Art and Culture

"Genealogy of the Gods," adapted from The Classic Myths In English Literature and in Art, by Charles Mills Gayley, 1893. Among the Greeks, the most widely accepted account of the origin of the world was provided by the poet Hesiod, around the 8th century B.C. According to Hesiod, Chaos, the yawning abyss, preceded all things. Then came into being Earth, personified as the goddess Gaea, and Love. From Earth sprang the starry canopy of the heavens, personified as the god Uranus. Love then moved in the heart of creation and made of things male and female, thereafter bringing them together by natural attraction. Uranus took Gaea as his wife, and from their union sprang the Titans, personifications of mighty convulsions of creation, and the hundred armed monsters and one eyed monsters, personifications of thunder and lightning and the turbulent sea. Uranus feared these monsters, and accordingly cast them into the vast abyss beneath the Earth known as Tartarus.

Gaea was devastated by this harsh treatment of her own children, and she asked her children the Titans to help her to right this wrong, and throw off the arbitrary and tyrranical yoke of Uranus. None stepped forward to help their mother except Saturn, youngest of the Titans, god of Time. Armed with a mighty sickle provided him by his mother Gaea, Saturn lay in wait for night to fall, and for Uranus to come in for the night to overlay the Earth with his countless points of light. When the unsuspecting Uranus came in, Saturn leaped out from hiding and fell upon his sire, castrating the god Uranus and throwing his severed genitals into the sea. This violent palace coup resulted in Saturn, god of Time, becoming the lord of the gods. Was this violent coup the mythological equivalent of a supernova? Did the ancient Greeks understand that even the stars decayed in time?

Saturn, god of Time, in order to prevent the realization of an oracle he had learned of, to the effect that he would be overthrown by one of his own offspring, as he had overthrown his own father, Uranus, god of the heavens, devoured his own children as they were born. Saturn's children by his sister- wife Rhea were Ceres, Vesta, Juno, Neptune, Pluto and Jupiter. The first five were devoured in turn. Rhea was, of course, greatly distressed, and when she was pregnant with Jupiter she travelled secretly to Crete, and gave birth to him in a cave on the island of Crete. She then placed the infant Jupiter in the care of the nymphs Ida and Adrastea, while she hurried back to Mount Olympus with a huge rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, which she palmed off on Saturn in place of Jupiter. Saturn swallowed the rock immediately, thinking it was the newborn infant Jupiter. Meanwhile, on Crete, Ida and Adrastea cared for and nurtured Jupiter. The infant was fed with the milk of the goat Amalthea, and with honey gathered by the nymphs from the island beehives. The boy Dactyl also assisted in the nurturing of Jupiter. In time (a short time, since the gods grew to maturity quickly) Jupiter attained manhood. Assisted by his mother Rhea and grandmother Gaea (Gaea, you will recall, is the personification of Mother Earth, mother of all things, and of all the Titans), Jupiter forced Saturn to disgorge his unnatural repast, and his brother and sister gods came forth fully grown. The Jovian gods then went to war against Saturn and the Titans, eventually overthrowing them, as the oracle had prophesized. In the council of the gods that followed Saturn's and the Titans' overthrow, Jupiter was crowned Lord of Heaven and Earth and of all the gods. He granted Neptune (Poseidon to the Greeks) dominion over the sea, and to his other brother Pluto (Hades to the Greeks) dominion over the underworld.

Mars (Ares) the warrior god, as shown in this sketch by the famous Renaissance artist Raphael. The most enduring of the many wives and paramours of Jupiter was Juno, his goddess-sister-wife. From their union came Vulcan, god of fire, and Hebe, goddess of youth and sometime cupbearer of the gods. Before his marriage to Juno, Jupiter had had many relationships, the first being Metis, goddess of foreknowledge. Having conceived Jupiter's child, Metis foretold Jupiter that their child would be wiser than its father. Jupiter thereby immediately swallowed the pregnant Metis in an attempt to prevent this occurance. In time, however, Jupiter gave birth to the goddess Athena fully grown from his own head. Vulcan cleaved open Jupiter's head with a special ax he had fashioned for the deed in order to allow the birth. And Athena was indeed very wise. Juno, being of the jealous type, decided that she too would give birth without the assistance of her spouse, Jupiter, and accordingly touched a flower with her divine hand and the twin offspring Mars, god of war, and Discord, his troublesome sister, sprang forth fully grown.

The apparent retrograde motion of Mars, as seen against the star background, is shown in figure (a). At the end of the 16th century there were two explanations for this apparent retrograde motion. One was that of Ptolemy and Hipparchus, which employed epicycles to account for the motion, figure (b), with Earth at the center of the universe. The other was that of Copernicus, the heliocentric model, wherein Earth, in its orbit about the sun, catches up to Mars and passes it, figure (c). Both systems worked equally well in predicting the apparent motion of Mars.

Illustration in "War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells, 1898, showing the landing of the invading spacecraft in Great Britain. Wells' book was a powerful story, coming as it did at a time when Percival Lowell had excited the imagination of the public with his pronouncement, in 1894, of having seen canals on Mars.

Cover of one of the 11 Martian novels (1911-1925) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The beautiful woman is the Martian princess Dejah, wooed and won by the novel's hero, soldier of fortune John Carter. Ray Bradbury, author of the Martian Chronicles, credits Burroughs with inspiring him to write his chronicals.

Newspaper journalist's photo of Orson Welles looking totally bewildered, immediately following his famous 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Welles produced and presented his radio dramatization of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", which had been written some 40 years earlier. The site of the 'Martian invasian' in Welles' presentation took place in New Jersey. He succeeded unwittingly in terrifying millions of people on the east coast of the United States.

Painting by Ludek Pesek, National Geographic Magazine, 1973, showing the beginning of a great Martian dust storm. This painting was inspired by the dust storm encountered by the Mariner 9 spacecraft. On May 30, 1971 Mariner 9 was launched (following failure of Mariner 8) on its mission to map the surface of Mars. Four months after launch, and two months before Mars encounter and orbit insertion, a monster dust storm began sweeping the planet. The storm started locally, as shown in this painting, and developed rapidly. By the time Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars, in November 1971, the planet was totally enshrouded in clouds, causing one scientist to quip that Mariner 9 seemed to have encountered Venus instead. The dust storm delayed the mapping for several weeks.