Ouranos and Gaea, the primordial gods of Sky and Earth, were greatly afflicted with a parasite. Humanity. Humans are creators, yes, but also destroyers, much worse than the likes of Perses, Titan of Destruction, who is said to be prominent in all men of wisdom. The Earth Mother and Sky Father were sick, and with this sickness, came a want for revenge. Mother Gaea shook humanity with earthquakes, beckoning Pontus, the primordial ocean, to follow and crash unto human civilisation to devastate them. Humanity faltered, yet persisted, and in time, developed new ways to further poison not only Gaea and Ouranos, but even Pontus himself. Gaea, Pontus, and Ouranos plotted and schemed together to punish humankind, so that they would learn to respect their betters. If not, well, they would create new life that could populate Gaea’s body, after humanity died. Zeus, king of the gods agreed, decreeing that the gods had become too complacent and lenient with humanity’s growth, and that humanity should still bow to the gods.
Ouranos enlisted the help of bright Helios. When Helios shone, Ouranos would slowly let more and more burning sunlight through, but let little heat escape. This in turn, heated up Gaea herself. While it was an unfortunate discomfort for Gaea, the Mother Earth had suffered burns and cuts much worse than that of Helios shining through Ouranos. In fact, wise Gaea used this to her advantage. With the heat that the Sun Chariot of Helios produced, it made her poison much more deadly. This poison was naturally produced from the injuries that she suffered, and was of the same poison that humans had used for many years to harm her already frail body. The heat from Helios would increase the volume of poison, which would release into the sky. There, Ouranos would continue to gather the poison which would form into a layer of clouds, letting said clouds of poison fall on the unsuspecting humans. Humans, who did not have the might of great Atlas, Titan of Endurance who held up the pillars of the sky, could only watch helplessly, as this layer of sky fell.
Pontus, however, became far too weak to help. Humans had harmed him beyond the point of his ability to recuperate. He could no longer rage as he once did. He mourned his children, the life of the sea, as they had already begun to pass on from the machinations of man. His vision cloudy, he offered his body as a sink for the heat that Gaea and Ouranos were creating, and as such, the world as humans knew began to change irrevocably.
With this, humans not only slowly began to suffocate, but also feel something. They felt bothered, uncomfortable. They felt… hot. They realised in horror and despair, that the Earth and Sky had trapped them. All around them, they saw carnage. Other species dying, deadly diseases coming back to life amongst the heat. While humans have adapted to live in most conditions, in horror, they realised that many others did not. They panicked. Some humans who studied the combined world in the form of Gaea, Ouranos, and Pontus realised that they could fix the problems of the heating and poison, and stop what seemed to be mutually assured destruction. They pleaded with the anemoi, the gods of the four winds, to blow away this oppressive, poisonous layer. They pleaded with Poseidon to wash away the harm done to Pontus. And yet, the poison of the skies, earth, and seas persisted. Some humans, becoming desperate, began to take matters into their own hands, and tried to reduce the harm, hoping to let the world heal. Gaea and Ouranos witnessed these few, and pitied their fruitless actions. The rest of humanity, however, did not understand the point of healing the world, and continued their harmful actions. And so, the world continued to fight back, intent on taking all life with them. The question now is: what fate befalls these fools? Has Ananke and her Daughters forsaken all humanity, and sentenced them to death? Or shall the world fade from this realm first? Or, above all odds, can humanity and the world reconcile?
Analysis:
This myth talks about the aetiology of the phenomenon of global warming. As such, with the phenomenon of global warming encompassing all of the world over long periods of time, it was fitting that the myth focused on the primordials that make up most of the material world that we know; Ouranos, the sky, Gaea, the Earth, and Pontus, the oceans and seas. Another prominent figure in this myth is the presence of humanity, as it was us who started the world on this downward spiral of global warming. There are also some passing mentions to some other deities in Greek myth, who embodied feats that humans could not possibly hope to recreate without some form of extreme advancement.
Ouranos was the primordial of all the sky and heavens above, where he rested just on the edges of the Earth, his wife Gaea. (Hesiod, Theogony. 126-128.) Conjoined with Gaea and Pontus, they made up the world in its entirety sung by Orpheus in the Argonautica. (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. 1.496-498.) However, in all of the myths, there has been nothing said regarding specifically the powers of Ouranos. Any mentions of him in myth are that of his title as a primordial god, or the father of Titans and monsters such as the hekatonkheires. As such what Ouranos does in this myth is merely a reflection of what he is titled as: the primordial god of the sky and heavens, where they are part of his body, and he can manipulate them. The persistence of the “poison” as well as the “cloud of poison falling on unsuspecting humans” are part of his manipulation of his body. Ouranos, as well as Gaea in this myth are described to be capable of pity to some humans who were trying to fix the world, mostly since they are seen as loyal subjects of the world. There is also the fact that humans are not of a monstrous creation like the Hekatonkheires, which Ouranos threw into Tartarus when they were born, but more resembling the Titans, who were seen as the better lifeforms of the two. It is not real “pity” per say, but rather a tyrant looking down at ants that amuse him.
