Olympian gods

“ Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. The placid minds even of Olympian gods are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of inevitable decay, of dispossession. Again, the supreme and colourless abstraction of those divine forms, which is the secret of their repose, is also a premonition of the fleshless, consumptive refinements of the pale, medieval artists. ”

“ One placed young gods and goddesses only when one placed them on Olympus, and it met the case, always, that they were of Olympian race, and that they glimmered for one, at the best, through their silver cloud, like the visiting apparitions in an epic. ”

“ In Greek religion, apart from the Olympian Pantheon of the Achaean caste, every great man assumed a divine nature when he died. But the Olympian religion did not recognise the right of man to become divine, and therefore whenever legend attributes human acts to such Olympian gods as Apollo or Athene (of whose mortal life there was no record) we must assume that at the time of such acts these gods have temporarily assumed a human form. ”

“ It has gradually been made probable that the Olympian gods, whatever capricious shapes they afterward assumed, were in their origin but the first feeble efforts of the human mind to name the unnamable, to give local habitation and expression to the incomprehensible Being who haunted men’s inmost thoughts, but was above their highest powers of conception. ”

“ The grimmest superstitions, old and new, fused in her brain into a strange religion not far removed from madness. She mingled prayers with spells, Olympian gods with demons, Christian rites with the black arts. Her body was behung with crosses, and amulets carved out of the bones of the dead; and scapularies, containing the ashes of martyrs, swung from her shoulders. The old woman felt for Julian a pious affection, regarding him as the sole and legitimate successor of Constantine the Great, and holding Constantius, the reigning Emperor, a murderer and a usurper. ”

“ This is the stage of the great Olympian gods, who dominated art and poetry, ruled the imagination of Rome, and extended a kind of romantic dominion even over the Middle Ages. It is the stage that we learn, or mis-learn, from the statues and the handbooks of mythology. Critics have said that this [3] Olympian stage has value only as art and not as religion. ”

“ The Olympian gods, with their cousins of the same generation, have grown into persons, ceasing to be abstract ideas, or powers of nature. Five were the children of Kronos, namely, Zeus, Poseidôn, Hêrê, Hestia, and Dêmêtêr; six were children of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis, Hephæstos and Arês, Hermês and Athênê. The twelfth of the Olympian group, Aphroditê, belonged to the second generation, being daughter of Uranos and of the Ocean. Beauty, divine child of Sky and Sea, was conceived of as older than Power. ”

“ We receive a delight of very much [Pg 231] the same nature from these lads of Murillo. It is obvious enough that neither their objects nor their interests aim high, but this is no result of stupidity; there they chaffer on God's earth with, we may almost say, the bliss and contentment of the Olympian gods themselves. They, too, have their business; but though we hear little about it they are a genuine sample of humanity, neither morose nor discontented with their lot. ”

“ There was a gate of clouds on the top of Mount Olympus that the goddesses, who were known as the Seasons, opened to allow the inhabitants of the Mount to descend to the earth and return. Jupiter, the ruler of the gods, sat on the Olympian throne holding thunderbolts and darts of lightning in his mighty hands. The same arts and labors as those of men were practised by these celestial beings. ”

“ But the sight that greeted my eyes as I passed along that exterior road of Olympus, under the genial auspices of those wonderful gods, appealed to something in my soul which had never before been awakened, and which I shall never be able adequately to describe. The mere act of seeing seemed to be uplifting, and, from the moment I looked downward upon the beloved earth, I ceased to wonder that gods were godlike—indeed, my real wonder was that they were not more so. It seemed difficult to believe that there was anything earthly about earth. ”

“ But as the glory of the Olympian festival grew, as the worship of the Olympian Zeus became more and more a national bond among all Hellenes, an Olympian victor was raised to a rank so eminent that it seemed no longer irreverent to pay him an honour similar to that which was rendered to ἡμίθεοι: especially as this honour was in some sort rendered, not merely to the man, but also to the gods and demigods of Oiympia. Hence, in the course of the sixth century B.C., sculpture was already finding a new field in the commemoration of athletes. ”

