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The myths of the Ancient Greeks about Gaia -- Mother Earth -- arise for fresh inspection in cyberspace, on the Internet. World-wide, environmentally-aware people plumb their anxieties about global warming. If we wish to preserve our ways of life, reduction of the effects of global warming can only be achieved with the aid of modern sciences. Analysis of the problems requires the use of the sciences.

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Australian writer, poet and webmaster Dan Byrnes asks -- what happens to your imagination when you clash ancient mythology and today's hard sciences -- as world-wide, our weather seemingly becomes more violent? How do you feel ...?


(This article is footnoted – see bottom of page)

If Gaia speaks?

By Dan Byrnes

Why do we never get an answer,

When we're knockin' at the door,

To the thousand million questions

About hate and death and war?

But we stop and look around us....


The Moody Blues (album 1970), A Question of Balance, lines from the song Question.

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This page updated 15 October 2014

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www.danbyrnes.com.au

So you are a peacenik? You want to save the environment? Want to save the earth? From what? Barring earthquakes, what can you do?


How and where do such cultural urges arise? We can ask the questions easily enough. The movie The Day After Tomorrow explores many issues. The answer(s) can be very complicated... as follows...


Explaining how this webpage arose
In May-June 2004 I was asked to write a long article basically on Ancient Greek Mythology. The first part of the article was on modern views of the Myth of Gaia (Mother Earth)


The second part was to be about The Origins of the Olympic Games as seen in Greek Mythology and any new arising from archaeology.


This second part of the article was also to treat the rise of the modern Olympics movement, a topic which became sidelined. But when in 2004 I did survey various publicity about The Olympics being held in Greece, I rather thought that the Greek authorities, generally, had decided to sanitise the related Mythology – at least as far as websites went. Some aspects of the basic story are downright ugly.

The person asking for these articles to be written was decidedly not pleased! I have anyway left the two sections joined here as in one of the final drafts of the article.
Dan Byrnes

If GAIA speaks, what does she say, this Mother Earth?


GAIA for the ancient Greeks was Mother Earth, Mother of All Living Things, Earth Goddess. (Greek = "earth"). She figures gigantically in Greek mythology, and today is an inevitable reference point for environmentally-minded people. But while Gaia is supportive and nurturing, she can also annihilate - as with earthquakes or volcanoes.

Today, "Gaia" is a moral-mythological target -- a cultural receptor depot -- largely because of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, which between 1969-1972 proposed that our planet is itself a living organism. With a consciousness? So possessing foresight, a sense of purpose, a desire for survival-with integrity, some sense of future? Like any organism, having some sense of pattern recognition, which all organisms need to identify their food supplies?


James Lovelock revives the idea of Gaia

Lovelock from the 1950s helped inspire the anti-DDT (anti-pesticide) movement. (1) Before 1969 as an independent atmospheric scientist he was working for NASA on questions relating to Mars' atmosphere in relation to plans for space probes to Mars. Wondering also about Earth's atmosphere, he suspected that Planet Earth is itself a biological organism. He pondered the global eco-system, and it was his friend, novelist William Golding, who planted the word Gaia in Lovelock's mind in connection with thoughts on the interdependence of all things. Golding (as from a website) viewed Gaia as "the ancient Greek earth-mother goddess and of her dual character of caring supporter of beings who 'fit' and ruthless annihilator of

those who do not fit"...


Is it useful to regard Gaia as a goddess? For myself, no. A goddess that sits in space, revolves on an axis and enjoys sunlight? If Gaia is a goddess, why not also re-institute sun worship? Gaia does not answer religious questions - she merely proposes that such questions might need to be asked.


I cannot see Gaia as "spiritual" since she is the planet itself - the absolute first set of material in the material world that we need to look at. I prefer to apply to her the more literary term, demi-urge, a set of major forces hugely beyond the control of humanity, and completely unmoved and unmovable by any of humanity's concerns. Gaia was also "an ancient oracle of the gods". In some vague sense, she precedes any discussion the gods might have - she precedes deity itself, or rather, notions of deity.


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In which case, Gaia is beyond and outside the scope of religion, or anything "spiritual" or imaginative. Gaia has a more significant relationship with gravity than with humanity. We need to retain a sense of perspective. It is not that we can save the planet, more that Gaia, if she had thoughts, could annihilate us if she so wished. I doubt she cares. If we or any other species dies, we die. A planet has no need to express opinions. A planet's first job is to spin.


Lovelock claimed that there is strong evidence to suggest the interlocking of an overall systemic control of the earth's surface temperature, atmospheric composition, ocean salinity and other factors such as the temperature of major ocean currents.


The processes are complex - and mostly avoided here. I assume that humanity would be foolish to interfere with any such large-scale processes. Moreover, human cultural history reflects a deep, in-built feeling that we should not "interfere with nature". Various feelings by now -- about global warming and/or a new ice age --are haunting our entire world, and dread is a far stronger feeling than any mere guilt.


The Greeks' view on Gaia's atmosphere is uncannily similar to that of Lovelock. The question might be: why did it take so long for the style of the ancient Greeks' formulations on wide-scale natural processes to be echoed for modern days - by Lovelock, who originally was a lone voice?


When Lovelock published, scientists gave his Gaia Hypothesis a frosty reception, partly as the sheer scale of his propositions rattled the scoping of questions that scientists were used to asking - and due to various in-house philosophical problems that scientists regularly assail each other with. Lovelock's early propositions seemed vaguely mystical, which Golding of course quickly noticed.


Having been attacked by his peers, but surviving by applying mathematics with his Daisyworld Model (Google search for it), Lovelock writes: "I recognise that to view the Earth as if it were alive is just a convenient, but different, way of organising the facts of the Earth. I am of course prejudiced in favour of Gaia and have filled my life for the past twenty-five years with the thought that Earth may be alive: not as the ancients saw her—a sentient Goddess with a purpose and foresight—but alive like a tree. A tree that quietly exists, never moving except to sway in the wind, yet endlessly conversing with the sunlight and the soil. Using sunlight and water and nutrient minerals to grow and change. But all done so imperceptibly, that to me the old oak tree on the green is the same as it was when I was a child." (See Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, Gaia Books Limited, London, 1991, p.12.)


