Gaia
In the Iliad, a black lamb is sacrificed, and the oath sworn over it calls on Gaia as a witness. The Greeks believed she was listening. If a man broke his word, she would know.
Gaia was the Greek personification of the Earth. Some writers spell her Gaea, and the Romans knew her as Terra. Yet in Homer she is more a physical presence than a woman with a face, and she seems to take no action of her own.
This documentary follows her through the poets, the shrines and the rival stories told about her. How did the ground under every Greek's feet become a mother? What did she plot against the sky itself? Why did she turn on the gods she had helped to power? And why did so ancient a figure receive so little formal worship in classical times?
The spelling Γαῖα is mostly an epic variant. Athenians wrote Γῆ, Dorian speakers wrote Γᾶ, and every one of these forms meant simply Earth. Some scholars think Γᾶ may be the same word as Δᾶ.
Where the word came from is disputed. Beekes suggested a probable Pre-Greek origin. M. L. West instead derived it from an Indo-European form, *dʰéǵʰōm, which also meant earth.
West's route ties Greek to languages spread across a huge distance. The Hittite word tekan, the Tocharian tkam, the Phrygian zemelo, the Avestan za and the Vedic ksam are all cited as relatives. So are the Greek chamai, meaning on the earth, and the Latin humus.
The root may be older than the poets. A Mycenaean Greek form, Ma-ka, is probably to be read as Ma-ga. It is thought to mean Mother Gaia, and it carries the same ga root.
In Hesiod's Theogony, the first great figure after Chaos is "wide-bosomed" Gaia, the everlasting seat of the immortals on Olympus. Next came "dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth", and then Eros, the god of love.
Gaia then produced Uranus, the Sky, as her equal, so that he could cover her on every side. She also bore the Ourea, the Mountains. By herself she bore Pontus, the Sea, "without sweet union of love", which means he had no father. With Pontus she later had the sea deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia.
With Uranus, who was her own son, she bore the Titans. Hesiod names Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. Last came Cronus, the wily youngest, whom Hesiod calls the most terrible of her children. He hated his father.
Then came the Cyclopes, giants with a single eye. They were Brontes, meaning Thunder, Steropes, meaning Lightning, and Arges, meaning Bright. After them came the Hecatonchires, Cottus, Briareos and Gyges, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads.
Uranus hated what he had fathered. As each Cyclops and Hecatonchires was born, he pushed the child back into a hidden place inside Gaia. The pain was great, so Gaia devised a plan.
She made a sickle of grey flint, or in some tellings adamantine. Cronus took it and castrated Uranus as the Sky came down to lie with his mother. From the spilled blood Gaia produced the Erinyes, the Giants and the Meliae, the ash-tree nymphs.
The severed parts fell into the sea. From them rose Aphrodite.
Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that one of his own children was fated to overthrow him. His answer was to swallow every child that his Titan sister Rhea bore him.
When Rhea was pregnant with her youngest, Zeus, she begged Gaia and Uranus for help. Gaia supplied a stone, and Rhea wrapped it in swaddling-clothes and handed it to Cronus in place of the baby. He swallowed it. Gaia then took the infant Zeus into her own care.
Zeus defeated the Titans with the help of Gaia's advice. Her loyalty did not last. She joined with Tartarus and bore her youngest son, Typhon, who would be the final challenge to the authority of Zeus.
She also resented the way Zeus had treated her Titan children, so she brought forth the Gigantes to fight him. A prophecy said the gods alone could never kill them, but a mortal could. Gaia went looking for a plant that would shield the Gigantes even from mortals.
Zeus moved first. He forbade Eos, the Dawn, Selene, the Moon, and Helios, the Sun, to shine. In the darkness he harvested the whole plant himself. He then had Athena summon the mortal Heracles, who helped the Olympians defeat the Gigantes.
A quieter story connects the two sides of her feud with Zeus. The Apples of the Hesperides, which Eurystheus ordered Heracles to fetch, had been Gaia's wedding gift to Zeus and Hera.
Aeschylus, in Prometheus Unbound, calls Gaia pammetor, the mother of all. A fragment of Euripides gives the same title to chthon, a word that often means the earth itself. The tragic poets tended to picture her as all-nourishing and all-productive, a power that deserved honour.
A fragment of Euripides' Chrysippus lays out the idea in full. It says Gaia "receives the drops of rain bearing the mortals and bearing food and beasts", and so is rightly called mother of all. It adds: "Nothing is destroyed, but it is transformed to another form." Everything born of earth returns to earth, while what is born of the sky returns to the sky.
A gravestone inscription at Potidaia says the same thing in a single line: "Aether receives the souls and 'chthon' receives the bodies."
