Atlas God

So many Greek Gods

I assume that many of us understand 1 thing about the traditional Geeks they were definitely into their Gods. Now as a occasionally crossword enthusiast I am often caught out by not knowing the name of one or the other of the Gods, and I believed that it has got to be an indication of a missing part of my education not to understand their names. After a trip to Greece and conversion to a Greekophile I became galvanized enough to look up these varied Gods. And, I presumed, at least my crosswords abilities would move up a bit. Right? Wrong! I need to tell you that I just could not believe just how many Gods the ancient Greeks basically had. I’ll share with you a little of my research and you’ll know what I mean.

I find there are actually several classes of the gods of the Greek pantheon ( here meaning, I think, church or religion ). The first three categories are : the Olympian gods, the Titan gods, and the primeval gods the three different generations of gods to rule the world. The following five classes are those of domain ( e.g. Sky Gods, sea, earth underworld etc ) and the following classes are the gods representing ideas, spirits and emotions for example. I’m already just about lost and not a name in sight. If we just stick with the Olympian gods, there were huge numbers of these and of different kinds, for instance, the gods of the agora ( gods of the peoples’s assembly and gods of the marketplace ) included Zeus, the god of kings and who watched over the assembly, assisted by Athena, the goddess of sensible counsel Dike of justice, Themis of Custom and Calliope of Eloquence, whilst the market gods were controlled by Hermes, of commerce, Hephaestus and Athena, patron gods of workmen, weavers, potters, metalworkers etc . Oh! And Apollo who was another market place god and whose job eludes me, though his church is in Delphi, near Parnassus ).

Apart from massive other members of the Olympian gods ( and, my, must Mount Olympus have been crowded incidentally, Mount Olympus is around 100km from Thessalonika ) there seem to be many less of the Titans twelve Uranides ( I think I have been told about Hyperion and Cronus ) and four Iapetionides and i have heard of 2 of these, specifically Atlas ( who luckily is holding up the world ) and Prometheus who is also doing something important however it escapes me.

The primeval gods of Greek mythology were the basic components of the universe which appeared at creation. The way these names gave an image of the world view of the ancient Greeks and the way in which the cosmos was put together is interesting, and maybe I may just know one or two more for a crossword, but one thing i do know. I am going to have to go back and have a greece holiday to do the analysis in situ as it were.

About the Author

The writer is a traveller with an interest in the culture and history of countries in Europe such as <A HREF=”http://www.goissimo.com/holidays/country/name/greece.aspx”>Greece</A>.

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