Here is an ideal - using accurate metaphors to enable the unification of a variety of outlooks. Lovelock has also written "For me, Gaia is a religious as well as a scientific concept , and in both spheres it is manageable… God and Gaia, theology and science, even physics and biology are not separate but [seen in] a single way of thought". (The Ages of Gaia, pp. 206, 212.)


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Gaia as a living earth mother

The idea of a living earth -- Mother Earth -- is ancient. Plato wrote: "We shall affirm that the cosmos, more than anything else, resembles most closely that living Creature of which all other living creatures, severally or genetically, are portion; a living creature which is fairest of all and in ways most perfect."


Thus we have, Gaia, goddess and earth mother, the Anima Mundi - the "world soul", the idea of "spirit" in things - this sort of understanding has been eroded mostly since Descartes helped usher in so-called objective science. Nor is Lovelock alone. He keeps company with "living earthers" such as James Hutton (earth as a super-organism, a physiological system); Lamark, Goethe, Humbolt and the little-known Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, who discusses the concept of the biosphere, recognises matter as "living", life as "a geological force" and atmosphere as an extension of life. (2)


These philosophical arguments are entertaining. They should I think be matched by an awareness of educational problems around the world that could easily be addressed by the Internet - if people will be allowed to use the Internet.


Sometime after Taliban fighters were lifted by US forces from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an interrogator there mentioned to a journalist, "Some of these [Taliban] guys don't know the world is round." We might ask, are some conflicts around the world today being conducted by round-earthers versus flat-earthers? The implications of a view of earth from space are still not fully accepted?


In sum, the philosophical-scientific arguments about the Gaia Hypothesis have served to emphasise sets of important outlooks which already are institutionalised in media reporting in the English-speaking world at least, and in our education systems. These perspectives by the way often conflict with standard, post-nineteenth century economic theories. Perhaps a little dumbed-down by our media, a few key phrases can be provided as metaphors, as Gaian outlooks, such as:


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Humanity can pose dangers to Gaia's life support systems - possibly also at micro-biological levels;


Nature cannot validly be viewed as a "machine" (a non-mechanistic outlook);


Co-operation and integration rather than competition, non-integration, dis-integration, or even over-emphasis on sub-systems which if concentrated might later impact against the integrities of the system overall;


Metaphors/recommendations of community/harmony;


Participation and inclusiveness rather than alienation (or species extinction);


A conviction that greater bio-diversity is desirable.


Emphasis on interconnectedness;


The influential Jewish, Christian and post-Christian notions, drawn from Genesis, about mankind's stewardship of the earth (and its fruits) is by now outdated, outmoded, irrelevant. It does not meet the case; and perhaps, other major religions should rethink their positions on such questions. (Incidentally, from my own reading on world climate history, I notice that one of humanity's reactions to climate change is an urge to rejig theology such that society can find ways to cope with or respond to situations arising. This has happened yet again with Catholic theology, for example, due to fears about global warming, at the Vatican level. It seems not to be a question being addressed in the Islamic world.)


Paradoxical risks of global warming flicking us into a new ice age; uncertainty whether such processes could be slowed down or avoided;


By today's standards, both the science and the metaphors involved remain fascinating. But if fears of global warming worsen, more than fascination will be involved.


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Greek mythology

Let's examine then what Lovelock started with -- Greek mythology. (3)


Greek mythology informs us of the existence of about 6000 "entities" or sets of observable forces and influences - including the influence of the human imagination by way of story-telling - linking the meanings of the entities' activities in a coherent, large-scale fashion.


Books commented on websites newly outline the genealogy of these entities. These 6000 figures move on a vast canvas, the sheer vastness helping to explain why Greek mythology has remained so popular across millennia. The inter-related stories have great entertainment value. Webmaster Jonathan Coxhead says, Greek mythology is: "The most intricate, obsessively worked out, fictional family tree in the Western world."


There was certainly no Big-Bang theory. One view is that Gaia as a demi-urge has no parents at all. Another view is that she is a daughter of Chaos and is herself the mother of Uranus and Pontus. Another view is that her children by Uranus were the Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires (100-handed giants), and the Titans, 12 male and female giants (including Titanesses).


The Titans -- ancestors of the gods of Olympus -- were named Cronus, Iapetus, Hyperion, Oceanus, Coeus, Creus, Theia, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Themis. These Titans were ancestors of "divine beings" such as Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Dione, Demeter, Orphion, Hecate, Selene, and Helios. As the Greek formed their explanations, they raised up a truly bewildering family history of important entities. (4)


The word Tethys becomes entertaining here, as it is the name now given to a major sea existing sometime as Pangea, the original single huge plate of land which existed - so science tells us - which broke up to become Gondwanaland, then our modern continents with their mystifying variety of fossils and surviving animals.


Don't ask how long ago this was! The ancient Greeks did not know about tectonic plates moving slowly across the surface of a round planet with a diameter of 12,756km. Fascinatingly, the Gaia myth proposes a single huge plate of land surrounded by sheer ocean - as science today tells us was once the case with Pangea.


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Ancient Gaia

The Greek words Gaia, Gaih or Gh, transliterate to "Earth", as does Khthon (from which comes the word gnothic, "from the earth".) Similar archaic words mean "Mother of All", "Nurse of the Young". The Latin became Gaea, Terra / Tellus, or Natura.

As one website has it, "Gaia was Mother Earth, an ancient primeval goddess or protogenos who emerged at the creation of the universe, second only to Khaos (Air). She has been depicted [on Greek vases] as a buxom, matronly woman, shown half-risen from the earth, unable to completely separate herself from her element."


"In the ancient cosmology, The Earth was a disk surrounded by the river Okeanos. It was called the foundation of all, because not only trees, men, and animals, but even the hills, sea and the solid dome of the sky were supported by it."


(Note here: the sky as a "solid dome". - hardly how we think of it today.)