The Homeric hymn gives her a warmer face than the Iliad does. There she is the Mother of the Gods, who brings forth life and blesses people with children. The hymn to Apollo calls her pheresvios, meaning life giving. Sophocles, in Philoctetes, calls her pamvotis, all nourishing.
The poets also saw a darker side. In Aeschylus' Persai, offerings are recommended to Ge and to the spirit of the departed. In the Choephori, Electra prays to Gaia as an avenger of wrong.
The visual evidence is harder to read. A vase in the Ashmolean Museum shows Pandora rising from the earth, and some scholars identify her with Gaia. A vase in the British Museum labels a figure Anesidora, "sending up gifts", which is an epithet of Gaia.
Plutarch put the general feeling plainly: "The name of Ge is beloved to every Greek and she is traditionally honoured like any other god." That affection rarely turned into grand public ritual.
An old verse at Delphi spoke of words uttered from "tree-clad mother Gaia's navel-stone". Some sources treat Gaia as the original power behind the oracle there. Pausanias recorded that in the earliest times the seat belonged to Earth, who appointed a mountain nymph, Daphnis, as prophetess.
Pausanias also cited a poem called Eumolpia, which was assigned to Musaeus. It says the oracle belonged to Poseidon and Earth together. Earth gave her own oracles, while Poseidon spoke through a man named Pyrcon.
The story then passes the oracle along. Earth gave her share to Themis, and Themis gave it to Apollo as a gift. Apollo gave Poseidon the island of Calaureia, off Troezen, in exchange.
Another tradition is harsher. Apollo killed Gaia's child Python at Delphi and took over the earthly power of the place. Hera punished him by sending him to King Admetus as a shepherd for nine years. A temple of Ge stood south of Apollo's temple.
Outside Delphi, her worship was scattered. Scholars note that in classical times she was not an important deity and was usually honoured alongside other gods. Local cults are rare, and only a few can be documented.
Near Aegae in Achaia stood the Gaion, a sanctuary of Ge Eurysternos, the Broad-bosomed, with one of the oldest wooden images in Greece. Its priestess had to remain chaste. Candidates were tested by drinking bull's blood, and Pausanias says a woman who lied was punished at once. Pliny adds that the priestess drank a small amount of the blood before entering a secret cave.
At Olympia, the altar of Ge was made of ashes, and an oracle of Ge was said to have stood there in older days. At Patras, a sacred well at her oracle was used to predict the cause of diseases.
Athens offered the strangest rite. Within the precinct of Zeus Olympios, the floor opened to the width of a cubit, said to be where the flood of Deucalion drained away. Every year, wheat mixed with honey was thrown into the gap for Ge Olympia.
Athens also held the Genesia, a mourning festival in the month Broedromion, when citizens brought offerings to the graves of the dead. On the Mykonos calendar, seven black lambs went to Zeus Chthonios and Ge-Chthonia in the month Lenaion.
On the Acropolis stood a statue of Gaia begging Zeus for rain.
When Zeus decided to end the Bronze Age with a great deluge, only Deucalion and Pyrrha survived. Prometheus, imprisoned but able to see the future, had warned Deucalion to build an ark. The couple landed on Mount Parnassus, the one place the flood spared.
Deucalion asked the oracle of Themis how to repopulate the earth. The answer was to throw the bones of his mother behind his shoulder. The couple decided that the mother was Gaia, mother of all living things, and that her bones were rocks.
They threw the stones, and the stones began to soften and change shape. The soft, moist parts became skin, the veins of the rock became human veins, and the hardest parts became bones. Stones thrown by Pyrrha became women, and those thrown by Deucalion became men.
Gaia also rescued victims by turning them into plants. Elaea, an accomplished athlete from Attica, was killed by rivals who envied her skill. Gaia turned her into an olive tree, for Athena's sake. When impious people killed a young man named Libanus, Gaia turned him into rosemary.
The nymph Pitys, an Oread, was killed by Boreas, the north wind, because she preferred Pan to him. Gaia pitied her and made her a pine tree.
Her anger could be just as sharp. In Hesiod's lost poem Astronomia, Orion boasted while hunting with Artemis and her mother Leto that he would kill every animal on earth. Gaia sent a giant scorpion to kill him. Zeus placed hunter and scorpion among the stars.
Ovid tells it differently. In his version, Gaia sent the scorpion against Leto for some reason, and Orion died trying to protect her.
One mortal received her highest gift. Gaia made Aristaeus immortal because of the benefits he had brought to humanity.
The Roman mythographer Hyginus tells a version in which Terra, Caelus and Mare are children of Aether and Dies, meaning Day. With Aether, Terra then bears a list of abstractions: Pain, Deception, Anger, Mourning, Lying, Oath, Vengeance, Self-indulgence, Quarreling, Forgetfulness, Sloth, Fear and Arrogance. The same list includes Oceanus, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus, the Titans and the Furies. With Tartarus, she bears the Giants.
