The music of the spheres

by Florence Armstrong Grondal

This beloved country was thought to lie on the center of the earth, which was marked by the oracle of Apollo, at Delphi. In those days, the earth was supposed to hang like a disk in the great hollow globe of the world, its land divided into two parts by the Mediterranean Sea and its edges washed by the turbulent river of the ocean. The upper part of this globe was illuminated by the sun, moon and stars and was called Heaven, but the lower part extended below the earth-disk and formed a terrifying pit of utter darkness. The Milky Way was a road which led to the home of the gods, but this pit was a place of dire punishment.

One of the many duties of the gods was to see that the earth was properly lighted by the sun and the moon, and that the stars were "penned in" at dawn and "unpenned" nightly. The sun, moon and stars rose and sank in the stream of the ocean, but the sun, instead of being submerged, was carried around the stream from west to east in a winged cup or golden boat made by the god Vulcan.

It was at first thought that Vulcan, with a mighty heave, threw the hot sun-ball over the Caucasus mountains in the east to the Atlantic ocean in the west, and then hastily paddled around the world stream to catch it as it fell, but later it was believed that Apollo, the Sun-god, drove it across the sky in a chariot, the return journey to the country of the sunrise being accomplished by placing both chariot and sun in Vulcan's remarkable boat. Centuries later (about 336 B. C.) Eudoxus evolved the theory of the concentric crystalline spheres which brought the tracks of the heavenly bodies under and above the motionless disk of the earth with the stars rolling round in long-drawn notes of celestial sweetness audible only to the gods.

The ancient people imagined that before the earth was smoothed out flat in its present attractive form, the whole world was tumbled together in great confusion,—land, air, sea, sky, hot, cold, soft, hard, light and heavy all mixed and melting in a desolate mass presided over by the god Chaos. Chaos was dethroned by the God of Darkness, who in turn was dethroned by Light and Day. Light and Day, being orderly, industriously sorted the earth from the sea and extracted the heavens from both. The fiery part was cast into the sky where it splintered into stars, while the earth, "a lifeless lump, unfashion'd and unfram'd," was heaped in a big, broad mound with a deep and terrifying stream of waters flowing around it. Then Uranus, the Heavens, noting his superior position, took the scepter away from Light and Day and became the first ruler of the created world. Love was then born and the Earth, entranced, hemmed in her valleys and extended her plains, made paths for the rivers and beds for the lakes. The seeds, relieved of weight, burst their coverings, and the hills became green with foliage and the meadows brilliant with flowers. The world was now beautiful, and Heaven looked down on the colorful earth, and Earth looked up into the starry eyes of Heaven, and love grew, and the Earth became the Heaven's bride.

In the course of time, Uranus began to seriously consider his numerous and somewhat fearful progeny, for the huge Titans, the one-eyed Cyclops and the hundred-handed giants were here and there and everywhere about the land. Foreseeing that his sovereignty might eventually become imperiled, he picked up the Cyclops and Hecatoncheires and thrust them out of sight into the Pit of Darkness.

Such heartless conduct on the part of her husband aroused the wrath of Mother Earth, who urged the Titans to revolt against their father and release their brothers from the Pit. But the Titans looked at the great Sky and were afraid, all except one huge giant named Saturn who picked up a keen-edged scythe and frightened his father into submission. Saturn then appropriated the throne and made Rhea his Queen,—although he prudently swallowed all of the children that were born to him lest they in turn might take the throne. By the time Jupiter, her sixth child, was born, Saturn's wife was aroused to such a point of opposition that she concealed a stone in the infant's clothes and hid the 'mighty babe.' Jupiter, however, expressed himself so vigorously and so continuously that Rhea, in desperation, sent him away from Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, to an island named Crete, lying to the south of Greece. Here he was fed on honey, milk and ambrosia while his attendants danced and clattered and kept up a perpetual din. This concealment was quite necessary, for his uncles, the Titans, had now become a powerful race of giants and had decreed that not one of Saturn's heirs, but one of themselves would succeed to the throne. His nurses, by the way, and the goat with which he played, were afterwards placed in the sky as a reward for their kindness, the nurses, according to one legend, being accorded a position on the "V" of stars in the constellation of Taurus, while the goat was placed in the arms of the shepherd in Auriga.

When the Titans discovered that they had been deceived and that a child of Saturn's was among them, they rushed with furious war-cries upon Olympus. Hearing the commotion from the island of Crete, Jupiter rushed to the aid of his father, and so confident and strenuous was this powerful child, that the surprised Titans turned and fled. The young god then displayed an inherited trait and helped himself to his father's kingdom and the golden palace on the top of the mountain.

After establishing his sovereignty over the world and rescuing his brothers and sisters through the aid of a powerful potion, he called Neptune and Pluto into his presence and made Neptune God of the Sea, and Pluto God of the Underworld. These three deities were then armed with powerful weapons for Jupiter could hurl his thunderbolts and flash his lightnings, Pluto walk about in the security of a hat of darkness, and Neptune stir up the sea, or calm it, by means of a three-pronged spear. The Titans, now thoroughly cowed, were punished in various ways, some being imprisoned in the Pit of Darkness with their brothers, the sons of Uranus, while others were doomed to work without ceasing on servile tasks for the gods. Atlas, the tallest, was commanded to stand on the western extremity of the earth and bear the vault of heaven on his head and shoulders. His station was later said to be in the Atlas mountains in Africa. Aeschylus, an ancient writer, claims that the daughters of Atlas and their mother, the nymph Pleone, fled to the sky in sorrow when Atlas was forced to undergo this terrible punishment. The seven daughters, now styled the Pleiades, represent one of our most beautiful star groups.

Now when Mother Earth heard of the high-handed ways of her grandson, Jupiter, she decided that she would give him a much needed lesson, so gathering together the most terrible of the giants among Uranus' sons, she incited them to start another great war. This war lasted ten years, the giants proving so formidable that Jupiter summoned the one-eyed Cyclops and the hundred-handed sons of grandfather Uranus to come to his aid. The Hecatoncheires gave immediate assistance by flinging rocks with all their three-hundred hands at once while the Cyclops forged thunderbolts as fast as Jupiter could handle them. In the thick of this bombardment, which left debris and bowlders strewn all over Thessaly, the giants balanced Mount Pelion on the summit of Mount Ossa, which lay between Pelion and Olympus, in a final effort to storm the home of the Gods, but Jupiter, hurling his thunderbolts, struck Ossa from under Pelion and buried the giants beneath the ponderous mass. The violence of this battle shook the foundations of the world: