1.
Wenceslaus Hollar
–
Václav Hollar, was a Czech etcher from Kingdom of Bohemia, known in England as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas and in Germany as Wenzel Hollar. He was born in Prague, and died in London, being buried at St Margarets Church, after his family was ruined by the Sack of Prague in the Thirty Years War, the young Hollar, who had been destined for the law, determined to become an artist. In 1627 he was in Frankfurt where he was apprenticed to the renowned engraver Matthäus Merian, in 1630 he lived in Strasbourg, Mainz and Koblenz, where Hollar portrayed the towns, castles, and landscapes of the Middle Rhine Valley. In 1633 he moved to Cologne and it was in 1636 that he attracted the notice of the famous nobleman and art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court of Emperor Ferdinand II. Employed as a draftsman he travelled with Arundel to Vienna and Prague, in Cologne in 1635, Hollar published his first book. In 1637 he returned him to England where he remained in the Earls household for many years. In around 1650, probably at the request of Hendrik van der Borcht, he etched a commemorative print done after a design by Cornelius Schut in Arundels honour and dedicated to his widow, Aletheia. Arundel is seated in melancholy mode on his tomb in front of an obelisk, in 1745, George Vertue paid homage to their association in the vignette he published on page one of his Description of the Works of the Ingenious Delineator and Engraver Wenceslaus Hollar. It featured a bust of Arundel in front of a pyramid, symbolizing immortality, surrounded by illustrated books, during his first year in England he created View of Greenwich, later issued by Peter Stent, the print-seller. Nearly 3 feet long, he received thirty shillings for the plate, afterwards he fixed the price of his work at fourpence an hour, and measured his time by a sand-glass. On July 4,1641 Hollar married a servant of the Countess of Norfolk and her name was Tracy, they had two children. Lord Arundel left England in 1642, and Hollar passed into the service of the Duke of York and he continued to produce works prolifically throughout the English Civil War, but it adversely affected his income. Hollar took his setting, presumably symbolizing longer term values, directly from an engraving published in George Sandys Relation of a Journey begun An, Hollar joined the Royalist Regiment and was captured by parliamentary forces in 1645 during the siege of Basing House. After a short time he managed to escape, in Antwerp in 1646, he again met with the Earl of Arundel. In 1652 he returned to London, and lived for a time with Faithorne the engraver near Temple Bar, during the following years many books were published which he illustrated, Ogilbys Virgil and Homer, Stapyltons Juvenal, and Dugdales Warwickshire, St Pauls and Monasticon. His income fell as booksellers continued to decline his work, during this time he lost his young son, also reputed to have artistic ability, to the plague. He lived eight years after his return, still working for the booksellers and he died in extreme poverty, his last recorded words being a request to the bailiffs that they would not carry away the bed on which he was dying. Hollar is interred in St Margarets Church in Westminster and he was one of the best and most prolific artists of his time
2.
Ancient Greek
–
Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
3.
The Void (philosophy)
–
The Void is the philosophical concept of nothingness manifested. The notion of The Void is relevant to several realms of metaphysics, the Void is also prevalent in numerous facets of psychology, notably logotherapy. The manifestation of nothingness is closely associated with the contemplation of emptiness, in this sense, knowledge or experience of the Void could be said to actually be unknowing, given its inherent ineffability. In Western mystical traditions, it was argued that the transcendent Ground of Being could therefore be approached through aphairesis. The Void as a cognomen is not easily defined, as the word itself means empty or without content, the concept of The Void has existed since the dawn of philosophy. Aristotle, in Book IV of Physica, denied its existence with his rejection of finite entities, in response to Parmenides, the Atomists described the universe as only being composed of atoms and void. There were questions as to whether void was truly nothing or if it was in fact filled with other things, stanislav Grofs distinction between holotropic and hylotropic experience is important here, with the former encapsulating experiences which connect to the Void. Viktor Frankl Mans Search for Meaning Absolute Ground of Being Ma Nirvana Śūnyatā Unmanifest The Void is also an important concept in martial arts such as Aikido, atomic physics, according to Paul Brunton, has proven that the world derives from a mysterious No-thing. A similar line of argument is explored in The Void by Frank Close, a further consideration is the enigmatic nature of dark energy which may be seen as coterminous with the Void. His work has received sustained criticism from David Albert and others working in philosophy and physics
4.
Chronology of the universe
–
The chronology of the universe describes the history and future of the universe according to Big Bang cosmology. The metric expansion of space is estimated to have begun 13.8 billion years ago, the time since the Big Bang is also known as cosmic time. The solar system formed at about 4.6 billion years ago, the far future, after cessation of stellar formation, with various scenarios for the ultimate fate of the universe. Little is understood about physics at this temperature, different hypotheses propose different scenarios, in inflationary cosmology, times before the end of inflation does not follow the traditional big bang timeline. Models attempting to formulate processes of the Planck epoch are speculative proposals for New Physics, examples include the Hartle–Hawking initial state, string landscape, string gas cosmology, and the ekpyrotic universe. Between 10−43 second and 10−36 second after the Big Bang As the universe expanded and cooled and these can be regarded as phase transitions much like condensation and freezing phase transitions of ordinary matter. The grand unification epoch began when gravitation separated from the gauge forces, the non-gravitational physics of this epoch would be described by a so-called grand unified theory. The grand unification epoch ended when the GUT forces further separate into the strong, while decelerating expansion would magnify deviations from homogeneity, making the universe more chaotic, accelerating expansion would make the universe more homogeneous. Inflation ended when the field decayed into ordinary particles in a process called reheating. The time of reheating is usually quoted as a time after the Big Bang, according to the simplest inflationary models, inflation ended at a temperature corresponding to roughly 10−32 second after the Big Bang. As explained above, this does not imply that the inflationary era lasted less than 10−32 second, in fact, in order to explain the observed homogeneity of the universe, the duration must be longer than 10−32 second. In inflationary cosmology, the earliest meaningful time after the Big Bang is the time of the end of inflation, in inflationary cosmology, the electroweak epoch began when the inflationary epoch ended, at roughly 10−32 seconds. There is currently insufficient observational evidence to explain why the universe contains far more baryons than antibaryons, a candidate explanation for this phenomenon must allow the Sakharov conditions to be satisfied at some time after the end of cosmological inflation. While particle physics suggests asymmetries under which conditions are met. After cosmic inflation ends, the universe is filled with a quark–gluon plasma, from this point onwards the physics of the early universe is better understood, and the energies involved in the Quark epoch are directly amenable to experiment. If supersymmetry is a property of our universe, then it must be broken at an energy that is no lower than 1 TeV, the electroweak symmetry scale. The masses of particles and their superpartners would then no longer be equal, between 10−6 second and 1 second after the Big Bang The quark–gluon plasma that composes the universe cools until hadrons, including baryons such as protons and neutrons, can form. At approximately 1 second after the Big Bang neutrinos decouple and begin traveling freely through space and this cosmic neutrino background, while unlikely to ever be observed in detail since the neutrino energies are very low, is analogous to the cosmic microwave background that was emitted much later
5.
Cosmos
–
The cosmos is the universe regarded as a complex and orderly system, the opposite of chaos. Cosmology is the study of the cosmos in several of the above meanings, all cosmologies have in common an attempt to understand the implicit order within the whole of being. In this way, most religions and philosophical systems have a cosmology, Cosmology is a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe, a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. The basic definition of Cosmology is the science of the origin, in modern astronomy the Big Bang theory is the dominant postulation. In physical cosmology, the cosmos is often used in a technical way. Our particular cosmos, the universe, is generally capitalized as the Cosmos. According to Charles Peter Mason in Sir William Smith Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Pythagoreans described the universe. It appears, in fact, from this, as well as from the extant fragments, the second book appears to have been an exposition of the nature of numbers, which in the Pythagorean theory are the essence and source of all things. In theology, the cosmos is the heavenly bodies. In Christian theology, the word is used synonymously with aion to refer to worldly life or this world or this age as opposed to the afterlife or World to Come. The book The works of Aristotle mentioned Aristotle says the poet Orpheus never existed, bertrand Russel noted The Orphics were an ascetic sect, wine, to them, was only a symbol, as, later, in the Christian sacrament. The intoxication that they sought was that of enthusiasm, of union with the god and they believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus, from Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious. Cosmos – Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cosmos and Cosmic Law Greene, B, the Elegant Universe, Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. Norton, New York Hawking, S. W, yulsman, T. Origins, The Quest for our Cosmic Roots
6.
