User:Paul August/Uranus (mythology)

Uranus (mythology)

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Lede

There is no trace of any cult of Uranus.

Sources

Ancient

Acusilas

fr. 4 Fowler

Alcaeus

fr. 441 Campbell

441 Schol. Ap. Rhod. iv 992 (p. 302 Wendel)

441 Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes (‘the Phaeacians are sprung from the blood of Uranus’)

Acusilaus says in Book 3 that when Uranus was castrated, drops happened to flow underground and the Phaeacians were born from these; . . . Alcaeus too says that the Phaeacians have their origin in the drops that fell from Uranus.

Alcman

fr. 61 Campbell [= Eustathius on Iliad 18.476]

61 Eust. Il. 1154.25

61 Eustathius on Iliad 18. 476 (ἄκμων, ‘anvil’)

The father of Heaven (Uranus), as was said already, is called Acmon because heavenly motion is untiring (ἀκάματος) and the sons of Uranus are Acmonidae: the ancients make these two points clear. Alcman, they say, tells that the heaven belongs to Acmon.¹

¹ Or ‘that Uranus is son of Acmon’. Bergk emended the text to read ‘that Uranus is Acmon’, which squares with Eust. 1150.59, ‘the father of Cronus is Acmon’. See R.E. s.v. Akmon 1.

Apollodorus

1.1.1

Sky was the first who ruled over the whole world. And having wedded Earth, he begat first the Hundred-handed, as they are named: Briareus, Gyes, Cottus, who were unsurpassed in size and might, each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads.

1.1.2

After these, Earth bore him the Cyclopes, to wit, Arges, Steropes, Brontes, of whom each had one eye on his forehead. But them Sky bound and cast into Tartarus, a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky.

1.1.3

And again he begat children by Earth, to wit, the Titans as they are named: Ocean, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, and, youngest of all, Cronus; also daughters, the Titanides as they are called: Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, Thia.¹

¹ Compare Hes. Th. 132ff. who agrees in describing Cronus as the youngest of the brood. As Zeus, who succeeded his father Cronus on the heavenly throne, was likewise the youngest of his family （Hes. Th. 453ff.）, we may conjecture that among the ancient Greeks or their ancestors inheritance was at one time regulated by the custom of ultimogeniture or the succession of the youngest, as to which see Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i.429ff. In the secluded highlands of Arcadia, where ancient customs and traditions lingered long, King Lycaon is said to have been succeeded by his youngest son. See Apollod. 3.8.1.

Apollonius of Rhodes

Argonautica

4.981–992

There is a fertile, expansive island¹²³ at the entrance of the Ionian strait in the Ceraunian sea, under which is said to lie the sickle—forgive me, Muses, not willingly do I repeat my predecessors’ words—with which Cronus ruthlessly cut off his father’s genitals. Others, however, say it is the reaping scythe of indigenous Demeter. For Demeter once lived in that land and taught the Titans how to harvest the bountiful grain, out of devotion to Macris. Since then the divine nurse of the Phaeacians has been called by the name Drepane, and thus the Phaeacians themselves are descended from Uranus’ blood.¹²⁷

123 Corcyra, modern Corfu, often identified with the land of the Phaeacians, which Homer calls Scheria. Its curved shape accounts for the alternate name Drepane (“sickle”) and its association with Cronus’ castration of Uranus (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 176–182).

127 Which dripped onto the island when he was castrated (schol.).

• Nappa, pp. 643 ff.

Callimachus

Aetia 2, fr. 43.68–72

But when the builders made strong the wooden towers with battlements, and placed them 70around the sickle of Cronusa—for there in a cave is hidden under the earth the sickle with which he cut off his father’s genitals—they quarrelled (?) about the city.

• Nappa, p. 644

But when the founders pit up the towers strengthend with

battlements, around the sickle of Cronus (for in a cave under the earth there is hidden the sickle with which he removed his father's genitals), the [?fought] about the city...

