In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact that Zeus thrust
his father Kronos together with the remaining Titans into Tartarus;
an event to which he affords us a tolerable parallel in certain
occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. For the other
gods make more than one rebellious attempt against Zeus, and are only
put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, partly by the presence
of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kronos, like Laërtes or Pêleus,
has become old, and has been supplanted by a force vastly superior to
his own. The Homeric epic treats Zeus as present, and, like all the
interesting heroic characters, a father must be assigned to him: that
father has once been the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded
and put down into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and
the superior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development.
That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos—between the Olympic gods and
the Titans—which Homer has thus briefly brought to view, Hesiod has
amplified into a theogony, with many things new, and some things
contradictory to his predecessor; while Eumêlus or Arktinus in the
poem called Titanomachia (now lost) also adopted it as their special
subject.[29] As Stasinus, Arktinus, Leschês, and others, enlarged the
Legend of Troy by composing poems relating to a supposed time anterior
to the commencement, or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad,—as
other poets recounted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing
in Ithaka,—so Hesiod enlarged and systematized, at the same time that
he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly indicated
in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the Homeric gods, but the
great genius of Grecian epic is no way accountable for the stories
of Uranos and Kronos,—the standing reproach against Pagan legendary
narrative.
[29] See the few fragments of the Titanomachia, in Düntzer, Epic.
Græc. Fragm. p. 2; and Hyne, ad Apollodôr. I. 2. Perhaps there
was more than one poem on the subject, though it seems that
Athenæus had only read one (viii. p. 277).
In the Titanomachia, the generations anterior to Zeus were still
further lengthened by making Uranos the son of Æthêr (Fr. 4.
Düntzer). Ægæon was also represented as son of Pontus and Gæa,
and as having fought in the ranks of the Titans; in the Iliad he
(the same who is called Briareus) is the fast ally of Zeus.
A _Titanographia_ was ascribed to Musæus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod.
iii. 1178; compare Lactant. de Fals. Rel. i. 21).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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