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This imaginary excursion comes from the Cave’s

The Best of Hesiod’s Theogony & Works and Days.

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LET'S ASSUME FOR A MOMENT that we’re deep in space cruising along in a rocket ship. We’ve just passed into a black hole—and we’ve survived! As we near its other side—approaching another cosmos, as it happens—we look out our vessel’s window and see something odd. But it’s hard to know what, exactly, it is. Does it have the shape of a globe? Or an egg? And is it hard or soft? Or airy, like a bank of fog in early morning? Or is it somehow both?

However it is, as we approach, we’re able to make out three general parts of this cosmos—sky, earth, and a part beneath the earth. The uppermost area—if we split the whole in two—is mostly bright. As our eyes scan downward, the bright area gradually ends about halfway down, right where the earth or ground is. From there it is progressively darker until we can hardly see anything at all. No, in fact, we can’t see a thing. The very bottom of the cosmos vanishes altogether into darkness.

Wisely and skillfully, the captain guides the spacecraft to the uppermost portion of this cosmos, which is, we discover, solid. Or so it appears in Hesiod. He explains, for example, that if the sky and earth came together, the encounter would make a “mighty, crashing sound.” As we approach, the captain announces that we’re landing on the outermost layer of “starry Sky,” the highest part of the cosmos, which is studded with stars. He further announces that other major stops on our journey will be the earth below the sky, and much further below, Tartaros. But first we must disembark and climb aboard much smaller “bronze anvils,” as he calls them, which are peculiar forms of transportation in this cosmos.

And now, astride our anvils, we await the drop.

There we go! Someone pulls the lever, a trapdoor in the starry sky swings open, and we fall toward the earth below! Ahh! (Are your hands up?—or down with your eyes closed?)

Hesiod judges that “a bronze anvil falling down from the sky for nine nights and days would reach the earth on the tenth day.” That’s a long way to fall! The good news is that, as we descend, we’ll have plenty of time to see this part of Hesiod’s cosmos, as well as the surface of the earth and what it holds.

Speeding down on our bronze anvils, the first thing we notice is how wide the sky is. Hesiod tells us that Sky (Ouranos) is “equal” to Earth (Gaia) and “cover[s] her all around.”[i] In fact, when Sky mingles in love with Earth, he “stretche[s] himself out until he cover[s] her on every side.”

Then it hits us. We should have brought our sunglasses! Thanks to Aether, “the bright upper air,” which is interestingly the son of Night, the sky is very bright. We immediately observe that the brightness is also due to the brilliant and hot light of (the) Sun (Helios), who is making his daily run, as Homer would say, across the sky. It is daytime, a few hours past Dawn (Ēōs), the place where Sun rises each morning. Sometimes the sun shines more on “the dark people and their cities” in Africa while it “appears tardily for all the Greeks.” That’s how Hesiod puts it, anyway. The point is that the sun shifts its course throughout the year, just as it does in our world.

If it were night, then Moon (Selēnē) would be shining, and the many stars in the sky would be sailing across the sky as they usually and regularly do, depending on the time of year. For example, Hesiod informs us that as the year circles around, the Pleiades, “the daughters of Atlas,” regularly rise and fall, disappearing for forty days during the year, hidden behind the earth. Their movement is so regular, so consistent, that we can plant, harvest, and sharpen our tools in correspondence with their present location. Here’s another bit of excellent counsel: “When Orion and Sirius travel into the middle of the sky, and rosy-fingered Dawn sees Arcturus, then … harvest all the grapes and take them home.” It is advice we can count on if we should decide to stay behind in Hesiod’s cosmos and be a farmer or perhaps a vintner—not a bad idea since land is much cheaper here than in Napa Valley, and there are no state taxes; so, the idea is not as crazy as it may sound at first mention.

What do we have so far? It’s the question that comes to mind as we ride our bronze anvils and fall night after night and day after day. There’s the sky and the stars in the sky and the bright air and the sun and moon. And everything seems to run in an orderly fashion. The stars rise and fall at certain times of the year, and day follows night, each with its own ruling god, the sun and the moon.

To our surprise, perhaps, something seems to be rising out of the earth. Up to this point in our journey, the earth has appeared as a large, boundless mass. Monstrous, even. But now we see this rising thing to our side—a mountain. It’s Mount Olympus!