Greek mythology
–
It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
7.
Creation myth
–
A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true, in the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense. They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths – that is, Creation myths often share a number of features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals and they are often set in a dim and nonspecific past that historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore. Creation myths develop in oral traditions and therefore typically have multiple versions, found throughout human culture, Creation myth definitions from modern references, A symbolic narrative of the beginning of the world as understood in a particular tradition and community. Creation myths are of importance for the valuation of the world, for the orientation of humans in the universe. Creation myths tell us how things began, all cultures have creation myths, they are our primary myths, the first stage in what might be called the psychic life of the species. As cultures, we identify ourselves through the collective dreams we call creation myths, … Creation myths explain in metaphorical terms our sense of who we are in the context of the world, and in so doing they reveal our real priorities, as well as our real prejudices. Our images of creation say a deal about who we are. A philosophical and theological elaboration of the myth of creation within a religious community. Religion professor Mircea Eliade defined the word myth in terms of creation, Myth narrates a history, it relates an event that took place in primordial Time. All creation myths are in one sense etiological because they attempt to explain how the world was formed, in the past historians of religion and other students of myth thought of them as forms of primitive or early-stage science or religion and analyzed them in a literal or logical sense. However they are seen as symbolic narratives which must be understood in terms of their own cultural context. Charles Long writes, The beings referred to in the myth – gods, animals, the myths should not be understood as attempts to work out a rational explanation of deity. While creation myths are not literal explications they do serve to define an orientation of humanity in the world in terms of a birth story. They are the basis of a worldview that reaffirms and guides how people relate to the world, to any assumed spiritual world
8.
Firmament
–
In Biblical cosmology, the firmament is the structure above the atmosphere, conceived as a vast solid dome. According to the Genesis creation narrative, God created the firmament to separate the waters above the earth from the waters below the earth, the word is anglicized from Latin firmamentum, which appears in the Vulgate, a late fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible. The firmament is described in Genesis 1, 6–8 in the Genesis creation narrative, Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. ”Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven, so the evening and the morning were the second day. The word firmament is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250 and it later appeared in the King James Bible. The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate and this in turn is derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with firm. The word is a Latinization of the Greek stereōma, which appears in the Septuagint, the word firmament is used to translate rāqîa‘, a word used in Biblical Hebrew. It is derived from the root raqqə‘, meaning to beat or spread out, like most ancient peoples, the Hebrews believed the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Hebrews regarded the earth as a plain or a hill figured like a hemisphere, over this is arched the solid vault of heaven. To this vault are fastened the lights, the stars, so slight is this elevation that birds may rise to it and fly along its expanse. Augustine wrote that too much learning had been expended on the nature of the firmament and we may understand this name as given to indicate not it is motionless but that it is solid. Saint Basil argued for a fluid firmament, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the firmament had a solid nature and stood above a region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed. The Copernican Revolution of the 16th century led to reconsideration of these matters, in 1554, John Calvin proposed that firmament be interpreted as clouds. He who would learn astronomy and other arts, let him go elsewhere. As it became a theologian, had to respect us rather than the stars, calvins doctrine of accommodation allowed Protestants to accept the findings of science without rejecting the authority of scripture. The Greeks and Stoics adopted a model of celestial spheres after the discovery of the spherical Earth in the 4th to 3rd centuries BC, the Medieval Scholastics adopted a cosmology that fused the ideas of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Ptolemy. This cosmology involved celestial orbs, nested concentrically inside one another, the outermost orb contained the stars and the term firmament was then transferred to this orb. There were seven inner orbs for the seven wanderers of the sky, even Copernicus heliocentric model included an outer sphere that held the stars
9.
Heaven
–
According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive. Some believe in the possibility of a Heaven on Earth in a World to Come, another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, Heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and this cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, the modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier heven, this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized place where God dwells, all of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *Hemina-. In Ancient Egyptian religion, belief in an afterlife is much more stressed than in ancient Judaism, Heaven was a physical place far above the Earth in a dark area of space where there were no stars, basically beyond the Universe. Their heart would finally be weighed with the feather of truth, almost nothing is known of Bronze Age Canaanite views of Heaven, and the archeological findings at Ugarit have not provided information. The 1st century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon, in the Middle Hittite myths, Heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in Heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi. The Baháí Faith regards the description of Heaven as a specific place as symbolic. The Baháí writings describe Heaven as a condition where closeness to God is defined as Heaven. For Baháís, entry into the life has the potential to bring great joy. Baháulláh likened death to the process of birth and he explains, The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother. Accordingly, Baháís view life as a stage, where one can develop. The key to progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God. Baháulláh wrote, Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return, in Buddhism there are several Heavens, all of which are still part of samsara. Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn in one of them, however, their stay in Heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other being. Because Heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth, Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state
10.
Earth
–
Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
11.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
12.
Gaia (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the mother of all life, the primal Mother Earth goddess. She is the parent of Uranus, from whose sexual union she bore the Titans and the Giants. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra, the Greek word γαῖα is a collateral form of γῆ meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin, in Mycenean Greek Ma-ka also contains the root ga-. Gaia is the personification of the Earth and these are her offspring as related in various myths, some are related consistently, some are mentioned only in minor variants of myths, and others are related in variants that are considered to reflect a confusion of the subject or association. *Some said that those marked with a * were born from Uranus blood when Cronus castrated him, hesiods Theogony tells how, after Chaos, wide-bosomed Gaia arose to be the everlasting seat of the immortals who possess Olympus above, and the depths of Tartarus below. He then tells that Gaia brought forth her equal Uranus to cover her on every side, Gaia also bore the hills, and Pontus, without sweet union of love. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, as each of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires were born, Uranus hid them in a secret place within Gaia, causing her great pain. She created a grey flint sickle, and Cronus used the sickle to castrate his father Uranus as he approached Gaia to have sex with her. From Uranus spilled blood, Gaia produced the Erinyes, the Giants, from the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. By her son Pontus, Gaia bore the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia. Because Cronus had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children, but when Rhea was pregnant with her youngest child, Zeus, she sought help from Gaia and Uranus. When Zeus was born, Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes in his place, which Cronus swallowed, with the help of Gaias advice, Zeus defeated the Titans. But afterwards, Gaia, in union with Tartarus, bore the youngest of her sons Typhon, according to Hyginus, Earth, along with Heaven and Sea were the children of Aether and Day. According to Apollodorus, Gaia and Tartarus were the parents of Echidna, Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by stowing her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos, is sometimes said to be a son of Gaia. Gaia is believed by some sources to be the deity behind the Oracle at Delphi
13.
Tartarus
–
In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans. Tartarus is the place where, according to Plato in Gorgias, souls were judged after death, like other primal entities, Tartarus was also considered to be a primordial force or deity. In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld, in ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools, Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born. In the Greek poet Hesiods Theogony, c.700 BC, Tartarus was the third of the deities, following after Chaos and Gaia, and preceding Eros. According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia, as for the place, Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall nine days before it reached the earth. The anvil would take nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus. In the Iliad, Zeus asserts that Tartarus is as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth, while according to Greek mythology the realm of Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes, Zeus killed Campe and released these imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans. The gods of Olympus eventually triumphed, kronos and many of the other Titans were banished to Tartarus, though Prometheus, Epimetheus, Metis and most of the female Titans were spared. Another Titan, Atlas, was sentenced to hold the sky on his shoulders to prevent it from resuming its primordial embrace with the Earth, other gods could be sentenced to Tartarus as well. Apollo is an example, although Zeus freed him. The Hecatonchires became guards of Tartarus prisoners, later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, he threw him into wide Tartarus. Originally, Tartarus was used only to confine dangers to the gods of Olympus, in later mythologies, Tartarus became the place where the punishment fits the crime. But regardless of the impropriety of Zeus frequent conquests, Sisyphus overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could report their indiscretions. When Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain up Sisyphus in Tartarus, Sisyphus tricked Thanatos by asking him how the chains worked and ended up chaining Thanatos and this caused Ares to free Thanatos and turn Sisyphus over to him. Sometime later, Sisyphus had Persephone send him back to the surface to scold his wife for not burying him properly, Sisyphus was forcefully dragged back to Tartarus by Hermes when he refused to go back to the Underworld after that. In Tartarus, Sisyphus was forced to roll a boulder up a mountainside which when he almost reached the crest, rolled away from Sisyphus. King Tantalus also ended up in Tartarus after he cut up his son Pelops, boiled him and he also stole the ambrosia from the Gods and told his people its secrets
14.