Wheras Apollonius apologizes for the story that Depane is the site of Cronus' sickle, Callimachus definitely locates it in Sicilian Zancle.²⁰

fr. 498

. . . round which he placed (?) the revolving son of Acmon.^a

^a Ouranos was the son of Acmon; Acmon was the aether, or, according to another version of the myth, Oceanus.

Cicero

De Natura Deorum

3.44

the parents of Caelus, the Aether and the Day,

3.56

One Mercury has the Sky for father and the Day for mother;

Hesiod

Theogony

126–132

And Earth first bore starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods. And she brought forth long hills, graceful haunts [130] of the goddess Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She bore also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love.

207–210

But these sons whom he begot himself great Heaven used to call Titans （Strainers） in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously [210] a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards.

463–481

But when she was about to bear Zeus, the father of gods and men, [470] then she besought her own dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Cronos for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down. And they readily heard and obeyed their dear daughter, [475] and told her all that was destined to happen touching Cronos the king and his stout-hearted son. So they sent her to Lyctus, to the rich land of Crete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Him did vast Earth receive from Rhea [480] in wide Crete to nourish and to bring up.

886–900

Now Zeus, king of the gods, made Metis his wife first, and she was wisest among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to bring forth the goddess bright-eyed Athena, Zeus craftily deceived her [890] with cunning words and put her in his own belly, as Earth and starry Heaven advised. For they advised him so, to the end that no other should hold royal sway over the eternal gods in place of Zeus; for very wise children were destined to be born of her, [895] first the maiden bright-eyed Tritogeneia, equal to her father in strength and in wise understanding; but afterwards she was to bear a son of overbearing spirit king of gods and men. But Zeus put her into his own belly first, [900] that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil.

Hyginus

Fabulae

Theogony 2

[2] From Ether and Day came Earth, Sky and Sea.

Lycophron

Alexandra

869

rounding the Cronos’ Sickle’s leap^g

g Drepanum in Sicily.

Pausanias

7.23.4

At some distance from Argyra is a river named Bolinaeus, and by it once stood a city Bolina. Apollo, says a legend, fell in love with a maiden called Bolina, who fleeing to the sea here threw herself into it, and by the favour of Apollo became an immortal. Next to it a cape juts out into the sea, and of it is told a story how Cronus threw into the sea here the sickle with which he mutilated his father Uranus. For this reason they call the cape Drepanum.¹

1 Drepanum means “sickle.”

Sappho

fr. 198 Campbell [= 198 LP] [= 132 Bergk]

198 Schol. Ap. Rhod. 3. 26 (p. 216 Wendel)

198 Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes

Sappho makes Eros child of Earth and Heaven.

Schol. Theoer. 13. 1–2c (p. 258 Wendel)

Scholiast on Theocritus

Alcaeus (327) said Eros was the child of Iris and Zephyr; Sappho made him the child of Aphrodite and Heaven.

Paus. 9. 27. 3 (iii 58 Spiro)

Pausanias, Description of Greece

The Lesbian Sappho made many inconsistent references to Eros in her poems.

• Gantz, p. 3

Sappho makes him the child of Ouranos and Gaia according to one source, and Ouranos and Aphrodite according to another (198 LP),

Modern

Brill's New Pauly

s.v. Acmon

In an early Greek theogony son of Gaia, father of Uranus (Hes. fr. 398; Alcman fr. 61). The…

Evelyn-White

Epic Cycle, Titanomachy fr. 2 p. 480

Anecdota Oxon. (Cramer) i. 75.

p. 481

According to the writer of the War of the Titans Heaven was the son of Aether

Fowler 2013

p. 8

Epimenides [fr. 6ab] next said that Night and Aer produced Tartaros; from him (by an unnamed mother—it would have to be Night—or by no mother at all). came (uniquely) only two Titans, and from them the world-egg. Who are the Titans? Ouranos and Ge are never so called, only their children, and on the analogy of all the other un-Hesiodic theogonies, the ordinary Titans such as Kronos and Rhea ought to come after all this preliminary, non-canonical business (though nothing prevents us from thinking that Epimenides wrote ordinary Titans into his account at that stage too; it would be difficult to write them out. Diodorus 5.66 = Epimen. fr. 4 has them in the usual place, for what it is worth.) ... Okeanos and Tethys are another possibility (cf. Plato Tim 40e),²⁰ The evidence for these gods as fountainheads of a rival theogony begins with Homer Il. 14.201 ...

