“From the Heliconion muses let us sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon and dance upon lithe feet around the deep blue spring before the holy altar of Zeus…”

Hesiod, shepherd, in sorrow and frustration, in a crisis of faith, would have carried and worn a fleece or goat hide over his shoulders, and to be used as a shield draped over the left arm. His most common attribution for Zeus is aegis-holder. The aegis was sometimes borne by Athena as well, the gray-eyed goddess. It is equated with a shepherd’s cloak/shield. It is gray and Zeus numerous attributions as cloud-gatherer, thunderer, storm-bringer, lightning-hurler, who was aided by his gray-eyed daughter as well as three cyclopes, speaks of storm. The cyclops were named after the cyclone, the wheel, either the eye of a storm or the cycle of storm, with a single wheel-shaped eye within their forehead. It seems that the most accurate translation of the aegis would be Storm-shield. A shield, as well known by any ancient warrior, was not purely, or even primarily, a defensive item. It was a weapon, more offensive than the sword, partner of the spear, king of battle, to the sword’s queenly rank. [1]

Hesiod’s own aegis would protect him against wolves and men while his sling and staff kept them at bay. I surmise that the deep debt of antiquitous faith to the aegis was related to the fact that surviving peoples migrated with flocks, where crops must be left where they are. Just as Isrаel were shepherds, so Jason was a shepherd of men. I imagine that aegis-holder Zeus being the most common attribution of the Almighty God in Hellenic faith was related to a foundational crisis migration which shepherds survived and farmers did not.

Hesiod continues his overture:

“And once they taught Hesiod fine singing, as he tended his lambs below holy Helicon. This is what the goddesses said to me first, the Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder:

“Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true, but we know to sing true when we will.”

These daughters of Zeus despise eaters. They also possess the arrogance of the modern media influencer, the pretty face behind the news desk who lie to we the follower with cruel regularity. The muses then plucked and gave Hesiod a rod and set him upon his holy education concerning the higher powers.

Before continuing with notable quotes, I will avoid naming the more than 100 deities listed in a dizzying array and according to various branches. There are original primary powers that far predate Zeus, creator of mankind, father of gods and men. Only these I will list here before entering into a discussion of The Creator in Hesiod’s eyes.

The Eight Primal Powers in Order of Advent

-1. Chasm/Chaos [male] pre exististing

-2. Earth/Gaia [female] “mother of us all” who births Heaven and Ocean without a sire, of her own power, as Chasm appears to have brought her into being

-3. Eros/Love [male] out of Chasm

-4. Erebos/Darkness [male] (not night, but deeper and outer darks, like Tartarus and Hades) out of Chasm

-5. Night [female] Bride of Darkness, mother of Bright Air and Day, out of chasm, born in the first sexual union between Erebos and Night, with, it seems Eros as the match maker of the primal powers.

-6. Uranus/Heaven [male] son/mate of Earth, who sire Time/Khronos in union with her, born by earth without a mate

Here the first power is preexisting and powers 2 thru 7 are asexually brought into being.

-7. Ocean [male] born by Earth and then, like Heaven, also sprung from her, mating with her to sire a multitude of powers

Time is the youngest of 11 powers born of the second union with Earth and Heaven, the third Union being Earth and Ocean.

-8. Khronos/Time [male] born of Heaven and Earth, castrates his father Heaven then mates with Mother Earth, and is in turn unseated by Zeus, who does have the decency not to mate with his mother, but with his sisters instead. The 11 brothers and sisters of Khronos, including Hyperion, continue as sources of generation.

From these 8 powers various generative powers, such as Zeus, who came increasingly to be referred to as God in late antiquity, were credited with Hesiod of weaving a living world, which included every river being a masculine god, except for Styx, the river of the Underworld, who is female. The variety of minor deities is as dizzying as the angels, devils and demons of Christianity, which were, under the early Church, explicitly named as an empire of the demons.

These are reflective of the implicit powers of creation that that God in Genesis activates with his will.

Zeus would create man numerous times as the Hebrew almighty did in Genesis. He would also afflict mankind with plague and calamity, with the help of various lesser powers, as Jehovah did to Job with the aid of Satan, his agent. As with Jehovah in Exodus, Zeus does good and evil to mankind and is jealous of man’s regard for Him.

Zeus’ most common cult titles in Hesiod and beyond to historic accounts of Xenophon and Arrian include:

-1. Strormshield

-2. Cloudgatherer

-3. Thunderer [his name is Thunderchief.]

-4. Allknowing

-5. Allseeing [widebrowed]

-6. Almighty

-7. Allfather

-8. Deliverer

-9. Of Oaths

-10. Of Safe Landings

-11. Lord

-12. Timeholder [The Christian God is said to reside outside of Time]

-13. God [see Seneca and Arrian]

-14. The Father

-15. Heavenly Father [currently used in Western America]

There are more, even in Hesiod, with half of them congruent with Norse and Biblical notions of the Lord of Heaven.

“Though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly troubled soul, when a singer recounts the deeds of men of old and of the blessed gods, at once he forgets his heaviness and is relieved of sorrows, reflecting again on the gifts of the goddesses who turn him away from affliction.”

Though Hesiod is said to have composed Works and Days first, that remains a deeply religious work constantly pleading with Zeus for Justice. Thus, I thought an overview of Theogony was here due as a preface.

This pleasing poem I have enjoyed near 40 times alone in the dark and at this keyboard, ends abruptly, and according to the poet’s pledge to begin and end each work with mention of the Muses who empowered his song. The following is the end of Theogony and leads to an incomplete list of the semi-divine persons.

“Farewell now, you dwellers in Heaven, and you islands, and continents, and the salt sea between. But now, Olympian Muses, [3] sweet of utterance, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, sing of the company of goddesses, [4] all those who were bedded with mortal men, immortal themselves, and bore children resembling the gods.”

Notes

-1. See Burton, The Book of the Sword

-2. The painted, enthroned statue of Zeus at Ellis in the Olympian shrine has served as the original model for portraits of Jesus Christ down to this our time.

-3. This might better be presented to the present audience as “heavenly angels.” For the post Christian mind yet retains an ideal of angels as female, though in the Bible they are male, this female image of the angelic having here its first poetic source.

-4. Lesser gods, taken to be angels or demons, are referred to in Psalms and Exodus. See also Jakob wrestling with the angel of God.