Eros
–
In Greek mythology, Eros was the Greek god of sexual attraction. Some myths make him a god, while in other myths. He was one of the winged love gods, Erotes, Eros appears in ancient Greek sources under several different guises. In the earliest sources, he is one of the gods involved in the coming into being of the cosmos. But in later sources, Eros is represented as the son of Aphrodite, whose mischievous interventions in the affairs of gods and mortals cause bonds of love to form, a cult of Eros existed in pre-classical Greece, but it was much less important than that of Aphrodite. However, in antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, according to Hesiod, one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros was the fourth god to come into existence, coming after Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus. However, Parmenides, one of the philosophers, makes Eros the first of all the gods to come into existence. The Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries featured Eros as a very original god, aristophanes, influenced by Orphism, relates the birth of Eros, At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, Darkness, and the Abyss. Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence and he mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. In later myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, Eros was associated with athleticism, with statues erected in gymnasia, and was often regarded as the protector of homosexual love between men. Eros was depicted as carrying a lyre or bow and arrow. He was also depicted accompanied by dolphins, flutes, roosters, roses, “We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy, if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the spells, and make her fall in love with Jason. ”He smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat. Once, when Venus’ son was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, in fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. Enraptured by the beauty of a man, Eros drove Dionysos mad for the girl with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympus. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire. ”The story of Eros and Psyche has a tradition as a folktale of the ancient Greco-Roman world long before it was committed to literature in Apuleius Latin novel. The novel itself is written in a picaresque Roman style, yet Psyche retains her Greek name, Eros and Aphrodite are called by their Latin names, and Cupid is depicted as a young adult, rather than a child
15.
Erebus
–
In Greek literature the name Erebus is also used as a region of the Greek underworld where the dead pass immediately after dying, and is sometimes used interchangeably with Tartarus. The perceived meaning of Erebus is darkness, the first recorded instance of it was place of darkness between earth and Hades, the name Ἔρεβος itself originates from PIE *h1regʷ-es/os- darkness. Hesiod, Theogony The Roman writer Hyginus, in his Fabulae, described Erebus as the father of Geras, notes Sources Evelyn-White, Hugh G. Theogony. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
16.
Nyx
–
Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation and mothered other personified deities such as Hypnos and Thanatos and her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself. In Hesiods Theogony, Nyx is born of Chaos, with Erebus, Nyx gives birth to Aether and Hemera. Later, on her own, Nyx gives birth to Moros, Ker, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Oneiroi, Momus, Oizys, the Hesperides, the Moirai, the Keres, Nemesis, Apate, Philotes, Geras, and Eris. In his description of Tartarus, Hesiod locates there the home of Nyx, Hesiod says further that Nyxs daughter Hemera left Tartarus just as Nyx entered it, continuing cyclicly, when Hemera returned, Nyx left. This mirrors the portrayal of Ratri in the Rigveda, where she works in close cooperation, at Iliad 14. 249–61, Hypnos, the minor deity of sleep, reminds Hera of an old favor after she asks him to put Zeus to sleep. He had once before put Zeus to sleep at the bidding of Hera, Zeus was furious and would have smitten Hypnos into the sea if he had not fled to Nyx, his mother, in fear. Homer goes on to say that Zeus, fearing to anger Nyx, held his fury at bay and he disturbed Zeus only a few times after that always fearing Zeus and running back to his mother, Nyx, who would have confronted Zeus with a maternal fury. Nyx took on a more important role in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus. In them, Nyx, rather than Chaos, is the first principle from all creation emerges. Nyx occupies a cave or adyton, in which she gives oracles, cronus – who is chained within, asleep and drunk on honey – dreams and prophesies. Outside the cave, Adrasteia clashes cymbals and beats upon her tympanon, phanes – the strange, monstrous, hermaphrodite Orphic demiurge – was the child or father of Nyx. Nyx is also the first principle in the chorus of Aristophanes The Birds. Here she is also the mother of Eros, the theme of Nyxs cave or mansion, beyond the ocean or somewhere at the edge of the cosmos may be echoed in the philosophical poem of Parmenides. The classical scholar Walter Burkert has speculated that the house of the goddess to which the philosopher is transported is the palace of Nyx, in Greece, Nyx was only rarely the focus of cults. According to Pausanias, she had an oracle on the acropolis at Megara, more often, Nyx lurked in the background of other cults. Thus there was a statue called Nyx in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Spartans had a cult of Sleep and Death, conceived of as twins. Cult titles composed of compounds of nyx- are attested for several deities, most notably Dionysus Nyktelios nocturnal, in 1997, the International Astronomical Union approved the name Nyx for a mons feature on the planet Venus
17.
Titan (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, the Titans and Titanesses were members of the second generation of divine beings, descending from the primordial deities and preceding the Olympian deities. Based on Mount Othrys, the Titans most famously included the first twelve children of the primordial Gaia and they were giant deities of incredible strength, who ruled during the legendary Golden Age, and also comprised the first pantheon of Greek deities. The first twelve Titans comprised the females Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis and the males Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, like Cronus overthrowing his father Uranus, the Titans were overthrown by Cronus children, in the Titanomachy. The Greeks may have borrowed this mytheme from the Ancient Near East, Greeks of the classical age knew of several poems about the war between the Olympians and Titans. The dominant one, and the one that has survived, was in the Theogony attributed to Hesiod. A lost epic, Titanomachia was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was attributed to Plutarch. The Titans also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus, although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition. Sometimes the elders are supplanted, and sometimes the rebels lose and are either cast out of power entirely or incorporated into the pantheon, the Titanomachy lasted for ten years. The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus after the war had ended, Tartarus is the deepest spot known in the Underworld, where the most evil beings would be cast into to be tortured for all eternity. Hesiod does not have the last word on the Titans, surviving fragments of poetry ascribed to Orpheus preserve some variations on the myth. In such text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently, instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Cronus so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged—still drunk—to the cave of Nyx, another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus, is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the throne for themselves, they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then him and boil. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt, Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll and this story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus Zagreus, and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not. Pindar, Plato, and Oppian refer offhandedly to the Titanic nature of humans, according to them, the body is the titanic part, while soul is the divine part of humans. Other early writers imply that humanity was born out of the malevolent blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus, Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. Beekes connects the word with τιτώ, burket, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution, Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Harvard University Press,1995
18.