Gaea, the Earth Mother, mother of Titans and monsters, was wife to Ouranos, but also bore the children of Pontus and Tartarus as well. With her moniker as primordial of the Earth, her body is the Earth itself, and thus she should have a degree of control over body, such as shaking the ground to create earthquakes, or having her body adapt and produce the “poison,” which is another saying for the carbon emissions, ground-level ozone, and other pollutants. These pollutants that she releases from the machinations of humans is what Ouranos is described to be shaping into the cloud that will fall upon humanity. There is also mention of Gaea suffering “cuts and burns much worse than Helios shining through Ouranos,” which references humanity, from when we began to practice agriculture, all the way into the modern day era, where we continuously cut down trees, and making forest fires more common than they should be. In a CNN article, Andrea Kay, a study author on anthropology states “While modern rates and scales of anthropogenic global change are far greater than those of the deep past, the long-term cumulative changes wrought by early food producers are greater than many realize.”(Strickland, “Humans have been impacting Earth for thousands of years, study says”) Gaea, as a long-lived primordial, is also wise and cunning, which we first see in the castration of Ouranos; she uses her son Kronos, with a sickle of her fashion, and tells him to punish his father. She hides Kronos away while Ouranos comes down to make love with Gaea, and in that moment, Ouranos is castrated. (Hesiod, Theogony. 160-185.) This use of her son to castrate Ouranos is what inspired the idea of using the increased heat from Helios, as well as humanity’s own pollutants to further her goal of wiping out humanity through global warming. However, Gaea is not without pity, and in this case, witnessing the few humans willing to set aside their own goals to try and save the world is worth pitying. Gaea, after all, is the mother of all, eldest of all beings save for Chaos itself. In that sense, it is Gaea who is the mother of all humanity, taking care of them and giving them a place to roam, to harvest, and to live. (To Gaia, the Mother of All. 209.) When humanity harms the Earth and its “siblings”, it is up to her to punish them, however, to do so means that she must punish all of humanity rather than the ones causing ruin. It is in this sense that she pities the fruitless actions of the few that want to save the Earth, as it is the rest of humanity that would ruin their efforts.
Pontus is not a major actor in this myth, and that is due to his “weakening,” where humans have polluted his water so heavily that all oceanic life, his children, suffer no matter where they go. From Pontus and Thalassa, all the tribes of fishes were his children, as well as Thaumas, Nereus, Phorcys, Keto, and Eurybia from Gaea; all gods with domains that connect in one way or another to their father’s body. (Hyginus, Fabulae. 5.) His children reside in his body, his domain, so when his body is harmed, the lives of his children are threatened too. By turning his body into a heatsink, he is further dooming his children, but at this point, Pontus is mostly doomed already.
Finally, there are references to Perses, Titan of Destruction, Atlas, the Titan of Endurance, Helios, the Titan-God of the Sun, and the Anemoi, gods of the four winds. Perses is referenced as being present in wisdom. (Hesiod, Theogony. 378.) Wisdom refers to man, meaning that destruction is something that humanity has been proficient in for a long period of time. This we can obviously see in the destruction of wildlife, which led to extinction of some species in extreme circumstances. We can also see the extent of man’s capability of destruction in war, which more often than not creates environmental disasters that take years to recover from, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atlas is mentioned briefly in this aetiology, but there is reasoning for this. Atlas is the Titan whose punishment is holding the sky, which requires immense strength to do so. “... Atlas, he who knows the depths of the sea, and supports the great columns that separate earth and sky.” (Homer, Odyssey. 1.44-95.) Humanity cannot do nothing like this, nor can any other mythological being since they do not have the endurance of Atlas, which is what makes him so unique. When Ouranos introduces another layer, one of clouds of poison which are not part of the sky, humanity struggles underneath. By invoking the Anemoi, which are the four directional winds, they ask for the clouds to be blown away. However, the creator of this world did not allow them to have full dominion over the sky, as it would tear the world apart. (Ovid, Metamorphoses. 1.52-68.) Ouranos and his clouds would persist over humanity until they clear up the skies themselves. As for Helios, heating the Earth is easily doable, as seen when Helios melts the ice of Zeus on Typhus: “Gaea, seeing the stone bullets and icy points embedded in Typhus’ flesh, witness of his fate, prays to Titan Helios with submissive voice: she begged of him one red hot ray, that with its heating fire she might melt the petrified water of Zeus, by pouring his kindred radiance over frozen Typhus.” (Nonnus, Dionysiaca. 2.540-550.) Ananke and her daughters, the Fates, are mentioned in passing, as it is they who write out how all events turn out, be it for mortal or immortal.
These gods portrayed in this myth, are prominent in multiple myths, save for Pontus, and they are shown to be fickle in their emotions. Gaea may be wrathful one day, pity Rhea another, side with Zeus after, and turn on him in a couple of years. Helios can be kind and gentle, but also wrathful and unforgiving. It is these things that made the myth harder to write, as the rest came down to how their powers were described in the myths, and what feats they were able to accomplish within each myth. With that being said, while their personalities may not be the most accurate, the feats that they show here within this myth are what they are capable of based on other myths.
Works Cited
Hesiod, et al. Hesiod: Works & Days & Theogony. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993
Homer, et al. The Odyssey. Poetry in Translation, 2016.
Hyginus, and Mary A. Grant. The Myths of Hyginus. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960
Nonnus, and W H D. Rouse. Nonnos Dionysiaca. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940.
Ovid, and A. S. Kline. “Metamorphoses Book I (A.S. Kline's Version).” The Ovid Collection--A. S. Kline, Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, University of Virginia, ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm.
Rhodius, Apollonius, and R. C. Seaton. Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica. London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1912.
Strickland, Ashley. “Humans Have Been Impacting Earth for Thousands of Years, Study Says.”
CNN, Cable News Network, 29 Aug. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/world/human-impact-earth-scn.
Trzaskoma, Stephen, et al. Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2004.
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