Gaia was the second being to emerge at creation, following Chaos. She was co-equal with Uranus (Heaven, and home of the gods), and produced the ocean. Other "entities" produced were mountains, sea, night, darkness, hell's pit. The elements of the home of the gods were put together by Eros.


Gaia was an oracle of the gods, and before one oracle she placed a guarding dragon. She was life-giving in terms of the word, "pherosbios". She is nurse and protectress of the young, mother of mankind. She drew mists at dawn. Flowed the rivers ever, fumigated seeds, was fertile, all-destroying, all-parent, bounding, prolific with fruits and flowers, "the immortal world's strong base", "deep-bosomed, blessed, pleased with grassy plains". All rather anthropomorphic.


Giver of honey-hearted wealth, feeder of all creatures, she also knew of parched deserts. She could make fire and water fight till humidity and warmth renewed harmony. She could also hide herself in her own body, as in caves. She once devastated "many species" with a flood (the Great Deluge, maybe The Deucalion Flood, also said to have been caused by Zeus.) But she later kindly renewed life from her own slimes. As she nurtures growth, she is herself nourished by the upper and outer elements - including sunlight. Her exhalations helped nourish the air, the ether and the heavenly bodies.


She produced plants, unreasoning beasts, and a civilized, god-loving creature. The Greeks were undecided who were the first people arising, but their myths did mention kings in territory from Spain, Libya to Egypt, Ethiopia, to east beyond the Black Sea. (Though Prometheus was said to have created men out of earth.) They were probably aware of India's people.


The Greeks noted the existence of, variously: half-dog men, Libyans, Ethiopians, underground-folk, Pygmies, "black-skins", Skythians, Hyperboreans (races of men born to Gaia by either Poseidon or Epaphos). One is reminded that after the Biblical Flood, Noah's sons inherited various parts of the world roughly west of Persia, including Ethiopia, and across to Britain. The Biblical story of The Flood is partly an effort to insert a reluctant recognition of the existence of many peoples into an ethnocentric, religion-based mythology. At face value, the Myth of Adam and Eve is a mono-racial [and non-evolutionary] explanation of human origins - religion as near-racism?


Gaia was regarded as the upholder of cities and their towers. She did rather fear "the chariot of the sun". Her navel-stone (Omphalos, centre of the world) was at Delphi. The sanctuary precincts at Olympia kept an enclosure for her. Sparta kept a sanctuary for her, Athens maintained a sanctuary named Erinyes for her role as nurse of the young. In Attica she was known as Megale Thea (The Great Goddess). Rites for Gaia were relatively sedate. A male might gratefully load an altar with fruits and flowers and pour milk over them. At Gaia's Eurysternos sanctuary, a part-time priestess, who had to be chaste for the interim, had before she was elected to have had intercourse with only one man, a test applied by the drinking of bull's blood. Women could compete for this position by drawing lots. Mostly, only black animals were sacrificed to her.


Orpheus once sang of a distant time when Gaia, Uranus, and Pontos (Sea) were "knit together in a single mould; how they were sundered after deadly strife.” (Argonautica, 1.498f) Lovelock might use a similar set of metaphors.



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And as mother of all living things, Mother of the Gods, Gaia was counsellour of both gods and men. The Oracles of Delphi and Olympia traced their origin to her. (The Romans identified Gaia with Tellus.)


Gaia's broods

By various progenitors, Gaia produced "sets" of children, but sometimes according to her mood, as when she felt asexual a few times. She produced heroes and giants. Her children by Pontus were five sea-deities, Nereus, Thaumas, Ceto, Phoreus, and Eurbia.


She and Uranus once produced the three Hekatonkheires, large and powerful, who each had a hundred hands and fifty heads. Later came the Cyclopes.


She bore The Titans, who over time deposed their father Uranus and put Cronus in his stead, and were themselves overthrown by the Olympians as led by Zeus to the battle - Titanomachy.


One of Gaia's most terrible children was Cronus, who hated his father. A terrible child was Typhon, who once stole the fiery tools of Zeus to deal out what looks suspiciously like a volcano, unaware he might somehow harm his mother, which he did from time to time.


The Titanomachy was The Battle of Titans (ten years), between the Titans and Olympians, in Thessaly. (Search Google on it, the results are fascinating. The first king of Elis, Aethlios, was from Thessaly, where incoming migrants, "Greeks", had first concentrated their numbers. Aethlios' son Endymion is said to have been be the first to proclaim a footrace for his sons, Paeon, Epeois and Aetolus. The prize was evidently an inherited throne, as Epeois inherited here. Much was at stake with such a race, which may have been held to try to reduce risks of civil war when a king died?


The Titans were led by Cronus (popularly, Old Father Time) who held Mt. Othrys; the Olympians led by Zeus held Mt Olympus. Zeus won when he released the Hecatoncheires, and the Cyclopes, from Tartarus. The Cyclopes forged the thunderbolt for Zeus with which victory was assured. At battle's end, Cronus went to rule in the Isles of the Blessed, Atlas was condemned to wear the sky on his shoulders, and Oceanus and Prometheus as they had aided the Olympians, were left on Olympus. All the other Titans were condemned to Tartarus (an Underworld). (5)


The reign of Zeus came after warfare, and so later did moves to establish the first Olympic Games, as we shall see.


But contrary to the great British nineteenth century adoration of Greek mythology - the "Hellenization" of the British upper-class education system - the genealogy proposed by Greek mythology is confusing if not self-invalidating. To the end of the "genealogy" appears King Priam of Troy. He serves as an introduction to the more historical stories we know of the prosecution of the Trojan War won by the Greeks, newly-presented this year with the movie, Troy.



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Working the mythical Greek genealogy backwards, we soon end up contemplating the great demi-urges - world creating figures - that the Greeks noticed. Chaos, Gaia, Poseidon (earthquakes); and maybe Typhon, the figure signifying volcanoes. (6) It seems to me that in fact, the Greeks with the way they presented their pantheon of mythological figures were not interested in the reality of their own origins. They glossed over huge tracts of time, as the Jews (or Hebrews) did with what Christians call the Old Testament, particularly with the Book of Genesis.