Twelve Olympians
–
Hades and Persephone were sometimes included as part of the twelve Olympians, although in general Hades was excluded, because he resided permanently in the underworld and never visited Olympus. The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon, were the deities of the Greek pantheon. The Olympians gained their supremacy in a war of gods in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over their predecessor gods. The concept of the Twelve Gods is older than any extant Greek or Roman source, the gods meet in council in the Homeric epics, but the first ancient reference to religious ceremonies for the Olympians collectively is found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. The Greek cult of the Twelve Olympians can be traced to 6th-century BC Athens, the Altar of the Twelve Gods at Athens is usually dated to the archonship of the younger Pesistratos, in 522/521 BC. In ancient Greek religion, the Olympian Gods and the Cults of Twelve Gods were often relatively distinct concepts, while the number was fixed at twelve, there was considerable variation as to which deities were included. However, the twelve as most commonly portrayed in art and poetry were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia, or Dionysus. Hades, known in the Eleusinian tradition as Pluto, was not usually included among the Olympians because his realm was the underworld. Plato connected the Twelve Olympians with the months, and implies that he considered Pluto one of the twelve in proposing that the final month be devoted to him. In Phaedrus, Plato seems to exclude Hestia from the rank of the great gods. At Olympia there were six altars dedicated to six pairs of gods, Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the Charites and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus, the historian Herodotus states that Heracles was included as one of the Twelve by some. At Kos, Heracles and Dionysus are added to the Twelve, for Pindar, the Bibliotheca, and Herodorus of Heraclea, Heracles is not one of the Twelve Gods, but the one who established their cult. Lucian includes Heracles and Asclepius as members of the Twelve, without explaining which two had to give way for them, hebe, Helios, Selene, Eos, Eros and Persephone are other important gods and goddesses who are sometimes included in a group of twelve. Eros is often depicted alongside the twelve, especially his mother Aphrodite. Notes ^ Romans also associated Phoebus with Helios and the sun itself, however, ^ According to an alternate version of her birth, Aphrodite was born of Uranus, Zeus grandfather, after Cronus threw his castrated genitals into the sea. This supports the etymology of her name, foam-born, as such, Aphrodite would belong to the same generation as Cronus, Zeus father, and would be Zeus aunt. See the birth of Aphrodite The following gods and goddess are sometimes included as one of the twelve Olympians, the following gods and goddesses were not usually counted as Olympians, although they had close ties to them. Aeolus – King of the winds, keeper of the Anemoi, Alpheus – God of the River Alpheus
19.
Chthonic
–
The translation of meaning discusses deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for earth, it refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land. These include, but are not strictly limited to, Demeter. Nocturnal ritual sacrifice was a practice in many chthonic cults. When the sacrifice was a creature, the animal was placed in a bothros or megaron. In some Greek chthonic cults, the animal was sacrificed on a raised bomos, offerings were usually burned whole or buried rather than being cooked and shared among the worshippers. C. He does, however, note that this may be somewhat of an overgeneralization, the myths associating the underworld chthonic deities and fertility were not exclusive. Myths about the later Olympian deities also described an association with the fertility, thus Demeter and Persephone both watched over aspects of the fertility of land, yet Demeter had a typically Olympian cult while Persephone had a chthonic one. Also, Demeter was worshiped alongside Persephone with identical rites, and yet occasionally was classified as an Olympian in late poetry, the absorption of some earlier cults into the newer pantheon versus those that resisted being absorbed is suggested as providing the later myths. The categories Olympian and chthonic were not, however, completely separate, some Olympian deities, such as Hermes and Zeus, also received chthonic sacrifices and tithes in certain locations. The deified heroes Heracles and Asclepius might be worshipped as gods or chthonic heroes, depending on the site, moreover, a few deities are not easily classifiable under these terms. Hecate, for instance, was typically offered puppies at crossroads—a practice neither typical of an Olympian sacrifice nor of a sacrifice to Persephone or the heroes. Because of her roles, Hecate is generally classed as chthonic. As well, the chthonic has connotations with regard to gender, in cultural anthropology, men associated with the above, the sky, and women associated with the below, with the earth, water of the underground, and the chthonic deities. This was by no means universal, in Ancient Egypt the main deity of the earth was the male god Geb, his consort was Nut. The term allochthon in structural geology is used to describe a large block of rock which has moved from its original site of formation. From the Greek allo meaning other and chthon designating the process of the mass being moved under the earth. Chthonic law Earth mother Geomancy Life-death-rebirth deities Sky father The dictionary definition of chthonic at Wiktionary
20.
Aether (mythology)
–
Aether /ˈiːθər/ or Aither, in ancient Greece, was one of the primordial deities. Aether is the personification of the upper air and he embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals. Like Tartarus and Erebus, Aether may have had shrines in ancient Greece, in Hesiods Theogony, Aether, was the son of Erebus and Nyx, and the brother of Hemera. The Roman mythographer Hyginus, says Aether was the son of Chaos, started his Fabulae with a strange hodgepodge of Greek and Roman cosmogonies and early genealogies. It begins as follows, Ex Caligine Chaos, Ex Chao et Caligine Nox Dies Erebus Aether. His genealogy looks like a derivation from Hesiod, but it starts with the un-Hesiodic and un-Roman Caligo, darkness probably did occur in a cosmogonic poem of Alcman, but it seems only fair to say that it was not prominent in Greek cosmogonies. Aristophanes states that Aether was the son of Erebus, however, Damascius says that Aether, Erebus and Chaos were siblings, and the offspring of Chronos. According to Epiphanius, the world began as an egg, encircled by Time. Together they constricted the egg, squeezing its matter with great force, after that, the atoms sorted themselves out. The lighter and finer ones floated above and became the Bright Air and the rarefied Wind, while the heavier and denser atoms sank and became the Earth, see also Platos Myth of Er. The fifth Orphic hymn to Aether describes the substance as the high-reigning, ever indestructible power of Zeus, the best element, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth, A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press,1996, Two volumes, ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9, ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3. Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1914. Hammond, N. G. L. and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Second Edition, Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence, University of Kansas Press,1960, smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
21.
Aion (deity)
–
Aion is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. The time represented by Aion is unbounded, in contrast to Chronos as empirical time divided into past, present and he is thus a god of eternity, associated with mystery religions concerned with the afterlife, such as the mysteries of Cybele, Dionysus, Orpheus, and Mithras. In Latin the concept of the deity may appear as Aevum or Saeculum and he is typically in the company of an earth or mother goddess such as Tellus or Cybele, as on the Parabiago plate. Aion is usually identified as the nude or seminude youth within a circle representing the zodiac, examples include two Roman mosaics from Sentinum and Hippo Regius in Roman Africa, and the Parabiago plate. But because he represents time as a cycle, he may also be imagined as an old man, the imagery of the twining serpent is connected to the hoop or wheel through the ouroboros, a ring formed by a snake holding the tip of its tail in its mouth. The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius notes that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the nature of the year. Martianus Capella identified Aion with Cronus, whose name caused him to be conflated with Chronos. Martianus presents Cronus-Aion as the consort of Rhea as identified with Physis and this deity is represented as the leontocephaline, the winged lion-headed male figure whose nude torso is entwined by a serpent. He typically holds a sceptre, keys, or a thunderbolt, the figure of Time played a considerable, though to us completely obscure, role in Mithraic theology. Aion is identified with Dionysus in Christian and Neoplatonic writers, euripides, however, calls Aion the son of Zeus. The Suda identifies Aion with Osiris, in Ptolemaic Alexandria, at the site of a dream oracle, the Hellenistic syncretic god Serapis was identified as Aion Plutonius. The epithet Plutonius marks functional aspects shared with Pluto, consort of Persephone, epiphanius says that at Alexandria Aions birth from Kore the Virgin was celebrated January 6, On this day and at this hour the Virgin gave birth to Aion. The date, which coincides with Epiphany, brought new years celebrations to a close, the Alexandrian Aion may be a form of Osiris-Dionysus, reborn annually. His image was marked with crosses on his hands, knees, Roman coins associate both Aion and Aeternitas with the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth and cyclical renewal. Aion was among the virtues and divine personifications that were part of late Hellenic discourse, aeon Interpretatio graeca Zurvanism Chronos Kákosy, László. AIΩN in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit, verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Suda On Line, entries naming Aion Views of the Aion mosaic at Munich Glyptothek Images of Aion in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
22.
