brief examination of the sources of our knowledge of Greek
myth, we may approach the Homeric legends of the origin of things and
the world's beginning. In Homer these matters are only referred to
incidentally. He more than once calls Oceanus (that is, the fabled
stream which flows all round the world, here regarded as a PERSON)
"the origin of the gods," "the origin of all things".(1) That Ocean is
considered a person, and that he is not an allegory for water or the
aqueous element, appears from the speech of Hera to Aphrodite: "I am
going to visit the limits of the bountiful earth, and Oceanus, father of
the gods, and mother Tethys, who reared me duly and nurtured me in their
halls, when far-seeing Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth and the
unvintaged sea".(2) Homer does not appear to know Uranus as the father
of Cronus, and thus the myth of the mutilation of Uranus necessarily
does not occur in Homer. Cronus, the head of the dynasty which preceded
that of Zeus, is described(3) as the son of Rhea, but nothing is said
of his father. The passage contains the account which Poseidon himself
chose to give of the war in heaven: "Three brethren are we, and sons
of Cronus whom Rhea bare--Zeus and myself, and Hades is the third, the
ruler of the folk in the underworld. And in three lots were all things
divided, and each drew a domain of his own." Here Zeus is the ELDEST
son of Cronus. Though lots are drawn at hazard for the property of
the father (which we know to have been customary in Homer's time), yet
throughout the Iliad Zeus constantly claims the respect and obedience
due to him by right of primogeniture.(4) We shall see that Hesiod adopts
exactly the opposite view. Zeus is the YOUNGEST child of Cronus. His
supremacy is an example of jungsten recht, the wide-spread custom which
makes the youngest child the heir in chief.(5) But how did the sons of
Cronus come to have his property in their hands to divide? By right of
successful rebellion, when "Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth
and the unvintaged sea". With Cronus in his imprisonment are the Titans.
That is all that Homer cares to tell about the absolute beginning of
things and the first dynasty of rulers of Olympus. His interest is all
in the actual reigning family, that of the Cronidae, nor is he fond of
reporting their youthful excesses.

(1) Iliad, xiv. 201, 302, 246.

(2) In reading what Homer and Hesiod report about these matters, we must
remember tha