During the war, the Cyclopes had, as mentioned, given Zeus in respectful homage the weapon with which he is always associated: the thunderbolt. Their brothers the Hecatonchires, whose tremendous strength had secured victory, were rewarded by being sent back to Tartarus – not as prisoners this time, but as guardians of the gates to those imponderable depths. The Cyclopes’ reward was to be appointed by Zeus his personal artificers, armourers and smiths.
The Third Order
The shattered world was still smoking from the savagery of war. Zeus saw that it needed to heal and he knew that his own generation, the Third Order of divine beings, must manage better than the first two had done. It was time for a new order, an order purged of the wasteful bloodlust and elemental brutality that had marked earlier times.
To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet.
For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud-Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect.
Hestia
Of all the gods, Hestia – ‘First to be devoured and the last to be yielded up again’ – is probably the least well known to us, perhaps because the realm that Zeus in his wisdom apportioned to her was the hearth. In our less communal age of central heating and separate rooms for each family member, we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of ‘hearth and home’. Our word ‘hearth’ shares its ancestry with ‘heart’, just as the modern Greek for ‘hearth’ is kardia, which also means ‘heart’. In ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in words like ‘economics’ and ‘ecology’. The Latin for hearth is focus – which speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of words for a fireplace we have spun ‘cardiologist’, ‘deep focus’ and ‘eco-warrior’. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.
Refusing offers of marriage from the other gods, Hestia devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood. Placid, contented, kind, hospitable and domestic, she tended to stay away from the everyday power struggles and political machinations of the other gods.fn1 A modest divinity, Hestia is usually depicted in a plain gown offering up flame in a bowl or sitting on a coarse woollen cushion on a simple wooden throne. It was the custom in Greece to say a grace to her before every meal.
The Romans, whose name for her was VESTA, considered her so important that they had a school of priestesses devoted to her, the celebrated Vestal Virgins. Their responsibility, aside from life-long celibacy, was to make sure that the flame representing her was never extinguished. They were the original guardians of the sacred flame.
You can imagine then that there are not many great stories about this gentle and endearing goddess. I only know one, which we will hear before long. Naturally she comes out of it very well.
The Lottery
Zeus turned next to his dark and troublesome brothers, Hades and Poseidon. They had acquitted themselves with equal skill, bravery and cunning in the war against the Titans and he thought it only fair that they should draw lots for the two most important unassigned provinces – the sea and the underworld.
You will recall that Kronos had wrested control of all things in, under and over the sea from Thalassa, Pontus, Oceanus and Tethys. Now, Kronos was gone and the saltwater realm was in Zeus’s gift. As for the underworld – which included Tartarus, the mysterious Meadows of Asphodel (of which more later) and the subterranean darkness controlled by Erebus – it was time for those also to be subject to a sole presiding deity, one of Zeus’s generation.
Hades and Poseidon had no love for each other, and when Zeus put his hands behind his back and brought them out before him in closed fists, they hesitated. In cases of fraternal dislike each brother will usually want what the other wants.
‘Does Hades hope for the sea or the underworld?’ Poseidon wondered. ‘If he wants the underworld then I want that too, just to infuriate him.’
Hades thought along the same lines. ‘Whichever I choose,’ he said to himself, ‘I will shout in triumph, just to annoy that prick Poseidon.’
In each of Zeus’s outstretched fists lay concealed a precious stone: a sapphire as blue as the sea in one and a piece of jet as black as Erebus in the other. Poseidon did a jig of delight when he touched the back of Zeus’s right hand and saw it open to reveal the winking blue sapphire. ‘The oceans are mine!’ he roared.
‘That means – yes!’ cried Hades with a mighty fist-pump. ‘That means I have the underworld. Ha ha!’
Secretly, inside, he was sickened. Gods are such children.
Hades
This was the last time Hades was ever seen to laugh. From that moment on, any merriment or sense of fun deserted him. Perhaps the duties of King of the Underworld slowly ground away any youthful zest or lightness of touch that may once have been his.
Down to the depths he went to carve out his kingdom. While his name will always be associated with death and the afterlife, and the whole realm of the underworld (which shares his name) with pain, punishment and perpetual suffering, Hades also came to symbolize riches and opulence. The jewels and precious metals that are mined deep underground and the priceless crops of grain, vegetables and flowers that germinate beneath the earth are all reminders that from decay and death spring life, abundance and wealth. The Romans called him PLUTO and words like ‘plutocrat’ and ‘plutonium’ tell of this great opulence and power.fn2
Under Hades’ personal command came Erebus and Nyx and their son Thanatos (Death himself). A system of river deities, too dark and dreadful to flow in the open air, wound their way through this underworld. The principal was Styx (hate), a daughter of Tethys and Oceanus whose name and ‘stygian’ attributes are invoked to this day whenever we want to describe something dark, menacing and gloomy, something hellishly black and brooding. Into her seeped PHLEGETHON, the flaming river of fire, ACHERON, the river of woe, LETHE, the waters of forgetfulness, and COCYTUS, the stream of lamentation and wailing. Styx’s brother Charon was appointed ferryman, and for the time being he waited, leaning on his pole, by the banks of the Styx. He had dreamed that one day souls by the thousand would come to the shores of the river and pay him the price of transport across. One day soon.
Space was given by Hades to the Furies, the earth-born Erinyes, to live within the darkest heart of his kingdom. From there the three of them could fly to all corners of the world to exact their revenge on those transgressors whose crimes were foul enough to merit their violent attentions.