative character. As soon as a new generation of gods is produced, the events are related through which it overcame the earlier race and obtained the supremacy. Thus, after the Titans and their brethren, the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, are enumerated, it is related how Cronus deprives his father of the power, by producing new beings, of supplanting those already in existence ; whereupon follow the races of the other primitive beings, Night and Pontus. Then suc- ceed the descendants of the Titans. In speaking of Cronus, the poet relates how Zeus was preserved from being devoured by his father, and of Iapetus, how his son Prometheus incensed Zeus by coming for- ward as the patron of the human race, though not for their benefit. Then follows a detailed account of the battle which Zeus and his kindred, assisted by the Hecatoncheires, waged against the Titans ; with religion of outward nature among the Greeks. See ahove ch. ii. § 4. (p. 14).
 * The same notion had prevailed, though in a less distinct form, in the early