Ananke (mythology)
–
In ancient Greek religion, Ananke, also spelled Anangke, Anance, or Anagke, is a personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. She is often depicted as holding a spindle, one of the Protogenoi, Ananke marks the beginning of the cosmos, along with her father and consort, Chronos. She was seen as the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance which meant that mortals, as well as the Gods, respected her, considered as the mother of the Fates according to one version, she is the only one to have control over their decisions. According to the ancient Greek traveller Pausanias, there was a temple in ancient Corinth where the goddesses Ananke, Ananke is derived from the common Ancient Greek noun ἀνάγκη, meaning force, constraint or necessity. The common noun itself is of uncertain etymology, homer refers to her being as necessity, often abstracted in modern translation or force. In Ancient Greek literature the word is used meaning fate or destiny. She appears often in poetry, as Simonides does, Even the gods fight against ananke. The pre-modern is carried over and translated into a modern philosophical sense as necessity. In Orphic mythology, she is a self-formed being who emerged at the dawn of creation with an incorporeal, serpentine form, Ananke and Chronos are mates, mingling together in serpent form as a tie around the universe. Together they have crushed the primal egg of creation of which constituent parts became earth, heaven, Ananke was the mother of Adrasteia, the distributor of rewards and punishments. Lakhesis, the daughter of Ananke. Only when I have been bent by pangs and tortures infinite am I to escape my bondage, skill is weaker by far than Ananke. Chorus, Who then is the helmsman of Ananke, prometheus, The three-shaped Moirai and mindful Erinyes. Chorus, Can it be that Zeus has less power than they do, prometheus, Yes, in that even he cannot escape what is foretold. Chorus, Why, what is fated for Zeus except to hold eternal sway, prometheus, This you must not learn yet, do not be over-eager. Chorus, It is some solemn secret, surely, that you enshroud in mystery, the word Ananke is featured in Victor Hugos novel Notre-Dame of Paris, written upon a wall of Notre-Dame by the hand of Dom Claude Frollo. In his Toute la Lyre, Hugo also mentions Ananke as a symbol of love, here is what Hugo had to write about it in 1866. In Philip K. Dicks novel VALIS, Ananke is mentioned as blind necessity or blind chance, according to some experts. blind chance, chaos, described alongside the term Noos as the overwhelming chaos which reason, Noos, tries to constrain
23.
Chronos
–
Chronos is the personification of Time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature. Chronos already was confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the identification became more widespread during the Renaissance, giving rise to the allegory of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe. He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel, Chronos might also be contrasted with the deity Aion as Eternal Time. Chronos is usually portrayed as an old, wise man with a long, grey beard, during antiquity, Chronos was occasionally interpreted as Cronus. According to Plutarch, the Greeks believed that Cronus was a name for Chronos. In addition to the name, the story of Cronus eating his children was also interpreted as an allegory to an aspect of time held within Cronus sphere of influence. During the Renaissance, the identification of Cronus and Chronos gave rise to Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe, the original meaning and etymology of the word chronos are uncertain. Some of the current English words whose etymological root is khronos/chronos include chronology, chronometer, chronic, anachronism, in the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was engendered by earth and water, and produced Aether and Chaos, and an egg. It produced the hermaphroditic god Phanes who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the creator of the cosmos. Pherecydes of Syros in his lost Heptamychos, around 6th century BC, the semen of Chronos was placed in the recesses and produced the first generation of gods
24.
Hemera
–
In Greek mythology Hemera was the personification of day and one of the Greek primordial deities. She is the goddess of the daytime and, according to Hesiod, Hemera is remarked upon in Ciceros De Natura Deorum, where it is logically determined that Dies must be a god, if Uranus is a god. The poet Bacchylides states that Nyx and Chronos are the parents and she was the female counterpart of her brother and consort, Aether, but neither of them figured actively in myth or cult. Hyginus lists their children as Uranus, Gaia, and Thalassa, pausanias seems to confuse her with Eos when saying that she carried Cephalus away. Pausanias makes this identification with Eos upon looking at the tiling of the portico in Athens. He makes this identification again at Amyklai and at Olympia, upon looking at statues and illustrations where Eos is present
25.
Moirai
–
In Greek mythology, the Moirai or Moerae /ˈmɪrˌiː/ or /ˈmiːˌriː/, often known in English as the Fates, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny, their Roman equivalent was the Parcae. Their number became fixed at three, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos and they controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, in the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa, is related with the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny. In the Theogony of Hesiod, the three Moirai are personified, daughters of Nyx and are acting over the gods, later they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, who was the embodiment of divine order and law. In Platos Republic the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke and it seems that Moira is related with Tekmor and with Ananke, who were primeval goddesses in mythical cosmogonies. The ancient Greek writers might call this power Moira or Ananke, the concept of a universal principle of natural order has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures like the Vedic Rta, the Avestan Asha and the Egyptian Maat. In earliest Greek philosophy, the cosmogony of Anaximander is based on these mythical beliefs, the goddess Dike, keeps the order and sets a limit to any actions. Moira may mean portion or share in the distribution of booty, portion in life, lot, destiny, death, portion of the distributed land. The word is used for something which is meet and right It seems that originally the word moira did not indicate destiny but included ascertainment or proof. The word daemon, which was an agent related to unexpected events, the word dike, justice, conveyed the notion that someone should stay within his own specified boundaries, respecting the ones of his neighbour. If someone broke his boundaries, thus getting more than his ordained part, in modern Greek the word came to mean destiny. Kismet, the course of events in the Muslim traditions, seems to have a similar etymology and function, Arabic qismat lot qasama, to divide. As a loanword, qesmat fate appears in Persian, whence in Urdu language, when they were three, the three Moirai were, Clotho spun the thread of life from her Distaff onto her Spindle. Her Roman equivalent was Nona, who was originally a goddess called upon in the month of pregnancy. Lachesis measured the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod, Atropos was the cutter of the thread of life. She chose the manner of each death, and when their time was come. In the Republic of Plato, the three Moirai sing in unison with the music of the Seirenes, Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be. Pindar in his Hymn to the Fates, holds them in high honour, send us rose-bossomed Lawfulness, and her sisters on glittering thrones, Right and crowned Peace, and make this city forget the misfortunes which lie heavily on her heart
26.
Phanes (mythology)
–
In these myths Phanes is often equated with Eros and Mithras and has been depicted as a deity emerging from a cosmic egg, entwined with a serpent. He had a helmet and had broad, golden wings, the Orphic cosmogony is bizarre, and quite unlike the creation sagas offered by Homer and Hesiod. Scholars have suggested that Orphism is un-Greek even Asiatic in conception, time, who was also called Aion, created the silver egg of the universe, out of this egg burst out the first-born, Phanes. Many threads of earlier myths are apparent in the new tradition, Phanes was believed to have been hatched from the World-Egg of Chronos and Ananke or Nyx in the black bird form and wind. His older wife Nyx called him Protogenus, as she created nighttime, he created daytime. He also created the method of creation by mingling and he was made the ruler of the deities and passed the sceptre to Nyx. This new Orphic tradition states that Nyx later gave the sceptre to her son Uranos before it passed to Cronus and then to Zeus, who retained it. According to Aristophanes, whence he is called Eros, he was born from an egg created by Nyx, after which he mates with Chaos and creates the birds. This passage seeks to demonstrate that the birds are considered older than all living creatures. The Protogonos Theogony is known through the commentary in the Derveni papyrus and references in Empedocles, according to Damascius, Phanes was the first god “expressible and acceptable to human ears”. Another orphic hymns states, You scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping wings, you whirled about. For this I call you Phanes, dionysus of the Orphic tradition is intimately connected to Protogonos. In the Orphic tradition, Dionysus-Protogonos-Phanes is a dying and rising god, eusebius tell us the story of his death and recreation. Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Volume 1, Chapter 10
27.
Pontus (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Pontus was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the Greek primordial deities. Pontus was Gaias son and has no father, according to the Greek poet Hesiod, he was born without coupling, though according to Hyginus, Pontus is son of Aether and Gaia. For Hesiod, Pontus seems little more than a personification of the sea, ho pontos, with Gaia, he fathered Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys and his sister-consort Ceto, and the Strong Goddess Eurybia. With the sea goddess Thalassa, he fathered the Telchines and all sea life, in a Roman sculpture of the 2nd century AD, Pontus, rising from seaweed, grasps a rudder with his right hand and leans on the prow of a ship. He wears a crown, and accompanies Fortuna, whose draperies appear at the left. She bore also the deep with his raging swell, Pontus. And yet again he got great Thaumas and proud Phorcys, being mated with Earth, - Hyginus, Fabulae Preface Pontus, historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea
28.