“ Even men, who knew but little of Olympian records, knew this, at least, for certain, that more than one dynasty of gods had passed over the golden stage of Olympus, had made their exit, and were hurrying onward to oblivion. It was matter of notoriety, also, that all these gods were and had been liable to the taint of sorrow for the death of their earthly children, (as the Homeric Jupiter for Sarpedon, Thetis for Achilles, Calliope, in Euripides, for her blooming Rhesus;) all were liable to fear; all to physical pain; all to anxiety; all to the indefinite menaces of a danger not measurable. ”

“ Among the Greeks, although mysteries and witches played no small part in the old religion and survived long in popular superstition, magic was thrust into the background by the poetic and philosophic Hellenic imagination. The powers of Nature were incorporated in the grand and beautiful human forms of the Olympian gods, or in the dread shapes of the Infernal deities. ”

“ Their position in the Olympian system, if we are to adopt the common genesis of the Olympian system, is one of hopeless and unaccountable solecism.
The gods of Olympus are arranged generally in two generations. If we put Apollo and Minerva out of view, then, with the exception of a deity like Dione, introduced to serve as a mere vehicle of maternity, and inferior in weight, if not in rank, to her own offspring, the majesty and might of Olympus, following the order of [57] nature, are entirely in the elder of these generations, and reside with Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and Aidoneus or Pluto. ”

“ They surpass mortals rather in power, than in size of body. They can render themselves visible or invisible to human eyes. Their food is ambrosia and nectar; their movements are swift as light. They may suffer pain; but death can never come to them, for they are immortal. Their abode is Mount Olympus and the airy regions above the earth.
LESSER DEITIES AND MONSTERS.—Besides the great gods and goddesses that constituted the Olympian council there was an almost infinite number of other deities, celestial personages, and monsters neither human nor divine. ”

“ How else could this so sensitive people, so vehement in its desires, so singularly qualified for sufferings have endured existence, if it had not been exhibited to them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory? The same impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consummation of existence, seducing to a continuation of life, caused also the Olympian world to arise, in which the Hellenic "will" held up before itself a transfiguring mirror. Thus do the gods justify the life of man, in that they themselves live it—the only satisfactory Theodicy! ”

“ In the Titans, Kyklopes, and the hundred-handed giants we recognise the antediluvian monsters—the mastodons, megatheriums, and saurians, petrified for ever in the strata of the earth’s crust. Zeus, after his conquest, began to rule the Olympian gods and mankind. He himself was full of passion and wrath, of human failings and shortcomings; but, after all, he was kind, dignified—even in his weakness, just and grand. He163 smiled, and love and joy pervaded the universe; he frowned, and the universe shook to its very foundations. ”

“ I was living like a slave, and I might have died a slave! I understand that I am stronger than the gods, because, vowed to death, I have conquered death! No melancholy, no fear, no victims, no prayer! All that is past. Henceforth in my life there shall not be a single shade, nor trembling. Nothing! except that everlasting Olympian smile which I have learnt from you, the Dead! Nothing, but the sacred fire of which I rob you, O Immortals! Mine be the cloudless sky in which you have dwelt till now, and from which you have died, to give place to man-gods! Maximus! Maximus! ”

“ I cried, lost now in admiration of the way the gods were ordering things on Olympus. "So they've made you a valet, have they?"
"Yes," replied Adonis. "I hold office for the six months that I am here. You know that I am a resident of Olympus only half the time. The balance I live in Hades."
"It's a common custom," said I. "Even with us, our swellest people go south for the winter."
"Hum—yes," said Adonis, somewhat confused. "It's very good of you to draw that parallel. Your construction of the situation does credit to your sense of what is polite, sir. ”

