Herakles and the Order of Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony
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Warren Huard
Abstract
Most of Herakles’ accomplishments as portrayed in Hesiod’s Theogony concern his defeat of various monstrous entities, such as the Nemean lion. By overcoming this “bane to human beings” (πῆμ’ ἀνθρώποις, line 329) and other creatures like it, Herakles does more than make the world safer for human habitation. Significantly, many of these creatures are among the offspring of Echidna and Typhaon/Typhoeus. Zeus must defeat this Typhoeus in order to establish his dominion over the cosmos. It falls to Zeus’ son Herakles to uphold Zeus’ new cosmic order by overcoming the offspring of Typhaon remaining among mortals. Herakles’ role within the Theogony is thus coherent in its cosmogonic dimensions, with Herakles acting both on behalf of Zeus’ order and in opposition to the would-be order of Typhaon/Typhoeus and (perhaps) a Hera not yet aligned with Zeus. Furthermore, through his actions among mortals, Herakles effectively brings this grand cosmogonic conflict down to earth, which serves narratively to better ground the events of the Theogony in the lives of Hesiod’s hearers and readers.
I thank Carolina López-Ruiz and Marco Antonio Santamaría, the organizers of the conference “Ex arches: looking back at the myths of origin,” held at The Ohio State University during September 14 – 15, 2018, where I presented this paper. From ARG I also thank for their valuable feedback Sarah Iles Johnston and Colleen Kron, besides the anonymous reviewer of the paper. Since the paper grew out of a chapter of my dissertation on Herakles and Dionysos in Archaic Greece, I thank again my dissertation adviser Sarah Iles Johnston and also the members of my committee, Thomas Richard Hawkins, Carolina López-Ruiz, and Timothy John McNiven.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Introduction
- Magic and Ritual
- Magic and Ritual
- Überlegungen zu einigen griechischen Wetterritualen
- And You Will Be Amazed: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Greek Magical Papyri
- Lawsuits with Headless Foes: A Greek Incantation Motif
- A Syntactic Approach to the Orphic Gold Leaves
- Materiality and Ancient Religion
- Materiality and Ancient Religion
- Accumulation, authority, and the cultural lives of objects: materiality and ancient religion
- Familiarity and Phenomenology in Greece: Accumulated Votives as Group-made Monuments
- The Cultural Biography of a Pilgrimage Token: From Hagiographical to Archaeological Evidence
- More than text: Approaching ritual papyri from Oxyrhynchus as inscribed objects
- Rethinking Orphic ‘Bookishness’: Text and Performance in Classical Mystery Religion
- Divine Names
- Divine Names
- “Noms de dieux!” Gods at the borders
- Nommer les dieux hittites : au sujet de quelques épithètes divines
- Le culte de Zeus Brontôn : l’espace et la morphologie du dieu de l’orage dans la Phrygie d’époque romaine
- Séquences onomastiques divines à Ostie-Portus
- Myths of Origin
- Myths of Origin
- Ex arches: Looking Back at Greek Myths of Origin
- Typhoeus or Cosmic Regression (Theogony 821 – 880)
- Herakles and the Order of Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony
- The Politics of Beginnings: Hesiod and the Assyrian Ideological Appropriation of Enuma Eliš
- Our Co(s)mic Origins: Theogonies in Greek Comedy
- At the Origins of Dionysus and Wine: Myths, Miracles, and Festivals
- Creation in the Poimandres and in Other Creation Stories
- The God Aion in a Mosaic from Nea Paphos (Cyprus) and Graeco-Phoenician Cosmogonies in the Roman East
- Ἀρχή and δῖνος: Vortices as Cosmogonic Powers and Cosmic Regulators. Study Case: The Whirling Lightning Bolt of Zeus
