The music of the spheres

by Florence Armstrong Grondal

"the immeasurable sea
Roared: earth resounded: the wide heaven throughout
Groaned shattering: from its base Olympus vast
Reeled to the violence of the Gods: the shock
Of deep concussion rocked the dark abyss
Remote of Tartarus:"

—The Theogony—Hesiod.
(Trans. by ELTON.)

Only one giant escaped, a terrible monster named Typhon, who picked up a whole mountain in a paroxysm of supernatural rage and hurled it at his adversaries. He was finally subdued, after a terrible struggle, by a thunderbolt from Olympus, which knocked him into the sea. There the gods lashed him with the Lightnings of Jupiter and heaped the vast three-cornered island of Sicily upon his limbs, two of the corners weighing down his arms and the third one crushing his feet, while his head was entombed beneath Mount Etna which hurled off its crown to let out his fiery breath. The lame god Vulcan took advantage of this situation and henceforth used the location for his workshop where he forged many wonderful works of art within its fires.

This last war left Jupiter reigning in peace. He was the greatest of the deities, the king of gods and men; he watched over the state and family; his hand wielded the lightnings and guided the stars; and, in short, he regulated the whole course of Nature. Since the world soon became far enough advanced to understand natural phenomena, he was also the last of the Olympian rulers. He is probably the best known of any of the gods and one finds many of the stories of his loves and adventures immortalized in the skies. His daughter Urania was the Muse of Astronomy, and is represented with a celestial globe, to which she points with a little staff.

During the reign of Jupiter's father, Saturn, the God of Time, there was so much happiness in the world that it was called the "Golden Age." Hesiod mentions five ages—the Golden, simple and patriarchal; the Silver, voluptuous and godless; the Brazen, warlike, wild and violent; the Heroic, an aspiration toward the better; and the Iron, in which justice, piety, and faithfulness had vanished from the earth. Ovid omits the Heroic Age. The Golden Age was said to be governed by Saturn; the Silver, by Jupiter; the Brazen, by Neptune; and the Iron, by Pluto. An "Age" was regarded as a division of the great world year, which would be completed when the stars and planets had performed a revolution around the heavens, after which destiny would repeat itself in the same series of events. Thus mythology was brought into connection with astronomy. It was believed that successive conflagrations and deluges were designed by the gods to purify the earth from guilt, and that after each of these judgments man was again so regenerated as to live for a time in a state of virtue and happiness. During the Golden Age, the year was one continued springtime, and the earth, "as yet unwounded by the plowshare," produced of its own accord. This was followed by the Silver Age where spring was "but a season of the year" and the "wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow" driving shivering mortals into houses. Next came the Brazen Age, a "warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage," and last of all the Iron Age when again—according to Dryden's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses—landmarks were set up "limiting to each his right," and not satisfied with the blessings of earth men greedily rummaged beneath the soil for the precious ore the gods had wisely hidden next to Tartarus. This ungrateful race was then destroyed by Jupiter, who sank their country and formed a new people to take their place. In the meantime, all the gods and goddesses had left the earth, Astræa, Goddess of Justice and Purity, remaining to the last. When man finally became so inferior that he engaged in strife and discord, this goddess hid her face in sorrow and flew upward to the sky where she took her place among the stars of the constellation of the Virgin.

Ovid describes the Milky Way as being the great road which led to the palaces of the gods which were clustered about the lofty, cloud-hidden summit of Mount Olympus. In these golden homes with their ivory halls and furniture which possessed self-motion, dwelt Jupiter, Supreme Ruler of Heaven and Earth; Juno, his wife; Mars, the God of War; Venus, Minerva, Mercury and all the other gods and goddesses and many lesser deities. They drank nectar, poured by Hebe or Ganymede, and ate ambrosia, which gave immortal life. Their statures were immense, for when Jupiter shook the locks of his hair the stars trembled, but they often disguised themselves as earthly beings and mingled with mankind. At times they issued commands through the voice of an oracle, or displayed anger through some exhibition of nature, such as when Jupiter threw his thunderbolts.

Although Apollo, Neptune and Pluto sometimes met in council at Olympus, these three gods had their principal palaces in quite a different part of the earth, Apollo's being beyond the "Land of the Sunrise," Neptune's under the sea and Pluto's under the ground.

Around Neptune's palace waved his lawns of seaweed and his trees of coral while the currents were the breezes which fanned and cooled his brow. His scepter was a trident with which he raised and stilled storms while his chariot was a shell drawn by brazen-hoofed sea-horses. Dolphins, tritons and sea-monsters made sportive homage about his watery path and sea-nymphs played among his rocks and grottoes or sat on the shore in the moonlight drying their long, bright hair. Neptune married one of these, a lovely dark-eyed nymph named Amphitrite and made her Goddess of the Sea. The dolphin which carried him during his courtship was rewarded by being placed on a diamond-shaped group of stars which have ever since been called "Delphinus, the Dolphin."

The kingdom of Pluto, the Ruler of the Shades, was a level, cloudy country under the ground and was inhabited by pale, fleeting shadows, the spirits of those who had died in the country on top of the ground. Across the meadows of this dreary land wandered the river of Sighs and the river of Forgetfulness,—but the flaming river of Phlegethon, with its sulphurous smoke and its waves of fire, flowed in an endless circle about the walls of Tartarus where the wicked groaned and clanked their chains. If a soul was not condemned by the three judges, who weighed the good and evil deeds in their scales, it was led to a place of happiness called the Elysian Fields, which was supposed by some writers to be next to Tartarus, but by others, to be above the earth on the Isles of the Blest in the western ocean. The gates to Pluto's regions were guarded by a fiendish dog with three heads but there were supposed to be a number of pathways which led to the upper world for strange vapors drifted out of an unexplored cave in southern Italy and both Hercules and Orpheus went down through caves in Greece to

"Pluto, the grisly god, who never spares,
Who feels no mercy, who hears no prayers."