MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's Theogony Robert Mondi T HE DISTINCTION between the synchronic and diachronic analysis of a work of literature is nowhere more relevant than in the ex­ plication of Hesiod's Theogony. To regard the poem that Hesiod created purely as a synchronic composition -giving no consideration to the separate traditional origins of its various parts and therefore expecting unity and consistency among them-is to invite a difficult choice between unpalatable alternatives when dealing with the text that has come down to us: the commentator must either explain away, often at the expense of great effort and ingenuity, the glaring discrep­ ancies and obscurities in that text in his attempt to preserve its integ­ rity, or delete enough of it so that what remains is synchronically consistent, the work of the 'original Hesiod'. The only other recourse would be to suppose that Hesiod's sense of clarity and narrative logic was either very weak or disturbingly different from our own. The necessity of making this choice inevitably resulted in a schism between analytic and unitarian schools of Hesiodic criticism, a gulf which has not been narrowed so much as its counterpart in Homeric scholarship by our increased appreciation for the workings of an oral poetic tradition. For the difficulties in the text of the Theogony, in both content and expression, are far greater than those in the epics, and the battle over the authenticity of various passages is still being joined.1 But if we begin by assuming that the Theogony we have is sub­ stantially the one that Hesiod composed and attempt to analyze its contents diachronically, we can stake out a middle ground in such debate and grant a certain validity to each side: by considering the in- 1 The degree to which the integrity of the text is still subject to debate can be seen in a recent discussion by F. Solmsen, "The Earliest Stages in the History of Hesiod's Text," HSCP 86 (I982) 1-31: he defends the deletion of the Typhonomachy (820- 80), the account of Zeus' swallowing of Metis and the subsequent birth of Athena (886-900), the reference to the freeing of Prometheus by Heracles (526-34), and the essay on marriage with which the Prometheia concludes (602-12); he further expresses grave reservations about the authenticity of most of the catalogue of Leto's progeny and the description of Tartaros. 325 MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 326 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS dependent traditional origins of the poem's several constituent parts, we can retain the unitarians' single monumental author, yet concede at the same time that in its composition the poem is nevertheless essentially the 'Sttickwerk' that the analysts supposed. That is, the key to understanding the Theogony is to view Hesiod himself as both composer and redactor.2 I shall explore here this approach to the poem and then illustrate its value by applying it to the problem of the relationship between Zeus' overthrow of Kronos and the conflict between the Titan and Olympian gods. I To understand how and why the Theogony was put together as it was, we must first dispel the specter of the 'theogonic tradition' which inevitably arises in any discussion of Hesiod's poem. There is in fact no compelling reason to suppose that some pre-Hesiodic The­ ogony stands behind our poem - not, at least, in the sense of a single Panhellenic scheme uniting the wide range of material that Hesiod has organized and amalgamated.3 On the contrary, the poem poses too many logical dilemmas and the transitions between its separate parts are too clumsy for us to believe that the Theogony as it stands is the end result of a long tradition of so systematizing all cosmogony and theogony into a single encyclopedic narrative. We would expect the product of such a tradition to be a narrative that is free from the internal discrepancies and the thematic doubling that characterize the non-traditional reworking and confiating of traditional materia1.4 In 2 For a statement of the principles underlying this 'neoanalytic' approach and a bibli­ ography of its application to the Homeric epics, see A. Heubeck, Die homerische Frage (Darmstadt 1974) 40-48; Heubeck and G. S. Kirk in Homer: Tradition and Innovation, ed. B. C. Fenik (Leiden 1978); and W. Kullmann, GRBS 25 (1984) 307-23. 3 For various expressions of Hesiod's innovativeness in creating this theogonic sys­ tem, see F. Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus (Ithaca 1949) Ilf; P. Mazon, Hesiode (Paris 1928) 29; U. von Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hellenen I (Berlin 1931) 341-43; G. S. Kirk, "The Structure and Aim of the Theogony," in Hesiode et son influence (Entretiens Hardt 7 [1962]) 70. On Panhellenism as a force in the creation of the monumental epic see G. Nagy, The Best o/the Achaeans (Baltimore 1979) 7-9, and "Hesiod," in Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome I (New York 1982) 43f. 4 The repeated use of the same or similar themes is of course a characteristic feature of oral poetry as well as most other forms of popular literature, and does not in general constitute proof of non-traditional conflation. But it is necessary to distinguish between the episodic multiplication of a theme (e.g., the combat scenes in the Iliad or the sea adventures in the Odyssey) and the juxtaposing of clearly alternative themes. It is this latter type of thematic duplication which I would construe as a sign of the conflation of traditionally independent material. J. T. Kakridis, Homer Revisited (Lund 1971) 43, simi- MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 ROBERT MONDI 327 the Theogony we encounter this simplicity and logical consistency on the level of the individual episodes (with one or two exceptions) but not in the overall composite narrative. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the tradition behind Hesiod's poem consisted rather of a body of simpler songs, some celebrating the births and charac­ teristics of individual gods (such as those in the corpus of Homeric hymns, or Hesiod's 'hymns' to Hecate, Aphrodite, and Styx) and others narrating specific divine or cosmogonic events, such as the Prometheia, the Titanomachy, and the Typhonomachy.5 Hesiod's place in the poetic tradition represented for us by the hymns in the Homeric corpus is beyond doubt. It has been demon­ strated repeatedly that the paean to the Muses with which the The­ ogony begins (I -115) is composed of the formal elements charac­ teristic of these hymns.6 Moreover, Hesiodic poetry and the hymns share a particular item of poetic vocabulary which likewise suggests a common traditional background: the use of VJ.Lvo~/VJ.LVf.tV by the composer to refer to his own poetic activity (or to that of his Muses, larly distinguishes between mutually exclusive "parallel themes" and "progressive inten­ sification." G. S. Kirk (Presocratic Philosophers [Cambridge 19571 25) also sees parts of the Theogony as a Hesiodic conflation of older material because of the poem's "occa­ sional irrationality and reduplication of stages." On the "formalizing and simplifying effect" which a long oral tradition would subsequently exert on such a narrative, see Kirk (supra n.3) 90, and W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979) 17. Cf also V. Propp's discussion of the "single axis" in the narrative structure of the Russian fairy tale: Morphology o/the Folktale 2 (Austin 1968) 21-23. 5 At Xenophanes 21B1.21-22 D.-K. a list of typical songs (although unsuited, ac­ cording to the poet, to a festive banquet) includes a Titanomachy, a Gigantomachy, and a Centauromachy. On the idea that the Theogony is based on a tradition of 'Gotter­ sage', just as the Homeric epics are the final product of a tradition of 'Heroensage', see H. Usener, "Eine Hesiodische Dichtung," RhM N.S. 56 (1901) 174-86, esp. 183. K. Ziegler, Roscher Lex. 5.155lf s. v. "Theogonien," likewise spoke of "iilteren Gotter­ epik, die die Vorstufe der eigentlichen theogonischen Epik darstellt"; for him, how­ ever, Hesiod's poem is merely the final product of a long tradition which gradually ("etappenweise") combined these shorter songs in a continually growing complex. The Phaeacian bard Demodokos regales the guests at Alkinoos' board with a burlesque of just such a 'Gotterepik' (ad. 8.266-366). On the incorporation of abbreviated hymns in the Theogony see P. Walcot, "Hesiod's Hymns to the Muses, Aphrodite, Styx, and Hecate," SymbOslo 34 (I958) 5-14. 6 P. Friedliinder, "Das Proomium von Hesiods Theogonie," Hermes 49 (1914) 1-16 (reprinted E. Heitsch, Hesiod [Darmstadt 19661 277-94); H. Meyer, Hymnische Stil­ elemente in der /riihgriechischen Dichtung (WUrzburg 1933) 36-38; R. BOhme, Das Pro­ oimion: Eine Form sakraler Dichtung der Griechen (BUhl Baden 1937) 8-10, 44-51; W. Minton, "The Proem-Hymn of Hesiod's Theogony," TAPA 101 (I970) 357-77; and R. Janko, "The Structure of the Homeric Hymns: A Study in Genre," Hermes 109 (1981) 20-22. On the Theogony itself as an expanded hymn see C. Robert, "Zu Hesiods Theo­ gonie," Melanges Nicole (Geneva 1905) 468-70 (Heitsch 158-60); H. Koller, "Das kitharodische Prooimion," Philologus 100 (1956) 179-82, 198-200; Nagy, "Hesiod" (supra n.3) 53-55. MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 328 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS which amounts to the same thing). The exact connotation of these terms in the archaic period and the degree to which they differ, if at all, from the unmarked aot8..q/ aei8euJ is open to debate, but their contextual distribution is suggestive: with the single exception of an obscure instance in the Odyssey (8.429), v!