As we descend, we make out the many mansions of the sky-dwelling gods. There’s Zeus’ house, where Zeus, “the father of gods and men,” “dwells in the brightest and purest aether.” He lives there with his sister and wife, Hera. (Don’t ask.) And there’s the dwelling of Apollo’s and Artemis’ mother, Leto, “the kindest of gods on Olympus.” Hesiod indicates that many other gods live there as well, including Hera, Demeter, Hestia, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Aphrodite, the Muses, the Graces (Charites), Longing (Himeros), Desire (Eros), Heracles and his wife, Hebe, and the children of Styx (whom the gods hate).

How did the Olympians come to possess Mount Olympus? They did thanks to the great Titanomachy, the Titan-battle, when Zeus “marched down from the sky and Olympus” and defeated his father Kronos and the other Titans. In the end, he hurled them down to Tartaros. (Like a war reporter, Hesiod explains that Zeus “expelled the Titans from the sky.”) Whereas Zeus and his allies fought from Olympus, the Titans fought from Mount Othrys, a mountain before us, though to the side, as we fall.

Looking the other direction, we see Mount Helikon, where the Helikonian Muses called and inspired Hesiod to be a poet-singer while he was shepherding his sheep. We also see forests that cover portions of the earth. Hesiod sings that these and similar forests “crackled loudly with fire” during the hottest moment of the Titanomachy. Following Mount Helikon’s upper slopes downward, we notice its low-lying hills. And beyond these, where shepherds lovingly guide their sheep and goats, are a number of villages. Some have an agora, an assembly and market place.

Ah! There it is—Ascra itself, Hesiod’s village! It is a small community of farmers. As we look closely, we see a number of farms there. Trailing behind an ox, a man is plowing in one of the many fields. He’s naked—apparently following Hesiod’s wise advice: “Sow naked, plow naked, and reap naked.” Diligently working like this, Demeter’s grain is produced by Earth—or so Hesiod promises.

The farmer is one among countless human beings—men and women, slave and free—who dwell upon the surface of the earth, just as the ox is one of many kinds of animals—“fish and wild beasts and large flying birds.” Hesiod reports that Zeus “gave human beings Justice, which is by far the best thing that has come to be,” whereas animals do not have justice, and so they “eat one another.” If a city follows the way of justice and avoids hubrisor needless violence, it will know peace and abundance. If not, there will be plenty of suffering—hunger, plague, warfare, shrinking households.

As we approach the earth, or Earth (Gaia), we observe that she is just as Hesiod describes her in the Theogony: “broad-breasted … the forever immovable abode of all the immortals who hold the peak of snowy Olympus.” Yup, she’s solid all right.

Even so, she may be shaken, as by an earthquake. We know this because the poet nicknames Poseidon “Earth-shaker.”

The earth is full of different lands. Hesiod indicates at least two—the land of the “dark people and their cities” and that of the Greeks. Each land holds many cities and villages—Aeolian Kyme, Thebes, Chalcis, Troy, and Ascra, among others. Nearby are the farms we’ve already observed.

Then there is the sea, or Sea (Pontos). Given what Hesiod tells us about the sea, it is hard to imagine where, precisely, it is. But while we’re falling, we’re able to note what is happening upon the sea. First, we see various islands. Hesiod mentions Kythera and Cyprus, two favorite islands of Aphrodite; Crete, where Rhea hid baby Zeus away in a cave; and Euboea, where Hesiod participated in a poetry competition in honor of battle-minded Amphidamas. We also see sailing ships, merchants making their way to various ports of trade, and warriors voyaging to battlefields, even as the heroes of the “great army from holy Greece” did when “their ships brought them over the great expanse of the sea to Troy.” We’re tempted to call the sea the Mediterranean, but we won’t because Hesiod never gives it that or any other name. He just calls it “sea.”

Speaking of the heroes that waged war in Troy, the poet also mentions the Islands of the Blessed, where half of the heroes now live. Unlike the other islands, however, these are somewhere faraway from other human beings “at the limits of the earth.” A good guess would place them in the east, the origin of the “light of day,” where the sun rises. But Hesiod doesn’t say. What he does tell us is that these happy islands are “by deep-eddying Ocean.”

Ocean (Okeanos) himself is the great river that flows around the earth. He is the father of all the rivers we see streaming down earth’s mountains and plains. Apparently, Ocean flows backward. Hesiod calls it “back-flowing Ocean.” Backward compared to what? The poet doesn’t say.

