Notes on the current edition
Library
1.
According to Hesiod (
Hes. Th. 126ff.
), Sky (Uranus) was a son of Earth (Gaia), but afterwards lay with his own mother and had by her Cronus, the giants, the Cyclopes, and so forth. As to the marriage of Sky and Earth, see the fragment of
Eur. Chrys., quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Bekker p. 751 (Nauck TGF(2), p. 633, Leipsig, 1889)
;
Lucretius i.250ff.
,
ii.991ff.
;
Verg. G. 2.325ff.
The myth of such a marriage is widespread among the lower races. See
E. B. Tylor,
Primitive Culture (London, 1873), i.321ff., ii.370ff.
For example, the Ewe people of Togo-land, in West Africa, think that the Earth is the wife of the Sky, and that their marriage takes place in the rainy season, when the rain causes the seeds to sprout and bear fruit. These fruits they regard as the children of Mother Earth, who in their opinion is the mother also of men and of gods, see
J. Spieth,
Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 464, 548
. In the regions of the
Senegal and the
Niger it is believed that the Sky-god and the Earth-goddess are the parents of the principal spirits who dispense life and death, weal and woe, among mankind. See
Maurice Delafosse,
Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Paris, 1912), iii.173ff.
Similarly the Manggerai, a people of West Flores, in the Indian Archipelago, personify Sky and Earth as husband and wife; the consummation of their marriage is manifested in the rain, which fertilizes Mother Earth, so that she gives birth to her children, the produce of the fields and the fruits of the trees. The sky is called
langīt; it is the male power: the earth is called
alang; it is the female power. Together they form a divine couple, called
Moerī Kraèng. See
H. B. Stapel, “Het Manggeraische Volk (West Flores),”
Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Landen Volkenkunde, lvi. (Batavia and the Hague, 1914), p. 163
.
2.
Compare
Hes. Th. 147ff.
Instead of Gyes, some MSS. of Hesiod read Gyges, and this form of the name is supported by the
Scholiast on Plat. Laws 7, 795c
. Compare
Ovid, Fasti iv.593
;
Hor. Carm. 2.17.14
,
iii.4.69
, with the commentators.