-"vof)/v!-"ve'iv is restricted to Hesiod and the hymns~ and in fourteen of the sixteen instances of v!-"ve'iv with an expressed direct object, that object is a divine entity­ either a specific god or all the gods collectively.7 It does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the comparatively late dates at which the particular hymns in our corpus may have been composed are not representative of the antiquity of the genre itself, and that both this corpus and Hesiod's Theogony are products of the same tradition of sacral narrative and attributive poetry.8 Such songs might well represent the oldest Greek poetic form~ they at least appear to be an Indo-European legacy. The earliest Indic poetry consists of a similar body of short songs (customarily called hymns, although the modern connotations of this term are not sug­ gestive of the wide range of tone and subject matter in these texts) including prayers, narratives of divine birth and conflict, aetiology, and speculation on questions ranging from cosmogony to eschatology. The similarities in formal structure and the cognate diction occa­ sionally found in these Greek and Indic poems suggest that they are reflexes of common Indo-European prototypes.9 The Indic material was eventually compiled in the collection we know as the Rig Veda, a compendium of more than one thousand separate poems arranged in ten books according to putative family of authorship, subject, or date of composition. But the Theogony represents a quite different type of composite based on such poems, one that was alien to the early Indic 7 The exceptional occurrences of VILVEtV in connection with human topics are Hymn. Hom.Ap. 190, where the object of the verb is (JEWV BWp' aIL/3pora Tj8' av(JpOmwv TA.'T/J-tOaVvac; (c/ also 158-61), and Theog. 5Of, where the verb governs the phrase av(JpclJ7Twv TE l'ivoc; KpaTEpwv TE rtl'avTwv. In both passages the focus is on human­ kind in reference to its place in the cosmological scheme. 8 H. N. Porter's diachronic analysis of the hexameter had in fact led him to the observation, which he advanced with some reluctance, that the hymns to Apollo and Aphrodite seemed to represent a form of the hexameter more archaic than that of the Homeric epics: "The Early Greek Hexameter," yeS 12 (951) 33-35. See also C. A. Sowa, Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns (Chicago 1984) llf. On Hesiod and the hymnic tradition see W. Minton, "Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Ho­ mer," TAPA 93 (1962) 188-202; F. Pfister, "Die Hekate-Episode in Hesiods The­ ogonie," Philologus 84 (1929) 1-9; Friedlander (supra n.6) 5; Mazon (supra n.3) 29. 9 On Indo-European 'Gotterdichtung' see R. Schmitt, Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit (Wiesbaden 1967) 142-94; F. Schroder, "Eine indogerma­ nische Liedform," Germanisch-Romanische MonatsschriJt 35 (1954) 183-85 (reprinted R. Schmitt, lndogermanische Dichtersprache [Darmstadt 1968] 183-86). MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 ROBERT MONDI 329 literary tradition, and, I would argue, an innovation in the Greek: Hesiod has arranged this disparate material into a single cosmogonic and theogonic narrative-a divine universal history extending from the origin of the cosmos to the enthroning of the current celestial regime and the establishment of the contemporary social order. Herein lies not only Hesiod's originality, but also, as more than one commentator has observed, the source of many of the infelicities in his text: "Ie poete se trouve en presence de traditions contradic­ toires qu'il s'efforce de concilier: d'ou des gaucheries et des obscuri­ tes dans son recit." 10 But to say that Hesiod is combining traditions is to say that he is combining traditional songs, for this is the medium in which the aot8ck learned, retained, and transmitted traditional ma­ terial. By 'song' I am not referring to an actuality, the fixed and specific text that the singer composes on any given occasion, but rather to that intangible and undefinable complex of events, themes, and phrases which exists in the singer's mind for each 'piece' in his repertoire, what Nagler has termed the "pre-verbal Gestalt." 