Firstly, a geneticist I know who is interested in human migration patterns in archaic times tells me that little is known reliably of the ethnic origins of the Greeks. Secondly, the Greeks proposed to themselves, as many other archaic peoples did, the Hebrews, the Japanese, that the ancestors of their kings somehow proceeded from one or several deities - divine beings.


By the same tokens, such explanations of human origins carried within them a cosmology, a world view as increasingly adopted by once-warring rivals of varying ethnic origins.


In brief, ancient religions and world views expressed quite some ambition to explain deities, religions, human origins and human destinies, weather and natural phenomena including crop fertility, all at the same time. Astrology was part of this urge-to-explain. In both Egypt and Sumeria, out of the mix came the institutions of Priesthood (including priestesses) and Kingship. That is, methods of social control. A believed-in mythology becomes a political ideology.


Today, many participants in the New Age Movement continue to believe in Astrology, a variety of belief system which originated in ancient Sumeria, which had weather patterns far more volatile than the more sedate patterns of, say, ancient Egypt.


Modern sciences simply fail to support belief in these ancient cosmologies. Consider a picture of Earth taken from space, and then ask yourself about ancient belief systems - what on earth does "the deity" have to do with the virtue of the ruler, or the fertility of the crops, that human beings can actually control by acts of sacrifice? This question has been embedded in modern life since we saw the first pictures of planet Earth taken from space - but culturally, much of today's New Age Movement pretends this never happened.


Our inspection of the first pictures of Earth from space became a historical watershed for all important future-made perceptions of where we live! The future needs to understand this! So do people who read about the past.


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The ancient Greeks related their cosmology to Kingship via King Priam of Troy, whose territory they subdued. Thus, their world view prevailed, and with their views on Gaia and her genealogy, they prevailed on the earth. So they thought.


As well, it is important to note that with the socio-political use of most major symbols -- such as the symbol of "dragon" -- meanings are conveniently slippery. They convey many possible meanings -- as does language. As with Alice in Wonderland, it is possible to believe a thousand impossible things before breakfast!


I suspect that symbols were popularized precisely because they are so slippery - if one explanation fails to explain, another meaning of the symbol can be used. If only for long enough that a ruler and his advisers can get themselves out of some political bother!


Whether individuals believe in dragons is not so important as the general preservation of social order. A great many symbols admired by today's New Agers have been useful historically as instruments of social control - often enough with the exercise of great brutality. Symbols need to be put in their place -- which is an important function of art -- to get the meaning of symbols out of individual, post-childhood minds and into the social arena where they can be discussed rationally. Lovelock did this helpfully when he presented his Gaia Hypothesis.


How Greek mythology related to kingship

By one version of the story, the Trojan War began when Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to shift the winds around more conveniently so the Greeks' ships could sail to attack Troy - a scene of human sacrifice not included in the movie, Troy.


I imagine, as today, we must not frighten the kiddies who will be paying to see the movie! Or was it, less cynically, that the producers do not wish to reinforce any notion that human intervention can influence any natural phenomena -- such as powerful weather?


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The mother of Iphigenia, Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra (sister of Helen who had been abducted by Paris of Troy), murdered Agamemnon for killing their daughter. My sympathies are with Iphigenia. And family history wise, Agamemnon's brother Menelaus had earlier married Helen. Two brothers had married two sisters. Family honour was just one motive for the Greek war against Troy.


To skate through a great deal of complex mythological material, King Priam is presented thus. The famous Helen of Troy (from Greece), married Paris of Troy. The son of King Priam of Troy. The Son of Laeomedon, the son of Ilus the founder of Troy, son of Tros the King of Troad (western coastal Turkey). The son of Erichthonus the King of Dardania, the son of deity Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra of the Pleiades (an astronomical entity). Zeus was son of Titan Cronus ("Father Time" who infamously eats his children) and Titan Rhea I (the Titan of the Milky Way). Cronus being son of Uranus and Gaia.


(Ilus the founder and king of Troy married Eurydice, and became father of Laeomdeon. Ilus' daughter Themiste married his nephew, Capys (of the Dardanian line). His son Laomedon succeeded Ilus.)


A modern date for the Trojan War is 1230-1180BCE (Before the Common Era). My sympathies lie more with the losers, the Trojans, not the winners, the Greeks, because elements of fascism lurked in Greek warmongering and ideology. (Plato himself was somewhat fascist in outlook.)

Now, in terms of historical time, the myths propose that only "ten generations" intervene between the appearance of the Earth (Gaia) and Paris of Troy who abducts Helen. (7)


The mythologies are built around the Greek's victory over Troy, and serve two major purposes: to explain the Universe, the creation of the world, some spiritual propositions, to explain much natural phenomena; and to celebrate the Greek's victory. (8) However, the defeated Trojans were not forgotten - legends exist on where they emigrated, to Rome, London, or Wales. (9)


Particularly, Robert Graves has a darker view on the myths, outlining violent behaviour. (10) The myths serve many purposes, promoting a kind of truth-telling about the darker sides of human nature and motivations, and to keep idealism and virtue to the fore in the public mind. Kindness, compassion and providing assistance to those in distress are also emphasised by the myths.



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With the aid of their mythologies, the Greeks formed their identity in terms of their victory over the Trojans. Troy, to the extreme north-west of Turkey, was a major city and command centre of a major trade route between the Aegean Sea, up the Bosporus into the Black Sea to the north-east. Troy was also a major horse-trading centre. (The grandmother of Agamemnon the Greek leader was Hippodamia, "mother of horses".)


The Trojan War looks suspiciously like an ordinary trade war, the victory elaborately decorated with poetry and myth. There are odd changes in acceleration rate as the mythologies attach kingship to ancestry from deities. Four generations back from King Priam of Troy we find semi-divine Dardanus (who gave his name to the Dardanelles), a son of Zeus and Electra of the Pleiades. But with Agamemnon of the House of Atreus, (Mycaenae, Greece), are only three generations back to King Tmolous, spouse of Pluto, daughter of Ares and Theogogne and a granddaughter of Gaia herself. (Some of the Spartan aristocrats were even "closer" to the deities.) Oddly, the genealogy of the Trojans (from Zeus) is longer in human lifetimes, as given, than the genealogy of Agamemnon (House of Atreus), the victor, by at least one human generation - a logical flaw in the storytelling.