Thalassa (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Thalassa was the primeval spirit of the sea, of whom it has been suggested that she was of Pre-Greek origin. Gaius Julius Hyginus described her in the preface to his Fabulae as daughter of Aether, with her male counterpart Pontus, she spawned the tribes of fish. The couple were replaced by the other marine pairs, Oceanus and Tethys, Poseidon. Nevertheless, fables were devoted to her by Aesop and she was to be depicted in both artistic and literary works during the Common Era, two rather similar fables are recorded by Babrius. In one, numbered 168 in the Perry Index, a farmer witnesses a shipwreck, assuming the form of a woman, she answers by blaming the winds for her turbulence. Otherwise “I am gentler than that dry land of yours. ”In the other, a survivor from a shipwreck accuses the sea of treachery and receives the same excuse. But for the winds, “by nature I am as calm and safe as the land. ”In yet another fable, Perry’s number 412 and only recorded by Syntipas, the sea replies that if they know as much, they should avoid such contact. The commentary suggests that the tale may be applied to people who criticize someone inappropriately even though they may actually be helping them, in this case he had been badly scorched and asks her to soothe his wounds. While the sea-divinities Tethys and Oceanus were formerly represented in Roman-era mosaics, they were replaced at a period by the figure of Thalassa. There she was depicted as a woman clothed in bands of seaweed and half submerged in the sea, in one hand she holds a ships oar, and in the other a dolphin. In 2011, Swoon created a site-specific installation depicting the goddess in the atrium of the New Orleans Museum of Art, in fall 2016, the installation was erected once more in the atrium of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Media related to Thalassa at Wikimedia Commons
29.
Uranus (mythology)
–
Uranus was the primal Greek god personifying the sky. His name in Roman mythology was Caelus, in Ancient Greek literature, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. According to Hesiods Theogony, Uranus was conceived by Gaia alone, elemental Earth, Sky and Styx might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic. The most probable etymology traces the name to a Proto-Greek form *worsanós enlarged from *ṷorsó-, the basic Indo-European root is *ṷérs- ‘to rain, moisten’, making Ouranos the ‘rainmaker’. A less likely etymology is a derivative with meaning ‘the one standing on high’ from PIE *ṷérso-, georges Dumézil’s equation of Ouranos’ name with that of the Vedic deity Váruṇa, god of the sky and waters, is etymologically untenable. In Hesiods Theogony, Uranus is the offspring of Gaia, the earth goddess, alcman and Callimachus elaborate that Uranus was fathered by Aether, the god of heavenly light and the upper air. Under the influence of the philosophers, Cicero, in De Natura Deorum, claims that he was the offspring of the ancient gods Aether and Hemera, Air, according to the Orphic Hymns, Uranus was the son of Nyx, the personification of night. Uranus was the brother of Pontus, the God of the sea, further, according to the Theogony, when Cronus castrated Uranus, from Uranus blood, which splattered onto the earth, came the Erinyes, the Giants, and the Meliae. In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the Theogony, Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod named their first six sons and six daughters the Titans, Uranus imprisoned Gaias youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus, only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing, he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, from the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes, the Meliae, and, according to some, the Telchines. From the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite, after Uranus was deposed, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hekatonkheires and Cyclopes in Tartarus. Uranus and Gaia then prophesied that Cronus in turn was destined to be overthrown by his own son, zeus, through deception by his mother Rhea, avoided this fate. These ancient myths of distant origins were not expressed in cults among the Hellenes, the function of Uranus was as the vanquished god of an elder time, before real time began. After his castration, the Sky came no more to cover the Earth at night, but held to its place, Uranus was scarcely regarded as anthropomorphic, aside from the genitalia in the castration myth. He was simply the sky, which was conceived by the ancients as a dome or roof of bronze. Olympus is almost always used of, but ouranos often refers to the sky above us without any suggestion that the gods
30.
Emptiness
–
Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy. A sense of emptiness is also part of a process of grief, as resulting of separation, death of a loved one. However, the meanings of “emptiness” vary with the particular context. In the West, feeling empty is often viewed as a negative condition, psychologist Clive Hazell, for example, attributes feelings of emptiness to problematic family backgrounds with abusive relationships and mistreatment. He claims that people who are facing a sense of emptiness try to resolve their painful feelings by becoming addicted to a drug or obsessive activity or engaging in frenzied action or violence. In sociology, a sense of emptiness is associated with social alienation of the individual, in political philosophy, emptiness is associated with nihilism. The concept of emptiness was important to a type of existentialist philosophy. Existentialism, the movement that gives voice to the sense of alienation and despair. People whose response to the sense of emptiness and aloneness is to give excuses live in bad faith, people who face the emptiness, existentialists argue that man lives in alienation from God, from nature, from other men, from his own true self. Crowded into cities, working in jobs, and entertained by light mass media, we live on the surface of life, so that even people who seemingly have everything feel empty, uneasy. In cultures where a sense of emptiness is seen as a psychological condition. As such, many of the treatments are proposed, psychotherapy, group therapy. As well, people who feel empty may be advised to keep busy and maintain a schedule of work. In Austrian philosopher/educator Rudolf Steiners thinking, spiritual emptiness was a problem in the educated European middle class. In his 1919 lectures he argued that European culture became empty of spirit and ignorant of the needs, the conditions, people experienced a spiritual emptiness and their thinking became marked by a lazy passivity due to the absence of will from the life of thought. The educated middle classes began to think in a way that was devoid of spirit, with their minds becoming dimmer and darker, louis Dupré, a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, argues that the spiritual emptiness of our time is a symptom of its religious poverty. Spiritual emptiness has been associated with juvenile violence, a professor of human development, Garbarino claims that violent boys have an alienation from positive role models and a spiritual emptiness that spawns despair. These youth are seduced by the violent fantasy of the US gun culture and he claims that boys can be helped by giving them a sense of purpose and spiritual anchors that can anchor boys in empathy and socially engaged moral thinking
31.
Chasm
–
In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the Earths crust and lithosphere are being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben with normal faulting, where rifts remain above sea level they form a rift valley, which may be filled by water forming a rift lake. The axis of the area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many. Major rifts occur along the axis of most mid-ocean ridges. Failed rifts are the result of rifting that failed to continue to the point of break-up. Typically the transition from rifting to spreading develops at a junction where three converging rifts meet over a hotspot. Two of these evolve to the point of spreading, while the third ultimately fails. Most rifts consist of a series of segments that together form the linear zone characteristic of rifts. The individual rift segments have a dominantly half-graben geometry, controlled by a single basin-bounding fault, segment lengths vary between rifts, depending on the elastic thickness of the lithosphere. Areas of thick colder lithosphere, such as the Baikal Rift have segment lengths in excess of 80 km, while in areas of warmer thin lithosphere, segment lengths may be less than 30 km. Along the axis of the rift the position, and in cases the polarity. Segment boundaries often have a complex structure and generally cross the rift axis at a high angle. These segment boundary zones accommodate the differences in fault displacement between the segments and are known as accommodation zones. Accommodation zones may be located where older crustal structures intersect the rift axis, in the Gulf of Suez rift, the Zaafarana accommodation zone is located where a shear zone in the Arabian-Nubian Shield meets the rift. At the onset of rifting, the part of the lithosphere starts to extend on a series of initially unconnected normal faults. In subaerial rifts, drainage at this stage is generally internal, as the rift evolves, some of the individual fault segments grow, eventually becoming linked together to form the larger bounding faults. Subsequent extension becomes concentrated on these faults, the longer faults and wider fault spacing leads to more continuous areas of fault-related subsidence along the rift axis. Significant uplift of the rift shoulders develops at this stage, strongly influencing drainage, during rifting, as the crust is thinned, the Earths surface subsides and the Moho becomes correspondingly raised
32.
Old English
–
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
33.
