Mythology
What we call, perhaps with a dash of disdain, mythology, had been a living truth for other
peoples, in other times. Images of beauty, calm, innocence, and honor handed down from
antiquity attract us; images of foulness, crudeness, violence, and depravity in the same tales
repel. The ancients, just like ourselves, wished to perceive divine order in the chaotic
world of nature and humans. It was often the poets who, out of the yarns of the
sublime and the base spun the narratives that explained the creation of the universe
and the place of humans in it. We may view those narratives with ambivalence,
yet they served their purpose in providing answers to the deep questions posed in the days long past.
Naming Distant Worlds
In our day, we turn elsewhere for answers to the questions that may trouble us. The ancient
religions, which lost their grip on the humans even before the Classical age was over, continue
to be useful in providing a reservoir of apellations for the objects seen in the sky for the first time.
The planets visible to the naked eye received the names of the principal gods of the
Roman pantheon in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ.
The custom of giving the names of the gods and heroes of antiquity to the newly
observed celestial objects originated in the seventeenth century, with the discovery of the
moons of Jupiter. It was a reasonable step on the part of the seventeenth- century
astronomers to widen the ancient custom which found its expression in the naming of the
planets, and name the moons after minor divinities. The first five moons of Saturn were
discovered also in the seventeenth century. The naming convention for the Saturnian moons had
to wait until 1847, when the astronomer John Herschel, the son of William
Herschel, discoverer of moons 6 and 7, proposed that the numerical designations be
supplanted with the names of Saturn's 'brothers and sisters, the Titans and Titanesses.'
Saturn's Family
Now, who were Saturn's brothers and sisters? Saturn was a Roman deity, and Roman
deities
did not form families. Saturn thus could not have had any brothers or sisters. Still,
Sir John was not amiss. The clue to the puzzle is in the reference to the Titans and
Titanesses. Those figures were indeed the brothers and sisters, not of Saturn, but of
Kronos, the Saturn's Greek counterpart. The poet Hesiod, Homer's younger
contemporary, gives us the family history of the Greek deities, including the tribe of the Titans.
Using some of Hesiod's own words, here is an outline of the story. First of all there
came Chaos, and after him came Gaia (the Earth). Gaia's first-born was 'one who
matched her every dimension', Ouranos (the Sky). Gaia 'lay with Ouranos (Uranus), and bore
him Okeanos, Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys'
. After these her youngest-born was the 'devious-devising Kronos,
most terrible of her children'. Hesiod assigned the name Titans to the enumerated six
boys and six girls. Gaia had more children by Ouranos; those and the progeny of the
original twelve are sometimes also referred to as the Titans. Kronos, upon urging from
Gaia, attacked his father Ouranos with the sickle she provided. Following the attack,
Kronos became the supreme ruler of the world.
Kronos took Rhea as wife. She bore him five children. Remembering the fate of his father,
Kronos swallowed each child right after it was born. Zeus was the sixth-born. To save
the baby, Rhea tricked her husband into swallowing a stone instead. Zeus, after having grown up,
made Kronos regurgitate the stone and the five children he swallowed. With his siblings'
help, Zeus initiated a rebellion against the father and his allies the Titans. The Titans
suffered a defeat in a terrible battle during which 'all earth was boiling'. They ended up,
imprisoned by Zeus, in Tartaros, 'a moldy place, at the uttermost edges of the monstrous
earth'. Zeus and his allies the Olympians, assumed the lordship over the world. Hesiod
says nothing about the further fate of the Titans. Later writers state that Zeus pardoned
Kronos and exiled him to the Islands of the Blest. Although Kronos's rule passed, it was
long remembered as the Golden Age of mankind, when people 'lived as if they were
gods, their hearts free from all sorrow, without hard work or pain'.
Festivals and Games
Kronos is probably a pre-Greek deity, perhaps of significance in agriculture, who was little
worshipped in the classical times. Kronia, the harvest festival dedicated to Kronos
was celebrated in only a handful of locations. During the festival, the slaves were granted
the freedom to feast at the same banquet table with the masters. According to one
ancient account, the beginning of the Olympic Games may have also been linked to the cult of
Kronos. In the account, Kronos wrestled Zeus at Olympia. The contest between the two
gods was commemorated with a local festival, which later turned into a Panhellenic event.
The quotes are from: Hesiod, Theogony, Richmond Lattimore, tr., University of Michigan Press, 1959.