Gantz

p. 3 (father of Eros)

Sappho makes him the child of Ouranos and Gaia according to one source, and Ouranos and Aphrodite according to another (198 LP),

p. 10

Gaia and Ouranos

... Gaia who brings into being (1) Ouranos (Sky) to enclose her and be a home for the gods (does this mean she forsees the comong of the Olympians?), (2) the Ourea (Mountains), and (3) Pontos (Sea), all expressely without sexual congress (Th 126-32.

p. 11

Homer, as we have seen, relates none of this; indeed, in Iliad 14, Okeanos and Tethys seem elevated to the status accorded Ouranos and Gaia in Hesiod (Il. 14.200-210, 245-46), while Aphrodite ... The first of these points is especially difficult to assess: Hera tells Zeus as part of her Trugrede that she is on her way to the ends of the earth to visit "Okeanos the genesis of gods and mother Tethys, they who raised me well in their home, receiving me from Rheia when Zeus cast Kronos down beneath the earth and the barren sea." Mother Tethys here need be no more than a stepmother to Hera herself, and the phrase "genesis of gods" might be simply a formulaic epithet indicating the numberless rivers and springs descended from Okeanos; so for example, at Iliad 21.195-97 he is that from which all rivers and springs and the whole sea derive. But in Hera's subsequent interview with Hypnos, the latter describes the great river as the "genesis for all," leaving us to wonder whether Homer could have supposed Okeanos and Tethys the parents of the Titans (Kronos' father is never specified), for how else can they fit this description? ...

From a later time we have Plato’s Timaios, where the genealogy offered looks very much like an attempt to bridge a presumed Homer/Hesiod divergence in Iliad 14: Ouranos and Gaia here beget Okeanos and Tethys who in turn beget Kronios, Rheia, and the others, plus Phorkys (Tim 40d-e). Just possibly, of course, it is instead an early tradition, and the basis for Homer’s [cont.]

p. 12

description of Okeanos.

The second ... The epic Titanomachia, with its presumed beginning from Gaia and Ouranos (the later sprung from Aither), ....

p. 41

The sixth ... When the sixth [offspring of Rheia, Zeus] is about to arrive, Rheia appeals to Gaia and Ouranos—who seem now on more amiable terms with each other—for a plan to save him. Following their counsel, she goes to Lyktos on Krete to deliver Zerus, and hands him over to Gaia to rear, while she herself gives Kronos a stone to swallow (Th 463-91).

p. 742

In the Protogonos Theogony (as presented in the Derveni papyrus), ... we find that Ouranos is the son of Nyx,

To all this West adds ... At his [Protogonos's] emegence [from the egg] Chaos and Aither are split (fr. 72). His offspring include Nyx (fr. 98), who is the mother by him of Ouranos and Gaia (fr. 109).

Grimal

s.v. Uranus

The personification of the sky as a fertile element. He plays a prominent role in Hesiod's Theogony in which he is the son of Gaia. Other poems make him the son of AETHER but this tradition (which goes back to the Titanomachia) does not name a mother. She was doubtless Hemera, the female personification of Day. In the Orphic Theogony Uranus and Gaia are two of the children of Night.

The best known legends of Uranus sre those in ... This act of mutilation was said is usually said to have taken place at Cape Drepana, which is supposed to have taken its name from Cronus' sickle; sometimes it is located off Corcyra, the land of the Phaecians. The island is said to be non other than the sickle itself, which was throne into the sea by Cronus and took root there, and the Phaecians were born of the god's blood. Alternatively the scene is set in Sicily, which was fertilized by the god's blood, which is why the island is so fertile.