Darkness
–
Darkness, the polar opposite to brightness, is understood to be the condition of a very small amount or even an absence of visible light. There is no such thing as darkness, its just the absence of light, humans are unable to distinguish color in conditions of either high brightness or darkness. In conditions of insufficient light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, the emotional response to darkness has generated metaphorical usages of the term in many cultures. Complete darkness is when the sun is more than 18 degrees below the horizon, the perception of darkness differs from the mere absence of light due to the effects of after images on perception. In perceiving, the eye is active, and the part of the retina that is unstimulated produces a complementary afterimage, in terms of physics, an object is said to be dark when it absorbs photons, causing it to appear dim compared to other objects. For example, matte black paint does not reflect much visible light and appears dark, whereas white paint reflects lots of light, an object may appear dark, but it may be bright at a frequency that humans cannot perceive. A dark area has limited light sources, making hard to see. Exposure to alternating light and darkness has caused several evolutionary adaptations to darkness, when a vertebrate, like a human, enters a dark area, its pupils dilate, allowing more light to enter the eye and improving night vision. Also, the light detecting cells in the eye will regenerate more unbleached rhodopsin when adapting to darkness. The color of a point, on a standard 24-bit computer display, is defined by three RGB values, each ranging from 0-255. When the red, green, and blue components of a pixel are fully illuminated, the pixel appears white, artists use darkness to emphasize and contrast the presence of light. Darkness can be used as a counterpoint to areas of lightness to create leading lines, such shapes draw the eye around areas of the painting. Shadows add depth and perspective to a painting, see chiaroscuro for a discussion of the uses of such contrasts in visual media. Color paints are mixed together to create darkness, because each color absorbs certain frequencies of light, theoretically, mixing together the three primary colors, or the three secondary colors, will absorb all visible light and create black. In practice it is difficult to prevent the mixture from taking on a brown tint, as a poetic term in the Western world, darkness is used to connote the presence of shadows, evil, and foreboding. The 1820 short story A Visit to the Lunar Sphere tells of a machine where prisms reflect light into bottles where it is captured. The first creation narrative in Christianity begins with darkness, into which is introduced the creation of light, the Quran has been interpreted to say that those who transgress the bounds of what is right are doomed to burning despair and ice-cold darkness. In Chinese philosophy Yin is the feminine part of the Taijitu and is represented by a dark lobe
34.
Pherecydes of Syros
–
Pherecydes of Syros was a Greek thinker from the island of Syros. Pherecydes authored a cosmogony, derived from three principles, Zas, Cthonie and Chronos, known as the Pentemychos. It formed a bridge between the thought of Hesiod and pre-Socratic philosophy. His work is lost, but it survived into the Hellenistic period, Pherecydes was said to have been the first writer to communicate philosophical musings in prose. According to William, Aristotle regarded him partly a mythological writer and Plutarch, according to tradition Pherecydes was a native of the island of Syros and flourished in the 59th Olympiad. It was said that he was a son of one Babys, Schibli dates his birth in the 49th olympiad. Aristotle wrote in his Metaphysics of Pherecydes being in part a mythological writer and Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives and he was considered to have had the greater significance in teaching on the subject of metempsychosis. His writings were extant in the Hellenistic period, although only fragments have survived to the present day and his works were written in prose rather than verse and he has been said to have been the first to have communicated or conveyed philosophical musings in this form. Tradition maintains that Pherecydes lived in two caves in the part of the island of Syros. His summer habitation remains a popular tourist destination to this day, some sources say that Pherecydes book was entitled Pentemychos translated as five recesses. in some sources said to have been titled Heptamychos. The author of the modern scholarly book devoted entirely to Pherecydes, Hermann S. Schibli. In this work, Pherecydes taught his philosophy through the medium of mythic representations, although it is lost, the fragments that survive are enough to reconstruct a basic outline. In the older cosmogony of Hesiod the initial state of the universe is Chaos, a dark void considered as a divine primordial condition, Pherecydes probably interpreted chaos as water and he does not place it at the very beginning. In his cosmogony there are three principles, Zas, Cthonie and Chronos who always existed. The semen of Chronos which can probably be considered as a watery chaos was placed in the recesses and this is described in a fragment preserved in Damascius On First Principles. A close relationship is thought to exist between these recesses and Chthonie, Hesiod described Tartaros as being in a recess of broad-wayed earth. Hermann S. Schibli thinks the five muchos were actually harboured within Chthonie, alongside Chthonie and Chronos, Pherecydes held a power called Zas. Zas, comparable with the Orphic Eros in function, and as such a personification of masculine creativity
35.
Pre-Socratic philosophy
–
Pre-Socratic philosophy is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates and schools contemporary to Socrates that were not influenced by him. In Classical antiquity, the Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi, Aristotle called them physikoi because they sought natural explanations for phenomena, as opposed to the earlier theologoi, whose philosophical basis was supernatural. Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups, Ionian, led by Anaximander, and the Italiote, led by Pythagoras, hermann Diels popularized the term pre-socratic in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker in 1903. However, the term pre-Sokratic was in use as early as George Grotes Plato, edouard Zeller was also important in dividing thought before and after Socrates. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes and it may sometimes be difficult to determine the actual line of argument some Presocratics used in supporting their particular views. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts has survived in complete form, all that is available are quotations by later philosophers and historians, and the occasional textual fragment. The Presocratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw them in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked questions about the essence of things, From where does everything come, how do we explain the plurality of things found in nature. How might we describe nature mathematically, others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study. Later philosophers rejected many of the answers the early Greek philosophers provided, furthermore, the cosmologies proposed by them have been updated by later developments in science. Western philosophy began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE, the Presocratics were mostly from the eastern or western fringes of the Greek world. Their efforts were directed to the investigation of the ultimate basis and they sought the material principle of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. As the first philosophers, they emphasized the unity of things. Only fragments of the writings of the presocratics survive. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts - known as doxography - of later philosophical writers, the first Presocratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia. Thales is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy, he declared water to be the basis of all things, next came Anaximander, the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His younger contemporary, Anaximenes, took for his air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water
36.
Cosmogony
–
Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of either the cosmos or universe. Developing a complete theoretical model has implications in both the philosophy of science and epistemology, the word comes from the Koine Greek κοσμογονία and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα. The Big Bang theory is the cosmological model of the early development of the universe. The most commonly held view is that the universe was once a gravitational singularity, however, while this expansion is well-modeled by the Big Bang theory, the origins of the singularity remain as one of the unsolved problems in physics. Cosmologist and science communicator Sean M, one cosmogonical view sees time as fundamental and even eternal, The universe could have contained the singularity because the universe evolved or changed from a prior state. The other view, held by proponents like Stephen Hawking, says there was no change through time because time itself emerged along with this universe. Thus, it unclear what combination of stuff, space, or time emerged with the singularity. One problem in cosmogony is that there is no theoretical model that explains the earliest moments of the universes existence because of a lack of a testable theory of quantum gravity. Researchers in string theory and its extensions, and of quantum cosmology, have nevertheless proposed solutions of the type just discussed. Another issue facing the field of physics is a need for more expensive. Cosmogony can be distinguished from cosmology, which studies the universe at large and throughout its existence, there is some ambiguity between the two terms. For example, the argument from theology regarding the existence of God is technically an appeal to cosmogonical rather than cosmological ideas. In practice, there is a distinction between cosmological and cosmogonical ideas. Physical cosmology is the science that attempts to explain all observations relevant to the development, cosmogonists have only tentative theories for the early stages of the universe and its beginning. Therefore, significant technological and conceptual advances would be needed to propose a scientific test for cosmogonical theories, proposed theoretical scenarios differ radically, and include string theory and M-theory, the Hartle–Hawking initial state, string landscape, brane inflation, the Big Bang, and the ekpyrotic universe. Some of these models are compatible, whereas others are not
37.
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
38.