A literary legend exists that the ancient Greeks who promoted reason had deliberately invented prose writing in order to free people of the "intoxication" resulting from thinking, speaking and writing "in poetry". Given the powerful themes and complexities in their mythology, this would have been a smart move.


The efforts their mythology made to explain everything in a coherent fashion, mixed with all the perplexities of human nature and the caprices of the gods, near overpower the imagination. Yet the gods do not exactly produce humanity itself with care - the relations of the gods are devoted chiefly to rulership, not to ordinary people.


With their complex presentation of "ten generations" preceding the Trojan War, to the appearance of Gaia, the very Earth itself, the Greeks managed to notice a great many important natural phenomena as well as many human vices and virtues. (11) Of the 6000 or so figures appearing in their mythology, quite a charmer, though a minor one, is the name they gave to "the play of light on water".


Various logical gaps in the "genealogy" as the Greeks traced their explanations of how deities had socialised with people, producing heroes such as Hercules, are filled in by way of rulers marrying such as the daughter of a river god. Which at the material level might be a reference to the dependence cities have on water supply, more so for purposes of irrigation? (King Priam's great great grandfather, Erichthonus, King Dardanus, married Aityoche, daughter of river god Simoeis.)


Perhaps, climate history can or should be related to Gaian outlooks? One view is that the Trojans earlier had been Cretans, one third of whom during a time of famine had sailed to the Troad [western Turkey] led by Prince Scamander. If so, climate problems could possibly be related to the rich archaeology of the region?


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Much is owed the to "creative promiscuity" of Zeus, chief of the gods of Olympus, who by adopting various guises managed to spread his seed, or his influence, through various important levels of phenomena, from levels co-equal with his role as deity (his wife Hera being his sister, they both being children of Cronus and Rhea I, the Milky Way) weaving through the diversities of nature itself/herself, to the human level.


Creatively, Zeus' "descendants" noted drastic themes-of-life -- murder within a family, incest, sexual infidelity, child sacrifice. The loving pleasures of parenthood and the bitter fruits of betrayal or revenge. They wove explanations for the existence of fearsome animals (such as bears) or beautiful animals (such as swans). They wove the notion of an earlier, trouble-free Golden Age of Humanity, (not unlike the Garden of Eden?). The notion of the role of human memory, more in the collective than the individual sense. The social role of rumour. As with Adam's destiny in Genesis, humanity is obliged to learn the arts of agriculture. Metalworking. And probably, tree worship.


They had notions about the Judges of the Dead, an Underworld for the wicked, an Isle of the Blessed for the virtuous who have died. Ideas of Magical Transformation, or, transmogrification. (“Shape-changers”, people can transform into animals and back again.)


They wondered about an oddity of sexuality - true androgyny, or hermaphroditism - an individual possessing aspects of both male and female sexuality.


Obviously, they noticed natural phenomena such as the North and other winds, earthquakes and resulting tsunamis (as we call them today), volcanoes, the rainbow. Zeus was a sky god, a storm or weather god, wielding thunder and lightning which he used also to teach rulers how to rule - use a big stick!


Greek mythology in many ways was a valiant human attempt to begin to explain - everything! They tried to refer to as much as possible, from fear of earthquakes to methods of agriculture, the pains and pleasures of social life. While their hobby of philosophy came ways to think about thinking itself. Thinking freed of reliance on "the capricious gods", or emotion, social mood, prejudices.


Their theatre explored human destinies - all to the sound of chorus - massed and co-operating voices. They sang, they lusted, they instituted male pedophilia as a set of social mores. They over-rated pleasure or they recommended stoical asceticism. Their writers rewove the myths to make them more plausible - and a well-reworked play was awarded prestige of a religious nature.


But it was the partly the weight of their non-rational habits of thinking, along with their warlike tendencies, which lead to the failure of their indecisive lurches in the direction of "democracy". The Greek franchise was limited. Greek views on democracy had almost nothing to do with any major public decisions about not using slaves - a tragedy for the human future. (From 1783, the citizens of the USA made the same sad public mistake.)


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Sparta was feared. It was a lingering, war-mongering mood which led to public dislike of Socrates, resulting in his forced suicide. He was educating his male students in gentler, more intelligent ways of solving problems.


Solon was a Greek reformer once asked especially to recommend remedies of widespread social problems of private debts - in a society where debtors could be put into slavery to their creditors. He surprised everyone by imposing a widespread cancellation of debts - a purge and a starting afresh. Solon once said, “I will have as my best witness the mighty mother of the Olympian gods, dark Ge (Earth), whose boundary markers fixed in many places I once removed [in land reforms].” (Solon Fragment, 36)

The Olympic Games in Mythology

Behind the origins of the Olympic Games lie yet more stories of "dysfunctional families" of aristocrats, along with divine interventions. Illustrated yet again is the Greek habit of attributing important initiatives to the gods, not to humans. Supposedly, the first athletes competing in the Olympic Games were the gods of Olympus. Zeus battled with Cronus for the throne of the gods and, in commemoration of this victory, founded the Games. It seems that as above, the first king of Elis (western Greece), King Aethlios, organized athletic games in the region, thus lending his name to the words "'athletic" and "athlete". Greek aristocrats placed heavy emphasis on physical abilities.


Elis near the River Alpheus, on the plain of Olympia, was part of the west Peloponnese, west of Arcadia. Mt. Olympus, home of the gods, was north of Delphi. At Delphi were held the Pythian Games. Noted for horse breeding and flax, Elis had three districts, Elis Proper, Pisatis and Triphylia. Pisa became an important city.


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Olympia was ten miles inland from the Ionian Sea where the Alpheus and Kladius rivers met. Pisa first held the area, but lost it to Elis (populated by Acheans) in 570BC.


