For the week including December 31, 2010

Saturn Jupiter Larger Illustration

OUT WITH THE OLD...

My wife and I once received a New Year’s greeting card that featured an aged Father Time, bearing a scythe, meeting the Baby New Year. The caption read, “Out with the Old, In with the New!” The theme of the card has been around for centuries and while the story behind these characters is definitely old, their connection with planets in our solar system might be new to some.

The figures are drawn from the earliest of Greek myths handed down to us from Hesiod, the ancient poet. No one is quite sure as to when Hesiod lived – the better estimates center around 700 BCE. In his work, Theogeny, Hesiod laid out the origin of the universe and the gods.

I’ll give my own condensed version here of the part that leads to our planets. Basically, it involves the relationship between Uranus, the god of the starry heavens, judgmental fathers, and red-shirted Star Trek extras and Gaia, the goddess of the earth, fertility, and PMS. Gaia had gotten around a bit before hooking up with Uranus and had already given birth to night and day, the air we breathe, and several other items of interest. But with Uranus, her offspring were mountains, valleys, hills and glens, oceans and seas, and lots and lots of little gods and goddesses to go with them. After a time and a multitude of offspring though, the kids they turned out started to get ugly and then uglier. When Gaia started giving birth to giants…

“From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms.”

… family photos were out of the question and Uranus had had enough. He started hiding these children away whenever he could get his hands on them. His attitude really angered Gaia though and she decided to enlist the aid of one of her sons in the matter. Although Uranus himself was her son (that’s another weird story), she thought it best not to involve him in the planning, but turned instead to her youngest, Chronos, the god of time and overly tight apron strings. She handed him a great scythe, whispered in his ear, and with his enthusiastic agreement, concealed him and waited. It didn’t take long for Uranus to walk into the ambush:

“And Heaven came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Earth spreading himself full upon her.”

At this point Chronos sprang out and did something excessively Freudian to Uranus with the scythe. I won’t go into details, but it would have left both Oedipus and Quentin Tarantino gulping. According to Hesiod, it wasn’t all bad though. When Chronos was through with Uranus, he took the more personal of his bloody bodily parts and threw them into the ocean and from the splash and foam was created Aphrodite, the goddess of love. (For more on the classical writings of Hesiod see lysergic acid diethylamide.)

And so, in the words of the great bard, I told you that story to tell you this one…

Ages passed and eventually Chronos moved out and got engaged to Rhea. His mother frequently pointed out that she was a lesser goddess and he could have done a lot better. At their wedding, after much wine, Gaia toasted the couple by prophesying that someday one of their children would do to Chronos what he had done to his father and wished them both a happy honeymoon. That particular bomb-drop seems to have affected the course of their marriage.

Chronos was a little mean-spirited about the prediction and adopted the practice of swallowing his children whole soon after they were born. Many meals later, Chronos seemed to have all of his bases covered, but Rhea wasn’t very happy with the way he was raising their kids. When it came time for Chronos to gobble down a newborn baby they called Zeus, Rhea served him up a rock wrapped in a blanket instead. Hesiod does not describe what Rhea’s culinary skills were usually like, but suffice it to say that Chronos didn’t notice any difference and so the baby Zeus was saved. His mother hid him away on a remote island and there Zeus grew to adulthood. When the time was right, Zeus returned and confronted Chronos, forcing him to cough up his other siblings. Together the young gods overthrew Chronos and established Zeus as their leader. According to Hesiod, this is how the reign of the Olympian gods was started. It also explains why we all read Homer’s stuff instead of his.

And that’s the story of why we have New Years greeting cards like the one I mentioned. Our link to the planets comes with a jump to ancient Rome.

The Romans borrowed heavily when constructing their own myths and weren’t too picky as to quality. Many of the gods of their legends were simply photocopies of the Greek originals. The Roman counterparts of Chronos and Zeus were renamed Saturn and Jupiter.

Jupiter (shown at upper left in our illustration) is 88,730 miles in diameter. It’s so immense that all of the other planets in the solar system could fit inside it. On a clear night, if you look at Jupiter with binoculars, you will immediately see four of its moons, Io, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede.

Saturn (shown at upper right in our illustration) is the most distant planet that can be seen with naked eye. After Jupiter, it’s the largest planet orbiting the Sun. Saturn’s spectacular ring system is visible in binoculars, but a telescope provides a great view that shouldn’t be missed.

The photographs of Jupiter and Saturn are from NASA.

The quoted excerpts from Hesiod's Theogeny were translated by Evelyn White.

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