Challenges to the power of Zeus in early Greek poetry

is the recipient of a long list of offerings including oxen, sheep, goats, pigs, wheat, wine, honey, unguents, wool and cloth. 6 From the perspective offered by these documents, Poseidon appears to be the strongest of all the gods in Pylos. This picture well suits Odyssey 3.43-4, which tells how Telemachus and Athena (disguised as Mentor) join in celebrating the festival of Poseidon at Pylos. Compared with the importance of Poseidon, Zeus does not appear as particularly consequential in the tablet documents. Tablet Tn 316 records his ostensibly unexceptional nature: he is just an ordinary god, receiving the same quantity of offerings as the other deities, some of whom may have been only minor gods since they are already unknown in classical times (as mentioned above). Given Zeus' later sovereignty over the universe, it is undeniable that his characterisation has undergone a major transformation by the beginning of the Archaic Period. If we attempt to delineate the significance of Zeus in the Linear B Tablets, it lies surely in his name: among the deities written on the tablets, only Zeus can claim to be etymologically Indo-European in origin. As I discuss in Chapter V below, many of the suggested etymologies for divine names of the Olympians are thought to be suspicious. 7 The fact that Zeus alone is exclusively the legitimate descendant of the Indo-European god is noteworthy with regard to his later supremacy among the Olympians. It is not only Poseidon who must be considered a challenger of Zeus. A number of local deities, especially goddesses, received cult. As Campbell writes, 'wherever the Greeks came, in every valley, every isle and every cave, there was a local manifestation of the mother-goddess of the world whom Zeus, as the great god of the patriarchal order, had to master in a patriarchal way'. 8 The Mother Goddess is the embodiment of the fruitful earth, who gives life and fertility to plants, animals and men. Perhaps all the Greek female divinities are, more or less, variations of her role in cult. Aphrodite, whose origin I discuss in Chapter VII, Section 2, is surely one of such variants. The Zeus whom we encounter in Homer and Hesiod is the conqueror only after he has subdued all of these deities; and the texts of these poets preserve for us chance traces, albeit fragmentary, of Zeus' route to victory. 9 Actually, the Olympian gods are a heterogeneous collection, and Guthrie points out that their settlement as one family on Olympus is 'a tour de force' of Zeus. 10 The concept of the Olympian family over which Zeus rules as father can be seen as a consequence of the drastic changes of that period. In the course of the eighth century, when the Iliad came to achieve its final shape, the Greek world grew increasingly receptive to new influences, both internal and external. Internally, the movement towards Panhellenism became prominent; and externally, the influence of the Near East grew pervasive from the latter half of the ninth century onwards in response to organised colonisation. 11 ously, provides a parallel to the Biblical motivation for the Flood. The idea of strife among the gods for the highest power -the strongest god ruling over the other gods -is ubiquitous in Near Eastern epics. Along with these parallels, there are also significant differences between the Greek and Near Eastern myths. The peculiarities of the Greek myth are, first, that the succession occurs through generational strife, and, second, that it is Zeus, a god of the third generation, who halts the cycle of strife. 17 These differences are precisely the essential characteristics of the Greek myth and, at the same time, clearly reflect the cultural and social conditions of their age. It was the time of pan-Hellenisation, when strong centralising forces were present in all aspects of Greek life. The Theogony represents the powerful and unchallengeable sovereignty of Zeus in response to this trend, which I discuss in Chapter IV. We can also connect pre-Greek Indo-European poetic traditions to the tales of Zeus' sovereignty. For example, Dumézil analyses the cognate theme of war as the divine solution for overpopulation in the Mahâbhârata and in the Cypria. 18 Eliade discusses the cosmogonic and metaphysical significance in the Rig Veda of 'binding', 19 a theme also to be found in the Iliad and in Hesiod in connection with generational strife and cosmic sovereignty. I discuss the Near Eastern and pre-Greek Indo-European influences on Greek myth in Chapters IV, V and VII. ## Generational strife and other challenges to Zeus My investigation makes manifest the existence of two, often intertwined, thematic threads woven throughout these texts. The first is the threat of the mighty son with the potential to overcome and usurp his father. This image is perceptible in Book 1 of the Iliad -the subject of my Chapter Iand runs through the other texts under discussion. I discuss the story of the binding of , focusing on how the mythological theme of the threat of a son mightier than his father functions in the scene between Zeus and Thetis, and also throughout the Iliad. My analysis reveals, for example, that the birth of Athena (Theog. 886-91: see Chapter IV) is pivotal to Zeus' acquisition of supremacy because, as a maiden daughter born from Zeus himself, she breaks a recurrent pattern of menace. The leitmotif reappears in Chapter VII in my exploration of Aphrodite's disempowerment in the Hymn to Aphrodite: although she is not an explicit challenger to Zeus, her incorporation into the patriarchal Olympian family nonetheless entails the loss of much of her personal power. I demonstrate that a major theme of the Hymn is the celebration of the solidarity of Olympian society at the expense of Aphrodite's personal happiness. In my investigation of the Hymn to Apollo -Chapter VI -I illustrate how the theme of the threatening and mighty son operates on two levels in the twin stories of Typhon and Apollo. Against a background of generational strife -a motif casting \* For my translation of the texts cited, I owe much to the following published translations: "In the earliest extant works of Greek literature, Zeus reigns supreme in the Olympian hierarchy. However, scattered and scanty though they may be, there are allusions to threats of rebellion which challenge Zeus' supremacy. This book examines these passages, drawn from Homer, Hesiod and the "Homeric Hymns", to offer some new interpretations. While focusing on the theme of cosmic/divine strife, it becomes clear that hints of lost legends underlie these texts. Tracing their hidden logic helps to improve our understanding of early Greek poetry."--Bloomsbury Publishing