Graves and others have a dark story on the origins of "the Olympics". Oenomaos, king of Pisa, possibly had an incestuous desire for his daughter Hippodamia. (12) Or, an oracle had told him he would be killed by a son-in-law. Oenomaos anyway instituted a custom whereby any of Hippodamia's suitors had to challenge her father to a chariot race. Oenomaos contrived to win thirteen (or more) such races, and after each race he speared the loser and decorated his palace gates with their remains. This was in the time of Epeios reigning in western Greece.


The parentage of Oenomaus is unclear due to proximity to "the gods", but he ruled Pisa and Elis. Oenomaus was famed for his love of horses, and he laid the long course of such chariot races from Pisa, beside the River Alpheius, opposite Olympia, to Poseidon's altar on the Isthmus of Corinth. Hippodamia had to ride beside her suitor, and winning, Oenomaus speared each of 12 or 13 suitors, then he nailed their heads and limbs over the gates of his palace while their torsos were flung barbarously on the ground.


The Olympian gods decided to put an end to this killing as Oenomaus had boasted that like other kings, one day he would build a temple of skulls. There appeared Pelops of the house of Atreus, falling in love with Hippodamia. The House Atreus was wealthy, but would be accursed, as follows. (13)


Pelops, from Lydia, was annoyed already, and determined to settle, as he had been earlier forced to move on by King Ilus of Troy. Preparing for the chariot race, Pelops and his companion incurred blood-guilt by sabotaging the chariot of his lover's father, who was killed in the crash. (14) This crime placed a curse on the House of Atreus, though Pelops inherited the kingdoms of his wife's father. The Peloponnese were named by Pelops for himself, and Pelops as King of Pisa once took Olympia from its King Epeius. But by another story, the Games were instituted as funeral games in memory of Oenomaus.


By one story, Pelops annexed Olympia and, not entirely virtuously, reinstituted the Olympic Games in honour of Zeus, in gratitude for his chariot race victory. Now, where had the Games come from in fact? Another legend is that Herakles instituted them. Chronology wavers. The myth of Herakles is the oldest referring to the origins of the Olympic Games. (15)


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By various myths, the demi-god Herakles (Hercules) is credited with the founding of the Games, including marathons and chariot races. It was Herakles who also brought back the wild olive tree from the land of the Hyperboreans, planted it in the Sanctuary, and set the boundaries of the Sacred Alti. (16)


Another myth proposes that Heracles started the Games at Olympia in order to honor Zeus, since Zeus had helped Herakles' campaign against king Augeias, who had cheated Herakles during the Labours of Cleaning the Augeian Stables. Thus Zeus helped Herakles gained dominance over Elis." (17)

This story recounts how Herakles arrives in Olympia from Crete with his four brothers, the Dactyls of Ida or Curetes. Herakles laid down the stadium measurements, organized races with his brothers and crowned the victors with wreaths made of branches of the wild olive tree. The following names also appear amongst those credited with founding the Olympic Games: Neleus, Pelias and Pisos, the eponymous hero of Pisatis. Finally, Strabo considers that the Games were organised by Oxylos, king of the Herakleidae, after his descent on Elis after 1200BCE.


Meantime, Pelops and Hippodamia ("mother of horses") had up to 22-23 children. Graves has it that in gratitude for her marriage to Pelops, Hippodamia instituted the Heraean Games to be held the day before the Olympic Games. This relieves us of concern that the Olympic Games were meant for men only. Originally, women had their own games.


The Heraean Games were assisted by sixteen matrons, one from each city of Elis. Each four years these matrons wove a robe for Hera and celebrated their games, which consisted of a single race between virgins of different ages, who were suitably handicapped. They ran in tunics shorter than knee length, right breasts bared, hair free. (18) The first victrix of such games was Chloris, the daughter of Niobe. This was a family show!


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Sister of Pelops, Niobe was daughter of Tantalus the Phrygian, (House of Atreus, son of Tmolus and Pluto, a semi-divine entity) and Euranassa. So Niobe was sister-in-law of the initiator of the Heraean Games, Hippodamia. But while it seems plausible a king and queen began two formal sets of games with a partly religious purpose, it is hard to find a useful historical date. First come the gods' initiatives, then the acts of humans in more historical time.


Enter Oxylos, supposedly an exiled nobleman of Aetolia, who met Herakles and his men and advised a sea landing for any incursions on Elis, not a land campaign. In gratitude, Herakles gave Elis to Oxylos, who "renewed" the Olympic Games. Laias son of Oxylos let the games lapse. A young relative of Oxylos named Iphitos inherited the kingship and renewed them.


About 776BC at the order of the Delphic Oracle, Iphitos made a treaty with Lykourgos, king and lawmaker of Sparta, plus Kleosthanes, King of Pisa, behind which initiative was an idea to call a regular sacred truce of warfare for purposes of honouring the Olympian gods. At Elis would be built the Altis, an enclosed grove sacred to Zeus (and otherwise evidently laid out by Herakles). Today's model on a website of a more-developed Altis website makes the games' site seem quite beautifully laid out. Olympia became a Pan-Hellenic focal point. The Delphic Oracle had told Iphitos to plant the olive tree from which would be the cut the victor's wreaths.


From a website: "Ancient, written sources record the year 776BCE, as the year when the Games began. This date also marks the year when records of Olympic victors began to be kept, which were completed much later." (19)

Evolution of the Modern Olympic Games


Not surprisingly, Greek admiration arose for human athleticism in an increasingly sophisticated way - reflected by the Olympic Games.


"The Olympic Games forged the national, racial and intellectual unity of the Greeks. The Games connected the deeply spiritual ethos of the Greeks with their past, combined to the maximum degree the cultivation of the body, mind and spirit with universal philosophical values and the emergence of the individual as well as the cities of Greece with the paramount ideal of freedom". (20) Less idealistically, the truce allowed athletes to travel to the games unmolested. Kings might compete against commoners.

