Hello, this is just part of my research paper I am working on. I am going to post it, please don't be a douche I need constructive criticism and suggestions and point out/fix any grammatical errors you see. Thank you in advance.
John Doe
Prof. Unknown
English 2030
20 March 2012
The Greeks and the Origin of Their Gods
The Greeks and their Gods is a very interesting subject. No one really knows the where all of the Greeks get their Gods from or the origins of them. When someone says Greek Gods the thought that comes to mind is Zeus, Hera and Apollo are just to name a few. Those Gods and not the original Greek Gods, they are The Olympian Gods. The Olympian Gods consist of 12 Gods that came after the fall of the Titans. The Titans were not even the first Gods either. “The ancient Greek mankind, trying to explain certain metaphysical phenomena and anxieties, invented amazing myths concerning the Cosmogony (the creation of the World) and the Theogony, which is considered the birth of the Gods. The Greeks made these Gods to explain Love, Birth and Death. “The origins of the gods of ancient Greek religion are described in the Theogony, the famous poem of the Greek writer Hesiod (around 700 BC) and the Library of Apollodorus.â€
In the beginning according to Hesiod the world was formed from an enormous, shapeless darkness called Chaos meaning a void in Greek. “It was an abstract principle, the ultimate source of creation, and was not personified in any way as a primal god (Titans and Olymphans).†Chaos produced the five elements, Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (Underworld), Erebus (Shadow of Tartarus), Eros (Desire) and Nyx (Night). Many other God and Goddess came from these elements motioned but the most important was Gaea. “On her own, she produced Uranus, the starry heavens, to cover her and to be a home for the gods who were to be created later.†She also created the Mountains and Pontus the sea. With this there was now a basic structure of the physical world.
With Gaia creating the rest of the physical world she married her son Uranus and this brought the Heavens and Earth together. This marriage began a tradition that gods could break the taboo of incest and thus two of their children would marry and their grandchildren would too. This marriage was important because they had many children together such as the three Hecatonchires, the Hundred-handed male monsters. Their names were Briarues, Cottos and Gyes, “Who were unsurpassable in size and strength, for each had a hundred hands and fifty heads.â€(InTextCite). They also had three Cyclopes, but their father Uranus felt jealous contempt for them and was worried that one of his sons would try and over throw him. He pushed them back into her womb, which was the earth. He tied up the three Hecatonchires and casted them into Tartaros, the underworld and for the Cyclopes they were sent to live in the volcanic core of Mount Etna. The most important of their children were the twelve Titians. There were six sons, Oceanos, Coios, Hyperion, Creios, Iapetos, and the youngest of all Cronos and the six daughters, Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, and Theia. The youngest, Cronos is most important of the twelve. “Gaia was no longer able to bear either her own pain or the insult to her and her children.(InTextCite)â€. She asked all of her Titan sons to attack their father but they were all scared of Uranus except the bravest one, Cronus. His mother made a sickle out of adamantine, material so hard that only gods could make weapons out of it. Gaia showed Cronus where to wait so he could catch Uranus off guard. Night fall came and Uranus came down from the heavens to make love to his wife. Cronus jumped out and castrated his father with the sickle. All of Cornou’s borthers and sisters attacked their father, except Oceanos. The 11 Titans took their fathers genitals and threw them in the sea. The blood that dropped from Uranus created many other important mythical characters, including the Gitants, who become enemies of later gods, the Erinyes, the vengeful Furies who punished people who did wrong. The sperm from Uranus’s genitals mixed with the sea and gave birth to Aphrodite who would become the Olympian goddess of love.
Cronus’s became the new supreme ruler of the Titans, but he was very similar to his father in that he was fearful that he would become over thrown by a younger generation. The Greeks and Romans had different views on Cronus. “To the Greeks, the Titans were savage and uncouth in comparison with the later generation of Olympian gods(InTextCite).†There are several versions of this myth so it is not entirely known, but Cronus was said to have freed his brothers from their prisons but almost immediately reimprisoned them. His mother Gaia became angry because he is doing exactly what his father did. Like the tradition started by Uranus and Gaia two of their children were to marry each other and Cronus and his sister Rhea married. They have six children: Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia and Zeus. These children would later become the Olympian gods. Cronus was warned by his mother and father that he would fall much like his father to his youngest son, which was Zeus.
I have changed the name of my teacher and I for obvious reasons. This is for my World Lit class.