Following Ocean around the earth with our eyes, we glance from the east and the Islands of the Blessed to the other side of the earth, toward what we would call “west.” Here, at the “limits of dark earth” and beyond, dwell the Hesperides, who guard the “all-golden apples” with the help of a “frightful serpent.” The Gorgons live nearby, as does Atlas, the great mountain that “holds up the far-spread sky with his hands and head.” Hesiod informs us that Atlas stands near or before the house of Night.

But more about this in a moment. For now it is time to make our landing.

We’ve been traveling for nine nights and nine days now, and finally, sometime during the tenth day of riding the bronze anvil, we touch down on “much-nourishing earth.” And directly, we are ushered along by an earth-dwelling man, our guide, to a cave.

It’s a good thing we’ve already seen what Earth has to offer because, apparently, the plan is to head down into the under-earth without delay—into what Homer and other Greeks called the underworld. Quoting Hesiod, our guide explains that caves like the one we’re entering lead us “deep into the depths of the sacred earth.”

We feel excited! Like Dante much later—though more accurately Dante was “like” Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and others before him, Dante who journeyed with the Roman poet Virgil through the underworld of the Inferno (read Hell, or Hel, what Norsemen or the Vikings called the underworld, that is, the kingdom of the goddess of the dead, Hel)—we’re getting ready to venture beneath the earth on foot. Down we go!

The guide takes us to the mouth of a cave. This must be the “marble gates and the bronze threshold” that Hesiod refers to in the Theogony. Admittedly, he doesn’t associate them with a cave. And their exact location is unclear. But it’s a good guess because marble and the constituent parts of bronze—copper and tin—are found just beneath the surface of the earth, right about where a cave would be. But we’ll not press the point. Rather, entering the cave behind our guide, we descend below to where the dark earth covers the dead.

Now we’re deep within the earth. It’s pitch black but for the light of the torches we carry. The guide turns to one man in our group and asks him to drop his torch over the edge.

“What?” he asks, incredulous. We all are.

“Drop it into the darkness,” the guide repeats, adding, “over the safety rails.”

And satisfying the urge he’s had to throw things off high places since he was a young boy, the man lets his torch drop. The flame grows smaller just as soon as it leaves his hand. Now it’s a speck falling into the abyss. And then, not long after the drop, the light is gone.

Hearing the collective gasp of our group, the guide explains, quoting Hesiod, that “a bronze anvil falling down from the earth for nine nights and days would come to Tartaros on the tenth.”

Tartaros? we wonder. Then someone asks, “What’s between the earth and Tartaros?”

The guide tells us that great roots grow down from the earth and the sea, roots that reach all the way down to Tartaros.[ii]

But that’s not all. “Chasm” also exists between Earth and Tartaros. Perhaps we can conceive of chasm as the great gap or space in which the roots of the earth and the sea grow downward, like the space in a vast ceramic pot, or its soil. Regardless, chasm is the “sources and limits … of everything”—“of murky earth and gloomy Tartaros, and of the barren sea and the starry sky.”

One last point. (The guide holds up his finger.) Chaos, who “was born the very first,” and, therefore, is the source of all things, also seems to be the same as, or at least in the same location as, chasm. We know this because Hesiod tells us that the Titans who live in Tartaros “dwell beyond gloomy Chaos.” In other words, Chaos borders Tartaros. But if chasm is the “sources and limits” of Tartaros, then it’s reasonable to assume that Chaos is too. The guide concludes by telling us that we can tentatively equate the roots of the earth and the sea that “grow above” Tartaros with Chaos and chasm, which is the sources and limits of everything. At least they exist in the same general area, that vast space that stretches down nine nights and nine days, and part of a tenth day, to Tartaros.

Climbing aboard an elevator that’s shaped like a bronze anvil (again—they seem to like these forms of transportation in this cosmos), one that operates by a complex mechanism of roots and more roots, we zip down through the darkness to Tartaros.

Down we go.

Down, down, down.

And finally, after many days and nights we arrive.

“Everyone watch your step. It’s dark out here,”—so says our guide, who is standing outside the bronze anvil.

No kidding, we all muse. We think of Darkness (Erebos) and Night (Nyx), the offspring of Chaos. We’ve never seen darkness so dark. We can’t even see well enough to see whether or not we can see our hands in front of our faces.

In the manner of a psychopomp, one who escorts the dead in the underworld, our guide carefully directs us toward the bronze walls that encircle Tartaros. They were put there by Poseidon. We shuffle along in the dark.

Nearing them, we hear the towering bronze gates slowly creak open. EEE-rrrr-EEE-rrrr.