Heraclitus
–
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, and a native of the city of Ephesus, then part of the Persian Empire. Little is known about his life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught. Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change as being the essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying. This position was complemented by his commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that the path up and down are one. Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties and this, along with his cryptic utterance that all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Diogenes said that Heraclitus flourished in the 69th Olympiad, 504–501 BC, All the rest of the evidence — the people Heraclitus is said to have known, or the people who were familiar with his work — confirms the floruit. His dates of birth and death are based on a span of 60 years. Heraclitus was born to a family in Ephesus, in the Persian Empire, in what is now called present-day Efes. His father was named either Blosôn or Herakôn, how much power the king had is another question. Ephesus had been part of the Persian Empire since 547 and was ruled by a satrap, two extant letters between Heraclitus and Darius I, quoted by Diogenes, are undoubtedly later forgeries. With regard to education, Diogenes says that Heraclitus was wondrous from childhood, Diogenes relates that Sotion said he was a hearer of Xenophanes, which contradicts Heraclitus statement that he had taught himself by questioning himself. Burnet states in any case that, Xenophanes left Ionia before Herakleitos was born. Diogenes relates that as a boy Heraclitus had said he knew nothing and his statement that he heard no one but questioned himself, can be placed alongside his statement that the things that can be seen, heard and learned are what I prize the most. Diogenes relates that Heraclitus had an opinion of human affairs. He believed that Hesiod and Pythagoras lacked understanding though learned and that Homer, laws needed to be defended as though they were city walls. Timon is said to have called him a mob-reviler, Heraclitus hated the Athenians and his fellow Ephesians, wishing the latter wealth in punishment for their wicked ways. Says Diogenes, Finally, he became a hater of his kind, making his diet of grass and herbs. Heraclitus life as a philosopher was interrupted by dropsy, the physicians he consulted were unable to prescribe a cure
39.
Anaximander
–
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales and he succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and, arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils. Little of his life and work is known today, according to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies, although only one fragment of his work remains. Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man, like many thinkers of his time, Anaximanders philosophy included contributions to many disciplines. In astronomy, he attempted to describe the mechanics of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth, in physics, his postulation that the indefinite was the source of all things led Greek philosophy to a new level of conceptual abstraction. His knowledge of geometry allowed him to introduce the gnomon in Greece and he created a map of the world that contributed greatly to the advancement of geography. He was also involved in the politics of Miletus and was sent as a leader to one of its colonies, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was born in the third year of the 42nd Olympiad. According to Apollodorus of Athens, Greek grammarian of the 2nd century BC, he was years old during the second year of the 58th Olympiad. Establishing a timeline of his work is now impossible, since no document provides chronological references, Themistius, a 4th-century Byzantine rhetorician, mentions that he was the first of the known Greeks to publish a written document on nature. Therefore, his texts would be amongst the earliest written in prose, by the time of Plato, his philosophy was almost forgotten, and Aristotle, his successor Theophrastus and a few doxographers provide us with the little information that remains. However, we know from Aristotle that Thales, also from Miletus and it is debatable whether Thales actually was the teacher of Anaximander, but there is no doubt that Anaximander was influenced by Thales theory that everything is derived from water. 3rd-century Roman rhetorician Aelian depicts him as leader of the Milesian colony to Apollonia on the Black Sea coast, indeed, Various History explains that philosophers sometimes also dealt with political matters. It is very likely that leaders of Miletus sent him there as a legislator to create a constitution or simply to maintain the colony’s allegiance. Anaximanders theories were influenced by the Greek mythical tradition, and by some ideas of Thales – the father of philosophy – as well as by observations made by older civilizations in the East. This was a practice for the Greek philosophers in a society which saw gods everywhere, therefore they could fit their ideas into a tolerably elastic system. Some scholars see a gap between the mythical and the new rational way of thought which is the main characteristic of the archaic period in the Greek city states. This has given rise to the phrase Greek miracle, but if we follow carefully the course of Anaximanders ideas, we will notice that there was not such an abrupt break as initially appears. The basic elements of nature which the first Greek philosophers believed that constituted the universe represent in fact the primordial forces of previous thought and their collision produced what the mythical tradition had called cosmic harmony
40.
Xenophanes
–
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25, some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers. He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating fame that will all of Greece. Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, a city in Ionia, some say he was the son of Orthomenes, others the son of Dexius. He is said to have flourished during the 60th Olympiad and his surviving work refers to Thales, Epimenides, and Pythagoras, and he himself is mentioned in the writings of Heraclitus and Epicharmus. In a fragment of his elegies, he describes the Median invasion as an event that took place in his time and he left his native land as a fugitive or exile and went to the Ionian colonies in Sicily, Zancle and Catana. He probably lived for time in Elea, since he wrote about the foundation of that colony. According an elegy reputedly composed when he was 92 years old, he left his land at the age of 25. According to biographer Diogenes Laërtius, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and also composed elegies and iambics against Homer, laertius also mentions two historical poems concerning the founding of Colophon and Elea, but of these, only the titles have been preserved. There is no authority that says that Xenophanes wrote a philosophical poem. The Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius tells us he had never met with the verses about the earth stretching infinitely downwards, several of the philosophical fragments are derived from commentators on Homer. It is thus likely that the remarks of Xenophanes were expressed incidentally in his satires. Xenophanes surviving writings display a skepticism that more commonly expressed during the fourth century. He satirized traditional religious views of his time as human projections, sextus Empiricus reported that such observations were appreciated by Christian apologists. Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and blackThracians that they are pale and red-haired. But mortals think that the gods are born and have the mortals own clothes and voice, regarding Xenophanes theology five key concepts about God can be formed. God is, beyond human morality, does not resemble human form, cannot die or be born, no divine hierarchy exists, and God does not intervene in human affairs. While Xenophanes is rejecting Homeric theology, he is not questioning the presence of an entity, rather his philosophy is a critique on Ancient Greek writers
41.
Aristophanes
–
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete and these, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and are used to define it. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy and his second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. In my opinion, he says through the Chorus in that play, less is known about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact, his plays are the source of information about him. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the author during a called the parabasis. However, these facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist, Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that other times would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, in politics, such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions. It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience, an elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five in number. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10000 at the Theatre of Dionysus, the conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays, throughout most of Aristophanes career, the Chorus was essential to a plays success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, when Aristophanes first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation yet they are not jingoistic, the plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. However it is whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters and he won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis, Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes, the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death
42.
The Birds (play)
–
The Birds is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia where it won second prize and it has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs. In spite of that, the play has many references to Athenian political and social life. It is the longest of Aristophanes surviving plays and yet it is a conventional example of Old Comedy. The play begins with two middle-aged men stumbling across a hillside wilderness, guided by a pet crow and a pet jackdaw, just then a very large and fearsome bird emerges from a camouflaged bower, demanding to know what they are up to and accusing them of being bird-catchers. He turns out to be the Hoopoes servant and they appease him and he returns indoors to fetch his master. Moments later the Hoopoe himself appears—a not very convincing bird who attributes his lack of feathers to a case of moulting. The Hoopoe likes the idea and he agrees to help implement it and he calls to his wife, the Nightingale, and bids her to begin her celestial music. These soon begin to appear and each of them is identified by name on arrival, four of them dance together while the rest form into a Chorus. On discovering the presence of men, the newly arrived birds fly into a fit of alarm and outrage, the birds are completely won over and urge the Athenians to lead them in their war against the usurping gods. The clever one then introduces himself as Pisthetaerus and his companion is introduced as Euelpides and they retire to the Hoopoes bower to chew on a magical root that will transform them into birds. Meanwhile, the Nightingale emerges from her place and reveals herself as an enchantingly feminine figure. It cites some of the benefits the audience derives from birds, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides emerge from the Hoopoes bower laughing at each others unconvincing resemblance to a bird. Pisthetaerus chases off all these intruders and then retires indoors to finish the religious service, the birds of the Chorus step forward for another parabasis. They promulgate laws forbidding crimes against their kind and they end by advising the festival judges to award them first place or risk getting defecated on, a second messenger then arrives with news that one of the Olympian gods has sneaked through the defenses. A hunt is organized, the goddess Iris is detected and cornered, after being interrogated and insulted by Pisthetaerus, she is allowed to fly off to her father Zeus to complain about her treatment. Hardly has she gone when a messenger arrives, declaring that men in their multitudes are now flocking to join the new city-in-the-sky. Another set of unwelcome visitors arrives as advertised, singing because inspired by the new city, One is a rebellious youth who exults in the notion that here at last he has permission to beat up his father
.jpg)
_-_Walters_W1061R_-_Full_Page.jpg)