Apollodorus offers another detail: Gaia and Tartarus were the parents of Echidna.
Diodorus Siculus preserves a legend that makes Gaia human. She was Titaea, one of the wives of Uranus, who in this telling was also originally a human and the first king of Atlantis. After her death Titaea was made divine, and her name was changed to Gê.
Modern writers have pushed further back in time. Mellaart, Gimbutas and Walker claim that Gaia as Mother Earth is a later form of a pre-Indo-European Great Mother, venerated in Neolithic times. That existence is speculation, and it is controversial in the academic community.
Kerenyi, Ruck and Staples read Demeter as the mother, Persephone as the daughter and Hecate as the crone. They treat the three as aspects of one former great goddess, whom some identify as Rhea or as Gaia herself.
On Crete, a goddess called Potnia Theron, the Mistress of the Animals, or simply Potnia, has been speculated to be Rhea or Gaia. Greek texts later applied the title to Artemis. The Anatolian mother goddess Cybele was partly identified with Gaia by the Greeks, but more closely with Rhea.
Today, modern pagans do not agree about what Gaia is. Some believe she is the Earth itself, some believe she is its spiritual embodiment, and others believe she is the goddess of the Earth.
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Common questions
Who is Gaia in Greek mythology?
Gaia is the personification of the Earth. Her name comes from a poetic form of the Greek word for land or earth. The Romans called her Terra.
Who were Gaia's children?
In Hesiod, she bore Uranus, the Mountains and Pontus on her own. With Uranus she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires. With Pontus she bore the primordial sea gods. With Tartarus she bore Typhon.
How did Gaia help Zeus?
When Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Gaia supplied a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes for Cronus to swallow instead of the baby. She then took Zeus into her care. Her advice helped him defeat the Titans.
Why did Gaia turn against Zeus?
She resented how he had treated her children, the Titans. She brought forth the Gigantes to fight him and sent Typhon as a final challenge. The Olympians still won, with the help of the mortal Heracles.
Was Gaia connected to the Oracle at Delphi?
Some sources hold that she was the original power behind it. Accounts differ on who inherited her powers. Pausanias names Themis, who gave the oracle to Apollo, and other accounts name Poseidon.
Did the Greeks worship Gaia widely?
Not in a large way. In classical times she was usually honoured beside other gods, and local cults of her are rare. Her sanctuaries at Aegae, Athens and Olympia are known from Pausanias and other evidence.
How did Gaia figure in the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha?
After the flood, Deucalion was told to throw the bones of his mother behind his shoulder. He and Pyrrha understood the mother as Gaia and the bones as rocks. The thrown stones became people.
All sources
111 references cited across the entry
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- 5Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia, The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.
- 6Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, pp. 269–270 (s.v. "γῆ").
- 31BookMetamorphosis in Greek MythsPaul M. C. Forbes Irving — Clarendon Press — 1990
- 32Nicolaus Sophista, Progymnasmata 2.4
- 33See Gantz, p. 271.
- 38JournalThe Première of Pindar's Third and Ninth Pythian OdesEdwin Floyd — The Johns Hopkins University press — 1968
- 39Statue; pedimentPheidias
- 41Nilsson, Geschichte, Vol I 456-458
- 48Nilsson, Geschichte Vol I, 457-458
- 52Nilsson Vol I, 460.
- 53πάς
- 56Hesychius of Alexandria s.v.
- 57Scholiast on Theocritus, 2.12
- 58Nilsson Vol I, p.458
- 60Nilsson Vol I, p.457-460
- 62Aristoph. Thesm. 300, with the Schol.; Hesych. s. v.; Phot. Lex. s. v.
- 65μέλαινα
- 67πάμφορος
- 68παμμήτωρ
- 69παμβώτωρ
- 70πανδώρα
- 71Homeros. Epigr. 7. 1; Stob. Eclog. i. p. 165, ed. Heeren.
- 74Inscription :,"Οf the priestess of Ge-Themis":Nilsson Vol. I, p. 458
- 75Pindar: , "The prizes of the deep-breasted earth ": Nilsson Vol. I, p. 458
- 77Joseph Fontenrose 1959
- 80BookHandbook of Classical MythologyWilliam F. Hansen et al. — ABC-CLIO, LLC — 2004
- 88BookNew Age and Neopagan Religions in AmericaSarah M. Pike — Columbia University Press — 13 August 2013
- 89This chart is based upon Hesiod's Theogony, unless otherwise noted.
- 98Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 259
- 100Probably a Giant
- 105Scholiast on Homer's Odyssey
- 110TritopatoresSuidas — Suda On Line — 21 December 2000
- 115Nonnus, Dionysiaca 25.453 & 486
- 117Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 78a