Family tree of the Greek gods and heroes
A mythologically established family tree of the Greek gods and heroes does not and never existed.
The oldest surviving work, which is dedicated to the origin of the gods and the world, is Hesiod's Theogony , it contains the origin of the gods from each other and describes the change of power of the gods generations from Uranus to the Titans to the rule of Zeus . It ends with a list of the connections of the Olympian gods with mortals. Many of the Hesiodic narratives were handed down in ancient literature and also had equivalents in pictorial representations and in cult, but they never became canonical. Existing fragments of later theogonic poems such as by Alkman or Musaios contain partly very different explanations about the origin of the gods, the most tangible are the differences in the writings of the Orphics . The various Orphic theogonies have in common that the first generation of Hesiodic gods was preceded by further generations. Before Uranos, Phanes, unknown to Hesiod, ruled the world and the Nyx and Zeus is replaced by his son Dionysus .
Genealogical information on heroes can already be found in Homer . In their simplest form they contain three generations, the most complex with six generations is that of Aeneas , in which the Trojan ruling family is traced back to Zeus. Already in the family tree of Aeneas there are elements that can be found in most of the Greek hero trees: the hero is descended from a deity, independent myths such as that of Ganymede are genealogically linked to the hero and eponymous namesake such as Dardanos or Ilos are ancestors of the hero. In the traditional local mythologies there is usually a family tree that traces the founding of the city back to an eponymous hero and this to a deity. In addition to the legitimation of the ruling dynasty and the emphasis on the importance of the city, at least implicitly, a chronological sorting of the known myths and a link with one another is made.
In the catalog of women ascribed to Hesiod , the linking and systematization by the author becomes clear as an intended activity. The catalog follows on from the end of the theogony and extends to the heroes of the Trojan War . The heroes here all go back to Deucalion and Pyrrha and their son Hellen , the eponymous namesake of the Hellenes . Hellen's sons are Aiolos , Doros and Xuthos , the ancestors of the three Greek tribes Aioler , Dorian and Ionian . Hellens daughter Protogeneia testifies with Zeus to Macedon and Magnes , eponymous namesake of the Macedonians and Magnesians.
In the course of antiquity, attempts were made by various mythographers to order and synchronize the various family trees. Apart from fragments, only the libraries of Apollodorus and the Genealogiae of Hyginus have survived . The mythographic processing of myths was mostly done by compiling the available literature and not by retelling folk mythology, for example, Callimachus let some remote local myths flow into his Aitia , of which he received knowledge in the library of Alexandria .
Even in modern times, since the Reformation of Greek mythology in the Renaissance , attempts have repeatedly been made to bring order to the lineages of gods and heroes.
See also
literature
- Fritz Graf : Greek Mythology. An introduction . Patmos, 2004, ISBN 3-491-96119-X .
- Friedrich Prinz : Founding myths and chronology of legends . CH Beck, Munich 1979, ISBN 978-3-406-05162-3 .
- Hans Schwabl : World Creation. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplementary Volume IX, Stuttgart 1962, Col. 1433-1582.