78 On the Theogonij. 



the general exciting cause of being : 'rj kh'titikij cat avvaywyoc rwv ovriav 

 aina ; yet the attributes here ascribed to it by the poet, are rather those 

 of animal passion. 



From Earth alone, arep (piXoTrjTos efifxepov, sprung the co-equal Heaven, 

 the Mountains, and the Sea j but the same universal mother, taking to 

 herself her first offspring, the Heaven, as an husband, gave birth to a 

 numerous progeny.* We may be surprised to find the Ocean reckoned 

 first among these, as we have before seen the sea, Hovtoq, specified as the 

 offspring of Earth alone, without a sire. But we may perhaps explain this 

 seeming inconsistency', by considering the poet, or rather, the original 

 inventors of this cosmogony to have conceived that tlie Eartli required 

 notliing but her own energies to produce those inequalities of surface vvhicli, 

 by their elevations, constitute the mountains, and by their depressions the 

 basins of the inland seas. But the vast circumambient expanse of ocean 

 stretched to the horizon, and blended as it were with the heaven, might seem 

 to depend on the conjoint influences of Heaven and Earth. The rest of the 

 offspring of Heaven and Earth are of very obscure character: the scholiast, 

 indeed, refers them all to physical allegories ; but his arguments are mere 

 conjectural etymologies, which it may perhaps be fair to mention in passing 

 on, but to which we can attach no manner of weight. It seems far the 

 most probable view of the matter, that physical allegory had already, in 

 the age of Hesiod, become inextricably blended with fabulous mythology. 

 Two of this progeny, Hyperion and Phoebe, the general usage of Homer 

 and most other poets would incline us to interpret as the Sun and the 

 Moon ; but as these luminaries are expressly mentioned in a subsequent 

 passage of the present poem as the children of Hyperion, we must either 

 find some other explanation of the terms in this place, or conclude that 

 such an inconsistency must demonstrate the conflicting passages to have 

 been originally fragments of distinct poems, jumbled together by the rhap- 

 sodists. On the former hypothesis, we might, with the scholiast, explain 

 Hyperion, " the mover on high," to denote the primum mobile of the 

 celestial revolutions ; and Phoebe as the radiant aether, or perhaps elemental 

 light. Themis and Mnemosyne, Law and Memory, seem personifications 

 too obvious to be forced into any series of purely Physical causes. The 

 remaining Titan brethren, (for we must observe that Titans is the proper 



* One of the principal subsidia which we possess for comparing the following 

 genealogies, whenever we may suspect interpolation or omission, will be found in 

 the Bibliothcca of Mythological Histories, compiled by Apollodorus, an Athenian 

 grammarian, who flourished 104 years before our a;ra. The observations appended 

 to the edition of Heyne, 1803, are particularly valuable. In the third book of 

 Diodorus Siculus, we find several chapters bearing on this descent of the gods from 

 Earth and Heaven ; but in these, the systems which he professes to have derived 

 from the Atlantic nations, from the Phrygians, and from the Egyptians, are some- 

 what confusedly intermingled, and they will rather perplex than assist its. 