Then—gross. Slightly gross, at least. Hesiod doesn’t mention it, but we all smell something damp and moldy. Like laundry that’s been in a hamper for a few weeks—including an armful of bath towels and a week’s worth of exercise socks. It must be the Titans. Or perhaps it’s just Tartaros itself.

It’s here that things get confusing. And no wonder why. It’s dark down here. Dark!

There’s no doubt that the Titans—Kronos and others—are imprisoned here. Hesiod tells us that they “live below in Tartaros.” But where, exactly, that’s a much harder matter to determine. Nevertheless, we don’t have to worry about precision, our guide explains. All we need to know is that there is a vast neighborhood, of sorts, that exists deep down in Tartaros and the layers of Night that surround Tartaros. Leaving aside Hesiod for a moment, the guide aptly suggests we call it the Neighborhood of Darkness. “Fine. But who lives there?” The Titans do. And somewhere nearby, since they guard the Titans, the hundred-handers—Gyges, Kottos, and Briareos—have their dwelling. Then there is the “frightful house of dark Night buried within dark clouds.” Hesiod tells us that “it is here where Night and Day draw near and greet each other as they pass the great bronze threshold” of the house. He goes on to explain that the “children of dark Night, the frightful gods Sleep and Death, have their houses” there as well. So much for Night’s compound.

Aside from Night, the Neighborhood of Darkness has another distinguished resident, one we all seem excited—though frightened!—to spot as we walk up to the gates of his house. We all hope to see Zeus’ brother Hades and his unfortunate wife, Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. (Unfortunate because Persephone was taken by her uncle down to the underworld with the permission of her father. It is a fact that causes us all to exclaim, “What the Hades?!” with a strange mixture of admiration and indignation. But, wisely directed by our guide, we all decide to call it a “mystery” and leave it to the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated by Athenians and Greeks each year.) Citing Hesiod, our guide tells us that Hades is “the lord of those rotting beneath the earth.” He “dwells in a house beneath the earth and has a pitiless, merciless heart.”

“There it is!” someone cries out. We all look and see Kerberos, Hades’ dog, “who eats raw flesh.” This is the dog who keeps guard over Hades’ house, the house of the dead. Hesiod explains that “without pity, the dog employs an evil trick: he greets those going in with a wag of his tail and the wiggling of his ears. But he doesn’t let them go out again, backward. Instead he watches them closely and eats those he catches going out of the gates of strong Hades and dread Persephone.”

Hearing this, everyone sensibly suggests we visit another house and leave the house of the dead for another day. The guide agrees, and so we all march on toward the house of the river Styx.

On the way we pass by Echidna’s “glorious mansions.” Half nymph and half serpent, Echidna engendered Kerberos, Hades’ dog, as well as other monstrous creatures. Unsurprisingly, she also feeds on raw flesh.

Suddenly, our guide shouts, “Let’s go!”

None of us objects. In fact, we’re running now!

We reach the house of the river Styx. And even though “terrible Styx is hated by the immortals,” we jump right in. Not into a sacred oath, of course, the thing the gods hate about Styx, but into her waters that flow out of the darkness—or something like that (Hesiod is unclear).

We’re taken up—up, up, up—toward the great Ocean, which flows around the earth. We all think of when we were children, floating in one of those lazy rivers at a water park back in our own cosmos. But this river is flowing much faster! So fast that we suddenly pop out through a “rugged place” past a “crag” at the edge of the earth, somewhere toward where night falls.

A young man cries out, “We’re back! We’ve survived the underworld!” And everyone cheers.

With that, we’ve had enough of Hesiod’s cosmos. Admittedly, it exhibits a certain harmony in that everything seems to fit together well, particularly on the human level and given the justice that Zeus brings to the world. But given the reality of Tartaros, and the Neighborhood of Darkness, and the ghastly gods and goddesses who dwell therein, we prefer our own world.

Leaving Hesiod’s cosmos behind in the same rocket ship we used to travel there, we smile, thinking that the monsters of our world are nothing compared to dark Night and Hades and Echidna. “Or are they?” we wonder.

So ends Item 9, “Hesiod’s Cosmos – An Imaginary Excursion.” See you in Item 10, “The Days from Zeus.”

Notes

[i] Hesiod personifies the sky and earth as Sky (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaia).

[ii] The guide observes that many scholars have noted the fact that roots imply a tree, something common in Indo-European related mythology. “Indo-European?” a fellow traveler asks. As if he’s been asked many times, the guide responds, “The soil or roots from which the great tree of Greece grew some four or five thousand years ago—Greece and Iran and India.”