11 The degree to which such a 'song' was memorized, prepared before­ hand, or recomposed during performance obviously must have varied greatly from singer to singer, song to song. To avoid confusion, I shall refer to anyone specific composition (oral or written) of such a traditional song as a realization of it. It seems likely that over the years a singer in this tradition would gradually develop a relatively stable version of his own for many of his songs, a version that might vary little in repeated performances. It is true that this does not appear to be the case in the Serbo-Croatian songs collected by Parry and Lord; but there are two reasons why that particular oral tradition does not provide a useful model for the one I imagine Hesiod to have been working in. The first distinction that needs to be drawn was recognized by Lord himself: the "clear­ ness of outline" of a song depends not only on how often it is per­ formed, but also on its length; a short song "will naturally tend to become more stable the more it is sung." 12 The second distinction, which did not play a significant role in the original formulation of the oral theory, is that of function, and its relationship to the fluidity or 10 Mazon (supra n.3) 20; see also H. Schwabl, RE Supp!. 12 (1971) 454f S.v. "Hesio­ dos"; and H. Buse, Quaestiones Hesiodeae et Orphicae (Halle 1937) 26, 58f. 11 Spontaneity and Tradition (Berkeley 1974) 13-26. B. A. van Groningen, La com­ position litteraire archaique grecque (Amsterdam 1958) 30r, describes the bard's reper­ toire as "un arsenal de poemes, de marceaux, de passages tout faits." Cj also E. A. Havelock, "The Alphabetization of Homer," in Communication Arts in the Ancient World, edd. E. A. Havelock and J. P. Hershbell (New York 1978) 11-14. 12 A. B. Lord, The Singer 0/ Tales (Cambridge [Mass.] 1960) 100. MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 330 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS fixity of a song. The Finnish Kalevala is a narrative compendium based, somewhat as I am supposing the Theogony to have been, on one man's amalgamation of a traditional corpus of orally transmitted songs.l3 Discussing this underlying tradition, P. Kiparsky has con­ cluded that "each individual singer works out his own arrangement of a song, which perhaps at first is relatively fluid, but then crystallizes into a stable form, which changes only gradually over the years as new elements are incorporated here and there and others are dropped"; he attributes this relative stability to the fact that these songs have "strong elements of myth and ritual," rather than being primarily intended for entertainment.14 Since a body of short songs dealing with myth and/or ritual is precisely what I am supposing to constitute at least part of Hesiod's repertoire prior to his composition of the Theogony, I take this to be a much better contemporary model of the tradition behind the Theogony than the larger and predomi­ nantly secular epic narratives of the south-Slavic tradition.15 If the episodes of the Theogony were in fact pre-existing and self­ contained songs to some degree already 'crystalized' in Hesiod's repertoire, then the origin and nature of the poem's 'gaucheries' are understandable. Hesiod, it would seem, did not sufficiently alter (to our literary way of thinking) the content of the songs as he knew and sang them separately to integrate them smoothly into the new and more complex structure of the Theogony, a structure for which they were not traditionally intended. As a result, each episode of the The­ ogony generally has an integrity and logic of its own, but lacks these qualities when taken together with other parts of the poem.16 13 Cf F. P. Magoun, The Kalevala or Poems of the Kaleva District (Cambridge [Mass.] 1963) xiii: "It is essentially a conflation and concatenation of a considerable number and variety of traditional songs, narrative, lyric, and magic, sung by unlettered singers ... " The crucial difference of course between the Kalevala and the Theogony is that its compositor Elias Lonnrot was not, like Hesiod, himself a singer trained in that oral tradition and combining songs from his own repertoire, but a literate and academic collector. 14 "Oral Poetry: Some Linguistic and Typological Considerations," Oral Literature and the Formula, edd. B. A. Stolz and R. S. Shannon (Ann Arbor 1976) 95-104. As C. Watkins points out in his response to Kiparsky's paper 007[), the great virtue of this approach is that it allows the Vedic hymns to be brought into the realm of discourse on oral poetry. On fluidity versus fixity in an oral tradition see also D. G. Miller, Improvi­ sation. Typology. Culture. and The New Orthodoxy' (Washington 1982) 1-15, and on the larger question of the individual singer's 'prepared version' of a song see R. Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge 1977) 73-87. 15 I do not necessarily mean to imply that Hesiod did not or could not also sing heroic epic; whether or not such songs also constituted part of his poetic repertoire is not relevant here. 16 In fact, one strong indication that Hesiod is combining pre-existing individual songs rather than simply composing the narrative of the Theogony out of whole cloth is MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 ROBERT MONDI 331 It might seem reasonable at this point to ask why Hesiod was not more conscientious in harmonizing this material into a fluid and consistent narrative, as was for instance the author of the Apollo­ doran Bibliotheca seven centuries later. Stated in this way, the ques­ tion suggests its own answer. Hesiod occupies a unique chronological position at the threshold of Greek literacy and lettered composition. His design in creating a unified and systematic theogony may have been original and forward-looking, and he may even have composed with the aid of writing~ but his poetic technique is that of the oral tradition in which he was trained. In particular, the episodes of the poem are joined together by the naive compositional device of simple juxtaposition, a characteristic of which is that the composer's atten­ tion is focused solely on the episode or digression with which he is currently involved, with apparently little concern for the harsh and uneven transitions produced by the juxtaposition of these episodes. As Auerbach said of the author of the Odyssey, "what he narrates is for the time being the only present, and fills both the stage and the reader's mind completely. "17 Hesiod did adapt his traditional material to suit its new context in one significant way. Like all songs in an oral tradition, the episodes that he wove into the fabric of the Theogony were individually ca­ pable of being expanded or condensed to any length that fit his needs.1S The brief narrative of the birth of Aphrodite (188-206), for example, could have been spun out to a much greater length; and among the sons of lapetos, the stories of Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoitios-merely alluded to in our text-perhaps could have been the ones elaborated rather than (or in addition to) that of Prome­ theus, if this had suited Hesiod's thematic plan better.19 In the Works the occasional retention in his text of a line or passage from the traditional version of a song which is completely at odds with the new thematic purpose to which he is putting it in his Theogony. There are compelling examples of this in Hesiod's use (one could almost say abuse) of the Prometheia: see, e.g., F. Wehrli, "Hesiods Prometheus," in Navicula Chiloniensis (Leiden 1956) 30-36 (Heitsch [supra n.6]) 411-18); Solmsen (supra n.3) 48f. 17 Mimesis, tr. W. Trask (Princeton 1953) 4-5. Cf van Groningen (supra n.ll) 33; J. A. Notopoulos, "Parataxis in Homer: A New Approach to Homeric Literary Criticism," TAPA 80 (949) 14-16; and C. R. 8eye's similar comments on the composition of the Works and Days, "The Rhythm of Hesiod's Works and Days," HSCP 76 (1972) 23-36. 18 Cf Lord (supra n.12) 102-23. 19 See F. C. Phillips, "Narrative Compression and the Myths of Prometheus in He­ siod," CJ 68 (1973) 289-305, esp. 297f. A comparison of the two Hesiodic versions of the Prometheia provides a good illustration of the extent to which different sections of a song could be condensed or expanded, depending on the immediate purpose to which the song is being put. This process of condensation and juxtaposition is very like that MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 332 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS and Days, a poem even more obviously composed by the compres­ sion and juxtaposition of a wide variety of disparate traditional ma­ terial, Hesiod explicitly describes this process (106-08): , ~, '8'\ ." " \ ' , ,I..,!. €I. u E EI\.Et~, E'TEpOV 'TOI. eyw I\.oyov EKKOPVoV i}B' aTLTaA,A,OV, BEgap,EvoL 'PEia~, OTE TE Kpovov EVpV01Ta Z€V~ yaiTJ~ VEp(J€ Ka(J€/'(J€ Kat (XTPVYETOLO (JaA,a(J(JTJ~. 