“ The gods had their separate dwellings; but all, when summoned, repaired to the palace of Jupiter, as did also those deities whose usual abode was the earth, the waters, or the underworld. It was also in the great hall of the palace of the Olympian king that the gods feasted each day on ambrosia and nectar, their food and drink, the latter being handed round by the lovely goddess Hebe. Here they conversed of the affairs of heaven and earth; and as they quaffed their nectar, Apollo, the god of music, delighted them with the tones of his lyre, to which the Muses sang in responsive strains. ”

“ Olym′pics, Olym′pic games, games celebrated every four years at Olympia, dedicated to Olympian Zeus; Olym′pus, the abode of the gods, supposed to have been Mount Olympus in Thessaly. [Gr. olympias, -ados, belonging to Olympia in Elis.]
Omadhaun, om′a-dawn, n. a stupid, silly creature. [Ir.]
Omasum, ō-mā′sum, n. a ruminant's third stomach, the psalterium or manyplies.—adj. Omā′sal.
Ombre, om′bėr, n. a game of cards played with a pack of forty cards, usually by three persons. [Fr.,—Sp. hombre—L. homo, a man.] ”

“ Æsculapius flushed.
[Pg 127]
"If one of the gods had said that," he replied, "I should have operated upon him. As a mortal, you are privileged to say unpleasant things, just as a child may say things to his elders with impunity which merit extreme punishment. Christian Science is all right when you are truly well—in good physical condition. It is a sure cure for imaginary troubles, but when you are really sick, it is not of Olympus, but of Hades." ”

“ But in his business suit, Mercury is a very different sort of a person. Even in Olympus he'd have been ruled off the stock exchange if he'd ventured to appear there as scantily attired as he is in most of his statuary appearances. You certainly are not so green as to [Pg 11] suppose that that suit he wears in his statues is the whole extent of his wardrobe?"
"I had supposed so," I confessed. "It's a trifle unconventional; but, then, he's one of the gods, and, I presumed, could dress as he pleased. Your gods are independent, I should imagine, of the mere decrees of fashion." ”

“ On their side the Olympians were neither to be eclipsed in splendor nor outdone in all that goes to make a feast of gods. Robed in supernal glory, each god and goddess, surrounded by their retinues, wore the symbols of their respective powers and attributes, but stood overawed by the transcendent magnificence of their chief, whom no mortal eye could behold without being consumed. ”

“ The Olympian Games of ancient times brought the Greek world together every four years in the beautiful valley of Olympia, to contemplate a spectacle the uniformity of which seems to have constituted an additional charm in the eyes of the spectators. ”

“ These legends are embodied in the First, Third, and Eleventh Olympian Odes, which may now be considered briefly in succession.
The First Olympian Ode was written for Hiero, and commemorates his success in the horse-race with a horse bearing the appropriate name of Pherenicus, or "the victor." It opens with the oft-quoted maxim, "Best is water," [6] and proceeds at once to the occasion of the Ode. Water is the first of boons, gold the first of treasures, and Olympia the first of festivals. Olympia it is that wakes our lays, as we approach the happy home of Hiero! ”

“ First (he tells us) the Olympic gods made the golden race,—good, perfect, and happy men, who lived from the spontaneous abundance of the earth, in ease and tranquillity like the gods themselves: they suffered neither disease nor old age, and their death was like a gentle sleep. After death they became, by the award of Zeus, guardian terrestrial dæmons, who watch unseen over the proceedings of mankind—with the regal privilege of dispensing to them wealth, and taking account of good and bad deeds. ”

“ The Olympian Games.—Because of their national [Pg 55] popularity and their direct influence on the education of the people, a description of the Olympian games is not out of place in a history of education. At first they were religious in character. They were celebrated in honor of Zeus, at Olympia, in Elis, which became the Holy Land of Greece. They took place once in four years, and this period, called an Olympiad, furnished the basis of computing time. ”

“ The ecstatic power of an Olympian triumph is well illustrated by the story of Diagoras, the Rhodian, who had been a famous champion in his younger days, and was present when his two sons won the entire pentathlon, i. e., carried off the five prizes for which the athletes of all Greece had been training during the four years preceding the sixty-first Olympiad. ”