Hard

p. 21

Hesiod's Theogony ... came to be accepted by the Greeks as the standard mythical account of the earliest history of the world;

p. 24

As the first and greatest of her self-generated children, she [Gaia] brings forth 'starry OURANOS (Sky), equal to herself, to cover her over on every side';

p. 31

p. 32

Ouranos was sometimes called Akmonides, i.e. son of Akmon, probably in accordance with a very early usage. The Byzantine scholar Eustathius (who claims that Alcman, a poet of the late seventh century BC, already referred to Ouranos as a son of Akmon) records an ancient etymological speculation on the matter, saying that the father of Ouranos was called Akmon because the movement of the heavens is 'unwearying' (akamatos).^{64 [Eustath. on Il. 18.476 (= Alcman 61).]} It has been suggested in more recent times that the name may be connected with Old Persian and Sanskrit acman, in which case it would mean stone, in reference to the solid vault of heaven. Whatever the true meaning of the word, it may well have originated as a cultic title or epithet of Ouranos; in like manner Hyperion is sometimes a title of the sun-god Helios, and sometimes the father of Helios. But the matter is a mystery.

p. 36

Hesiod assigns individual names to all the Titans, listing six male Titans and six females (know as the Titanides). In view of Kronos' special role in the succession myth and his status as the second lord of the universe, he would surely have been identified as a Titan in the prior tradition. Confirmation of this can be found in Homer, since Kronos is mentioned on three occasions in the Iliad as one of the banished gods in Tartaros (who are named as Titans on one occasion).⁷⁸ [p. 606: 78 Hom. Il. 8.478-81, 14.203-4 and 274, 15.224-5; banished gods named as Titans, 14.279.]

p. 37

from whom all the gods had sprung (an idea that was apparently derived from a Babylonian myth in which Apsu and Tiamat, representing the sweet and salt waters respectively, were portrayed as the first couple). Even if they could not be regarded as the first gods of all in the succession myth, Hesiod accords them only a slightly lower status by including them among the Titans, as would be fitting for venerable deities whose union could account for the origin of all the lesser streams of the world. Okeanos seems ill-fitted, on the other hand, to share in the collective actions of and fate of the Titans, since his streams are a permanent feature of the world and one might suppose that he would be obligated to remain in them at the edges of the earth. The story of the latter part of the Theogony in which he tells his daughter Styx to assist Zeus against the Ttitans⁸² (see p. 49) is consistent with the thought that he did not join with the other Titans in fighting against Zeus; and in Apollodorus' theogony, in which the Titans are presented as attacking Ouranis as a collective body, it is explicitly stated that Okeanus took no part in the enterprise.⁸³

Kern

Orphic fr. 109 Kern [= Hermias, Commentary on Plato's Phaedrus 247d p. 154, 23 Couvreur] [= 149 Bernebé]

Lane Fox

p. 270

Callimachus ... In the second book of his famous erudite poem On Origins ...^{25 [Callim., Aet. F43, 57-75, with Pfeifer and his extensive notes.]} ... evoked the first Greek founders of Zancle and their actions on the site: ... "strengthened with battlements, around the sickle of Cronos for, there, the sickle with which he sheared off his fathers parts has been hidden in a hallow under the ground."

p. 270

In antiquity , modern Trapani was ancient Drepanon, a place with another sickle-shaped harbor which earned it its name. Not until the 270s BC do we happen to have evidence of anything more, but it is preserved for us by the erudite Greek poet Lycophron.^{40 [Lycoph., Alex. 869 ...]} He refers at Eryx to the "leap of Cronos' sickle": he must be referring to the [cont.]

p. 271 "leap" of the sickle as it was thrown from the cliff of Eryx into the sea which lies off Drepanon's sickle-shaped promontory exactly below the cliff.