341 We can get an idea of how the fall of Kronos might have been tradi­ tionally described from Iliad 8.10-16, where Zeus threatens similar treatment of any god who defies his authority by interfering in the Trojan conflict: OV B' £xv €ywv a1TaV€v(J€ (J€(;w €(JEA,OVTa VOyWW '\(J , ,,, T ' "" ... " €I\. OVT TJ PW€(J(JW apTJY€p,€V TJ LJ.aVaOL(JL, \ \ , \' '\' 0 "\ ' 0;:, 1TI\.TJYH~ ov KaTa KO(Jp,OV €I\.EV(JETaL VI\.Vp,1TOVU€" ..;; P,W fA,WV PLt/lW €~ TapTapov i}EpoEvTa, Tl1A,E p,O:A,', ,ryXL {3a(JL(JTov V1TO X(Jovo~ €(JTL {3EPE(JpOV, ." (J 0;:, , , '\ \'\ '0;:, , EV a (JLuTJpHaL TE 1TVI\.aL KaL xal\.KEO~ OVuo~, TO(J(JOV EV€p(J' 'At-B€w o(Jov ovpavo~ E(JT' a1To yaiTJ~. Zeus' single-handed deposition of his father is mentioned with more detail among the preserved fragments of the Orphic theogonies: he tricks him into an intoxicated sleep induced by honey (frr.148-49, 154 K.), ties him up (58, 154), castrates him (137, 154), and sends him to Tartaros (58). Only then does he turn to confront the Titans 1TEpt Tl1~ apx7j~.40 One other passage in the Theogony can help us in reconstructing the traditional content of this song. Lines 71-74 of the proem present a brief outline of Zeus' career and manifestation-a further summary, I would argue, of the narrative, summarized in lines 453-500 (if an invocation and farewell were added to 71-74, the result would be very similar to one of the shorter Homeric hymns): o B' ovpav~ Ep,{3a(JLA,€VEL, , \" {3 \, 0;:,' '(J \ ' , aVTO~ €XWV pOVTTJV TJU at al\.OEVTa KEpavvov, KapTH vLKy,(Ja~ 1TaTEpa Kpovov' EV BE EKa(JTa '(J' 0;:, '/:' \, 'A. 0;:, , a avaTOt~ uL€Ta<:>€ VOP,OV~ KaL €1T€'ppau€ TLp,a~. Again, the phrase KapTH vLKy,(Ja~ implies some physical encounter between Kronos and Zeus in addition to the deception, an encounter 40 In the Callimachean hymn Zeus likewise comes to power through Epya XHPWV (65). The binding of Kronos in Tartaros is mentioned in Aesch. Eum. 641 and Eur. HF 1317f, 1342. In identical fashion, in Pind. Pyth. 2.39-41 Zeus dispatches Ixion by first defeating him with a combination of BOAo" and TraAa, .. un and then binding him in Tartaros. For a thematic discussion of these two manifestations of J.LlITtS'-the ambush and pinioning of an unsuspecting adversary and the serving of a baneful food or drink, see J.-P. Vernant, "L'union avec Metis et la royaute du ciel," Melanges H. Ch. Puech (Paris 1974) 101-16 (revised in M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses de !'intel­ ligence [Paris 1974] 104-25). MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 342 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS which resulted ultimately in the transfer of power from Kronos to Zeus. But this very brief summary also contains one detail not men­ tioned in the longer version at 453-500, a reference to what must have been the final event in the traditional hymn: Zeus' assumption of power and distribution of 'Tt.,f.W,L to the other gods. These events would take the place of element 5 in the standard hymnic form: Zeus' delegation of 'Tt.,f.W,L is in fact an acknowledgement of his own 'Tt.,!-'.f, as the new (Jew" {3a(ItAevc;. As we shall see, Hesiod had good reasons for omitting these events also from the longer realization of the hymn at 453-500. Just as there was no mention of Kronos in the four Hesiodic refer­ ences to the Titanomachy listed above, so too there is no mention of the Titans in any of these passages relating the passage of power from Kronos to Zeus, nor any mention of Zeus being aided by his siblings in some general theomachy.41 The implication is that this hypothetical hymn to Zeus preserved in Theogony 453-500 and 71-74 reflects a mythological tradition in which Zeus' rise to power came solely as a result of his deception and single-handed deposition of his father. Our gradually increasing knowledge of early Near Eastern myth and its relationship to the Greek permits us to speak with some confidence about the historical evolution of this particular tradition. Even without the benefit of such knowledge, Wilamowitz had argued persuasively that the only original significance of the god Kronos lay in his mythological relationship to Zeus: Kronos answered a need for the chief god of the Hellenic pantheon to have a father, just as the characterless Rhea furnished him with a mother.42 That Kronos sub­ sequently achieved more mythological prominence than Rhea ever did is due to something that Wilamowitz could not suspect, but is now generally accepted - that the three-stage mythological succession Ouranos-Kronos-Zeus owes its essential outline to the assimilation 41 The language of Gaia's prophecy points also in this direction (463-65): 1TEV8ETO "lap rai1J~ 'TE Kat Ovpallov a(],'TEpDEII'TO~ OVIlEKa oi 1TE1TPW'TO ici> lnrO 1TaLSt OOJLTlIIaL, Kat Kpa'TEpCp 1TEp EDII'TL, aw~ JLEyaAov Sw f30vAcl~. The fact that the epithets Kronides and Kronion are applied to Zeus alone in early epic has been taken to indicate that Zeus' siblings are a later development than the pater­ nity of Kronos. See F. G. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre I (Gottingen 1857) 141f; Wilamowitz (supra n.37) 48f; West (supra n.23) 36. 