Partly related to the legends regarding Herakles' role, there might have been with the layout of Altis, and with setting the stadion race (100 metres), some regard of sacred geometry, but space here does not allow pursuit of such possibilities. The Hellanodikai, citizens of Elis, judged the Games, which were held each four years (Olympiad), although other regular games were at Niernea, and each two years were the Isthmian Games on the Isthmus of Corinth.


Athletes had a circuit to train for. And this was Pan-Hellenic tourism; athletes had to appear at Elis one month before the games began. Two days before the games began, athletes and others went from Elis to Altis. Races for men might be in armour or in the nude. Honour was desired, but instances of bribery or cheating did occur. A games victor might be given meals for the rest of his life at expense of his city-state.


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The Olympic Games were ranged around the second or third full moon after the summer solstice, late July or August. They began with one day of racing and wrestling. Over decades were added chariot racing and a single-horse race. In 724BC came a double foot race of two stadia, the Altis was slowly added to. Originally, the Altis in an enclosure held only altars and a hero-shrine to Pelops and Hippodamia. Also added was a Doric-style Temple to Hera, and the Metroon, a small temple to Cybele, the Great Mother Goddess of Anatolia (partially equivalent to Gaia?). Today, a Temple of Hera is used for the lighting of the Olympic flame, with ritual, prayer, and a hymn to Apollo.


During the 7th century BCE, Pis with Pheidon, king of Argos, defeated Elis and took control of the Games. When Pheidon died, Elis resurged. In 580BCE, Sparta and Eleans conquered Pisa, destroyed its cities and there arose a confederation of four territories with as far as democracy went, a franchise limited to the wealthy.


By 472BCE, with preceding religious ceremonies, contests for boys and men occupied five days. Competitors took an Olympic oath. An eternal flame was kept.


Prior to the Olympics, messengers went to all parts of Greece, proclaiming the sacred truce. All war was halted for up to three months. Encyclopedia Britannica says, "Few enterprises created by man have lasted so long."


From 688 until 572BCE, the town of Pisa organized the Games. In 570BCE the Elians conquered Pisa and took control of the Games' organisation. In the 5th century BCE, the Games reached the apogee of their glory. However, during the Hellenistic period, they lost their original character and turned into professional athletic displays, a turn of events consolidated during the Roman period. With various warfare, the Eleans at times themselves broke the spirit of the Olympic truce.


The Elians early on allied with Sparta, but fell out with them in 420BCE. As a website has it, "The major historical events which took place in ancient Greece were reflected in the athletic ideals of the Olympic Games, the result being that there was a steady decline in moral values, which further deteriorated from 146CE, when the majority of Greece was conquered by the Romans and thus the Elians lost their independence. In 2BCE, when the rights of Roman citizens were extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, an internationalization of the Games was observed."


In 267CE, the Goths plundered Olympia and parts of Greece. (And in 467 the Vandals ravaged Elis.)


In 393-394CE (the 293rd Olympiad, 1169 years from the first), the Roman emperor Theodosius I abolished the Games, decreeing a prohibition on all places of pagan worship. He had been concerned the Games were becoming too wild and carnival-like. The 293rd Olympiad in 393CE, a total of 1,169 years after the first, was destined to be the last. It is thought that 394CE was the year the games were banned by Theodosios I. Thirty-three years later Theodosios II order the destruction of the temples, .or, about 426CE, Theodosius II tried to destroy the Altian monuments to Zeus and the greek Pantheon. (A virtual re-creation of the Games'. site for a TV documentary renders the Altian complex as remarkably beautiful in layout and design.)


Today, only scattered stones remain from the once magnificent buildings. For centuries even the exact location of Olympia was forgotten, and it was not until 1723 that a French monk found the site. Excavations were carried out by French archaeologists soon after Greece secured it independence. However, the systematic work which has given Olympia its present appearance has been done by German teams since 1875. Tourists today can visit the Archaeological Museum at Olympia, which was built from 1975 to be opened in 1982. It contains collections related to the games and other artifacts from ancient Greece.


As a matter of international idealism, the modern Olympics, after a lapse of 15 centuries, were revived in Athens in 1896 and have been staged every fours years since then.


Archaeologist Richard Chandler about 1766 worked on the site of the ancient Games. Internationally, interest remained dormant till Baron de Courbertin, (Pierre de Fredy), visited the site, and met a Greek enthusiast, Dimitrios Vikelas. An educator and scholar, passionately interested in sport but not an athlete, convinced that a major sports competition could help promote world peace, Courbertin (b.1863) made his own Herculean efforts to refresh world interest in the Olympic ideals.


He visited England and the US. Delegates met in Paris in June 1894 and voted to hold Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. That year, Courbertin became president of the International Olympics Committee and held the post for 29 years. (He died in 1937 in Geneva, Switzerland.) His ideal was that modern Olympics competition could be free of national rivalries and jealousies, with considerations of politics, race, religion, wealth and social status eliminated.


With all competitors being amateurs, the first modern Olympic games were held in Athens in April of 1896, with 13 nations sending almost 300 representatives to take part in 42 events. Unlike the ancient games, the modern Olympic games have been cancelled three times due to war in 1916, 1940 and 1944.


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In 1900, women competed in the games for the first time. In 1908, for the first time, medals were awarded to the first three people to finish each event--a gold medal for first place, a silver medal for second, and a bronze medal for third. By 1928, the famous Olympic flame was introduced. It makes its way, via a runners' relay, from Olympia to wherever the games are being held. (21)


Courbertin however did not approve of women competing in the Games - which now were instituted for the world's admiration. The Olympic Winter Games were added in 1924. Strictly speaking, the games' proper names are Games of the Olympiad (held in summer) and the Olympic Winter Games, not "summer and winter Olympics".


Today, the administrators of newer sports vie to have their sport admitted to the Games. The first sport competed was a 100 metres footrace (stade). Other games appeared for contest: running (double-stade plus long-distance), the pentathlon, jumping, discus, "ekebolon" javelin, wrestling, boxing, the pancration, chariot racing (two or four-horse), horse-racing, a race in armour.