p. 273

Near Argyra on the coast of Achea, the cape near Bolina was known to the traveller Pausanias (c. AD 150) as the site from which the "Cronos' sickle" was thrown into the sea.^{33 [Paus. 7.23.4, ...].}

p. 274

By 500 BC, we know that one Greek writer on myths was claiming that the Phaeacians, so "close to the gods," had been born from the very blood which spurted from Heaven's castration.^{37 [Acusil., FGrH 2 F4; Alcaeus F441 (Campbell) would if correct, take the idea back to 600 BC.]}

p. 274

According to the historian Timaeus (active c. 320-265 BC( Corcyra's sickle was nothing less than the "sickle of Cronos" itself.^{36 Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon.' 4.984 ff.; ...].}

Meisner

p. 37

The first comparison ... In the Derveni poem, the earliest deity is Night, who gives birth to Ouranos. Because Night gives birth to Ouranos in both the Rhapsodies and the Derveni poem, West ...

p. 70

It is at this central ... In "the verse following" (14.5) [of the Derveni Papuyrus] and "the next verse" (15.5) after that, the poem briefly runs through the reigns of Ouranos and Kronos (DP 14.6; 15.6 = OF 10.2-3 B):

Ouranos, son of Night, who was the first to become king.

Following him in turn was Kronos, and then clever Zeus.

p. 197

One important exception to this rule is Hermias quoting from the narrative of Phanes and Night giving birth to Ouranos and Gaia:

And again she [Night] gave birth to Gaia and wide Ouranos,

and showed them visible out of invisibility and they were offspring.¹⁶¹

161. Hermias, in Plat. Phaedr. 154.23 Couvr. (OF 149 I B = 109 K).

Parada

s.v. Uranus

•a)Gaia.-

•b)Aether ∞ Hemera

...

...•a)-••1)-•••1)Hes.The.127-153. •a)Nonn.2.335. •b)TIT2. [= Anecdota. Oxon. (Cramer) 1.75. = Evelyn-White, Epic Cycle, Titanomachy fr. 2] Hyg.Pre....

West

1983

p. 70

[In the Rhapsodies] First was Unaging Time ...

Phanes ... He [Phanes] also mates with Night [the second Night of three?] ... From this union springs Uranos and Ge (109).

p. 71

B

... Night handed the sceptre on to Uranos her son (107, 111)—again voluntarily (101).

C

Uranos marries Ge, and this is called the first marriage, ...

p. 85

[quoting from the Derveni Papyrus, xi. 6:]

to Uranos, son of Night, who became the king first of all;

p. 86

[In the Derveni Paryrus:] The first who sprang into the aither was a glorious god with the tile Firstborn (Protogonos). But the first to exercise kingly power was Uranos, who was the son of Night.

p. 87

in the Derveni poem Uranos is explicitly called the first king, wheras in the Rhapsodies he was the third, Phanes and Night being considered to have reigned before him.

p. 100

p. 102 f.

pp. 101-103

pp. 117-124

pp. 126 ff.

p. 121-124

p. 129 f.

p. 134

p. 181

p. 209

Night's first progeny were heaven and earth:

And she in her turn bore Earth and broad Heaven,

and showed them manifest that were not manifest before, and of whose lineage they are.

(fr.109); that is, by becoming phaneroi they were shown to be true children of Phanes. This appears to contradict Athenogoras, who says that the two halves of the shell of the egg from which Phanes came were made (...) into heaven and earth.¹⁰⁸

¹⁰⁸ Fr. 57. ...

p. 216

p. 233

p. 233 n. 13

p. 235 ff.

p. 236

2003

Eumelus fr. 1

1 Philod. De pietate B 4677 Obbink

1 Philodemus, On Piety

Whereas the author of the Titanomachy says that everything came from Aither.

Epimerismi Homerici α 313 Dyck (from Methodius)

Homeric Parsings (from Methodius)

Others understand Akmon as the air (aithēr), Ouranos being Aither’s son according to the author of the Titanomachy; the air is tireless (akamatos), because fire is.²

² The author is reporting explanations of why some poets called Ouranos (Heaven) the son of Akmon.

2007

p. 137

Many gods' names contain the suffix *-nos ... In the European languages the suffix was added to existing nouns to sgnify 'controller of', 'lord of'. ... As for deities, we may refer to the Greek Ouranos < *Worsanos, 'lord of rain', ...