42 Wilamowitz (supra n.37) 47. M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion J3 (Munich 1967) 511, characterized Kronos as "mythologisch, nicht kultisch." See also West (supra n.23) 30, Holscher (supra n.29) 406, and Preller/Robert 1.52. The op­ posing position, that Kronos was a pre-Hellenic divinity of primary importance who was replaced by the Zeus of the invading Indo-Europeans, had been argued by M. Pohlenz, "Kronos und die Titanen," NJbb 37 (1916) 556-63, 59Of. MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 ROBERT MaNDl 343 of an element of Hurro-Hittite theogony into the Greek mythological tradition long before Hesiod's time.43 Kronos' most important and distinctive mythological actions, the castration of his father and the swallowing of his children, are due to his early identification with the oriental Kumarbi, whose oral emasculation of his father and conse­ quent gastric pregnancy seem to have provided the inspiration for the grisly and un-Hellenic actions attributed to Kronos. In sum, the Titanomachy and the hymn to Zeus, as they appear in the Theogony, present diachronically independent mythological narra­ tives, and as late as Hesiod's time there was not yet any established tradition for combining them. Perhaps the coexistence of such alter­ native myths has a regional explanation; in any case, in creating his Panhellenic theogony Hesiod himself has simply placed these two songs in sequential juxtaposition, according to the compositional prin­ ciples outlined in part I.44 Consequently, it is pointless to try to un­ derstand or reconcile them synchronically. Hesiod does not mention Kronos in the Titanomachy because traditionally Kronos did not play any outstanding role there, just as the Titans did not figure in the alternative tradition, based on the Hellenized Hittite myth, of Zeus' birth and single-handed expulsion of his father. That Hesiod's com­ bination of the two songs is a non-traditional one is indicated not only by the fact that the contents of the two songs are simply juxta­ posed in the Theogony rather than conflated (as we might expect to have happened during transmission over a longer period of time), but also because when such a conflation does inevitably occur in post­ Hesiodic sources, both possibilities inherent in Hesiod's ambiguous narrative are realized: in some cases Zeus first disposes of Kronos separately and then goes on to fight the Titans, in others the out­ witted Kronos joins with the Titans in battling Zeus and his newly­ liberated siblings.45 We may now answer the question raised at the outset about the sudden disappearance of Kronos from the main narrative thread of the Theogony. Any self-contained realization of the hymn to Zeus surely would have concluded with an explicit statement of the trans- 43 See West (supra n.23) 2Of, 28-30; Burkert (supra n.4) 18-22; Holscher (supra n.29) 391-93,404-10; P. Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff 1966) 1-26. 44 c. J. Rowe, "'Archaic Thought' in Hesiod," JHS 103 (1983) 124-35, discusses other instances of this uncritical juxtaposition of "mUltiple approaches" to a subject as a characteristic of Hesiodic thought: "far from looking for 'the best explanation' or 'the most adequate theory', he can leave apparently rival accounts jostling side by side, without registering the slightest embarrassment" (133). 45 For the former cJ Orph.jrag. 58 K.; for the latter, Aesch. PV 201-03, Apol. Bib!. 1.2.1. MONDI, ROBERT, The Ascension of Zeus and the Composition of Hesiod's "Theogony , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 25:4 (1984) p.325 344 THE ASCENSION OF ZEUS fer of celestial authority after Kronos released his children and was overcome by Zeus. But Hesiod is here faced with the same dilemma as earlier when he inserted the abbreviated narrative about the chil­ dren of Styx. Any explicit depiction of the transfer of power at this point in the Theogony would render a subsequent narrative of an alternative tale of Zeus' rise to power-the Titanomachy-nonsensi­ cal. So Hesiod made at least a rudimentary attempt to preserve a degree of narrative flow in his composite Theogony by suppressing the end of the first of these two juxtaposed narratives. The outcome of the deception of Kronos-the enthroning of Zeus and the distribution of n/-Wi-is simply passed over in silence, and Zeus does not ex­ plicitly assume the reins of power and redistribute the divine preroga­ tives until lines 881-85 - that is, not until after the second of these two narratives describing how he attained them. RANDOLPH-MACON WOMAN'S COLLEGE December, 1984