Fig. 2. Rhea offering Cronus the stone in place of Zeus.

      When Zeus was grown, by giving Cronus a strong potion he forced him to disgorge the five children he had swallowed. He then declared war upon him. The gods, as Zeus and his brothers and sisters should now be called, fortified themselves on Mt. Olympus, in Thessaly, and for ten years the war raged without ceasing. The rugged mountains and jumbled rocks of Thessaly bear witness to the fury of the battles. Finally Gæa advised Zeus to loose from their prison under the earth the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants. After this, armed with the thunderbolts given him by the Cyclopes, and assisted by the convulsions of sea and land caused by the hundred-handed giants, Zeus gained the victory. Those Titans who had taken Cronus' part were buried deep in Tartarus, as far below the earth as earth is below heaven.

      The three brothers now divided the world between them. Zeus, chosen as king, was supreme over heaven and earth, as truly a sky-god as his grandfather Uranus had been. Poseidon was lord over all the waters, and to Hades was given the realm that bears his name below the earth, and dominion over the dead.

      Although Gæa had aided and abetted the gods in their war against Cronus, she resented the complete subjugation of her sons. Therefore she brought forth Typhon, a fearful monster, from whose shoulders grew a hundred serpent heads, with darting tongues and fiery eyes, and from whose throats came fearful sounds, like the bellowing of bulls, the howling of dogs, the roaring of lions, and the hissing of serpents. Under him all the earth was shaken, the waters seethed; even Hades below trembled at the convulsion of the world. But Zeus seized the thunderbolts, his gift from the Cyclopes, and overthrew Typhon, scorching all his hundred heads. This monster, too, was buried beneath the earth, but still from his uneasy writhing at times the earth trembles, and the flames from his nostrils shoot up through the craters of volcanoes.

      To Zeus were born many sons and daughters, and when other enemies threatened his power, he had their assistance in overcoming them. This new war was brought on by a race of giants who had sprung from the blood of Uranus, when he was wounded by his son Cronus. Not all are agreed as to just what the form of the giants was, but artists sometimes depicted them with the tails of serpents, and armed, as a tribe of savage men might be, with tree-trunks and rocks. These, too, Zeus with the help of his brothers and children overthrew and buried. After this his rule was undisputed.

      Much of this story of the world is allegory. Day springs from night; heaven and earth are the parents of the powers of nature. It is all a development from the lower to the higher, from unordered forces of nature, to nature ordered by thought, justice, and beauty. And this development comes through love and birth, and through struggle, in which the higher gains the rule by crushing the lower. It is the story of science, history, and the spiritual life, told as an allegory.

      Of the origin of man in the world the Greeks The had three explanations: he was born of the earth, as in the story of the earliest king of Athens, who rose from the ground, half man, half serpent; or he was descended from the gods, Zeus is called "Father of gods and men "; or — and this came to be the accepted account — he was molded out of clay by the Titan's son, Prome’theus, and given life by A the’na, the wise daughter of Zeus. A Greek gentleman of the second century A.D., traveling in his own country, was shown a small brick hut in which, he was told by the natives of the place, Prometheus had fashioned the first man. Large masses of clay-colored stone lay about, and the credulous tourist says that it had the odor of human flesh.

      When he had created man, Prometheus gave him the gift of fire, which raised him above all other animals and enabled him to make use of the world about him by forging weapons and tools for agriculture. Fire was the means and the symbol of civilization. But Prometheus fell under the displeasure of Zeus for his favor toward man; for when a joint meeting was held to determine what part of beasts offered in sacrifice was due to the gods and what to men, he prepared a cunning device. He cut up an ox and divided it in two portions; in one was the flesh covered by the hide, and in the other the bones temptingly covered by fat. Then he told Zeus once for all to choose what should be his portion. And Zeus, although he saw the deceit, chose the bones and fat, because he wanted to bring trouble on Prometheus and his creation, man. So the gods deprived men of fire and denied them their means of livelihood, until Prometheus stole it once more from heaven, bringing it secretly in a hollow reed. For this defiance of his power the god punished Prometheus by having him bound to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains, where an eagle ever tore at his liver, which ever grew again. Although at any time he might have won his freedom by telling Zeus a secret which he alone knew, the much-enduring Titan bore this torture for ages. The two were at last reconciled and Prometheus set free, by Her’acles (Hercules), the son of Zeus, who, as part divine, part human, was suited to act as mediator between the gods and man's self-sacrificing friend and benefactor.

      Because of the theft of fire, against men, too, Zeus devised evil.

      For fire will I give them an evil thing wherein they shall rejoice, embracing their own doom. So spake the father of men and gods, and laughed aloud. And he bade glorious Hephæstus speedily to mingle earth with water, and put therein human speech and strength, and make, as the deathless goddesses to look upon, the fair form of a lovely maiden. And Athena he bade teach her handiwork, to weave the embroidered web. And he bade golden Aphrodite shed grace about her head and grievous desire and wasting passion. And Hermes, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, he bade give her a shameless soul. (Hesiod, Works and Days, 56 ff. Translation by A. W. Mair.)

      Now when he had fashioned the beautiful bane in the place of a blessing, he led her forth where were the other gods and men. . . . And amazement held immortal gods and mortal men, when they beheld the sheer delusion unescapable for men. For from her cometh the race of woman-kind. Yea, of her is the deadly race and the tribes of women. A great bane are they to dwell among mortal men, no help-meet for ruinous poverty,