In modern times, newly-invented sports have been added, not without occasional controversy.


Today's Olympic Games with their origins in ancient Greece remain a fertile metaphor for peaceful interaction between all peoples. Behind those Greek origins shift views and beliefs about Gaia.


Does Gaia retain a career today? Should she? Many ancient cultures celebrated perceptions of something like Gaia, or, Mother Nature, Mother Earth. There are no reason which such celebration should not continue into the future.


It is time around the world that ordinary people required some useful answers. Mahatma Ghandi in India proved the answers can - on balance - be given peacefully.


Non-violent action, Gaia-wise, is a question of balance.


::::::(Ends::::::


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Author's Note: Interested readers will find the major topics treated in this article are well-commented on the Internet. The endnotes here can be regarded as a guide for serious netsurfers.



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1See Rachel Carson, The Silent Spring. 1962.

2Peter Bunyard, (Ed.), Gaia in Action: Science of the Living Earth. Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1996. (A recent anthology of Gaian writing including contributions by Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Brian Goodwin, Elisabet Sartouris and Kate Rawles.) James Lovelock, Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth. OUP, Oxford, 1979. New edition with updated preface, 1987. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Earth. OUP, Oxford, 1988. New edition, 1996. James Lovelock, Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, Gaia Books Ltd., London, 1991. (In USA: Healing Gaia: Practical Medicine for the Planet, Harmony, New York. 1991.) Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan, What is Life, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1995. The computer "game" Sim Earth (Maxis Inc.) provides entertaining opportunities to play with Lovelock's Daisyworld concept and some complex evolutionary scenarios.

3Follows a contrasting idea on Mother Nature. “They [the Golden Race of men created by Phusis (Mother Nature)] had not the form of primeval Kekrops, who crawled and scratched the earth with snaky feet that spat poison as he moved, drakon below, but above the loins to head he seemed a man half made, strange in shape and of twyform flesh; they had not the savage from of Erekhtheus, whom Hephaistos begat on a furrow of Gaie (Earth) with fertilizing dew, but now first appeared the golden crop of men [the Golden Race of Mankind] brought forth in the image of the gods, with the roots of their stock in the earth." -Dionysiaca 41.58

4Prometheus 1 gave mankind fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in a stalk of fennel. But having learned about the theft, Zeus had him nailed in Mount Caucasus, where every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night.

5Several Greek demi-urges are Gaia, Chaos, Poseidon (horse, earthquakes). Oddly enough, many writers including famous 20th Century writers have remarked about chaos - personal, social, political, plus the chaos of wartime - generally finding it chilling, threatening, implacable. I have a collection of their views on a webpage - which as it happens gets surprisingly few hits. Few netsurfers are interested. (Meanwhile, Utopia is from the Greek for a "no place"!)

6If Typhon was intended to represent fear of volcanoes, this can be fascinating, since it is part of the pre-history of Turkey that at the well city-planned Catal Huyck, (about 6200BCE if not later) volcanoes figured in the background of the artwork of the inhabitants - more or less, on a mural. South-east of Troy in Turkey, Catal Huyck was not so far away, in terms of distance, if not time, from Troy. Was Typhon then a figure embodying long-held regional folk memories of the fearsome powers of volcanoes? And perhaps the same for Poseidon, who represented earthquakes? Typhon was a hybrid monster whose eyes flashed with fire, with human shape but from the thighs downward having huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. Typhon's size was such that he out-topped all the mountains and brushed the stars with his head, his hands reaching out, one to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads.

7From a website: Not unnaturally, it is a perennial human error to make, the Greeks as they formed their identity took the view that their homeland was the centre of the earth. “What is called the Omphalos (Navel) by the Delphians is made of white marble, and is said by the Delphians to be the centre of all the earth (Ge). Pindar in one of his odes supports their view.” - Pausanias 10.16.3

8The legend exists that Hector, son of King Priam, began a lineage that became a line of Frankish kings, one of whom, Marcomer II, died about 170BCE.

9See Adrian Gilbert, The New Jerusalem: Rebuilding London, The Great Fire, Christopher Wren and The Royal Society. London, Bantam Press, 2002. Gilbert here outlines the legend that Brutus a prince of Troy, (or, Brwt) came to London to found a city centuries before the Roman arrived in Britain, which was named for Brutus /Brwt. This Brutus was great-grandson of Aeneas who had escaped the defeat of Troy to find refuge in Italy. The Greeks had enslaved the defeated Trojans, but some Trojans escaped Greece to finally go with Aeneas, emigrating to Britain. By this legend, "Trojan Britain" long pre-dated Roman Britain. The matter is entirely unresolved.

10Robert Graves, The Greek Myths. Two Vols. Various editions. Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans. London, Phoenix Press, 1960.

11As I was writing this article, a poet friend rang and happened to tell me he has heard of a case of Australian Greeks talking with Aboriginals, comparing Greek mythology with the standard mythologies of Australian Aboriginals. They found most interesting sets of parallels, particularly in terms of human adventures with "deities" where an individual somehow ends up as some kind of observable astronomical entity in the night sky. There were similarities between the intents of such storytelling.

12Oenomaus married Stereope or Eurarete, daughter of Acrisius.

13The Pelops-Hippodamia love affair was once commemorated by a scene carved on a front gable of Zeus' temple at Olympia. Pelops sacrificed to Ctdonian Athene.

14But another story is that this race took place at the Hippodrome at Olympia. Pelops has his blood guilt removed by Hephaestus.

15See an excellent website on Olympia at: http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/olympia/articleolympia.htm/

16Theatrically with the opening of the Barcelona Olympics, paid great attention to the figure of Hercules. Entertaining, somewhat pagan, engrossing to watch, expensive to produce, and interestingly, I never heard of any one complaining about such use of quasi-pagan, typically-Mediterranean symbolism!

17Website: ©2004 Athens News Agency.

18Website: ©2004 Athens News Agency.

19Website: ©2004 Athens News Agency.

20Website: ©2004 Athens News Agency.

21Website: Copyright 2002 by PageWise, Inc.