The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

II
T H E T W I L I G H T O F T H E G O D S
riddles of greek mythology
1. PROMETHEUS AND THE
THREE GENERATIONS OF GODS
They are holy demons upon earth,
Beneficient averters of ills,
Guardians of mortals.
– hesiod
What were the gods of Hellas and what their sanctuaries? Were the
divinities real; were they symbols of forces in nature or of the character of man;
or were they only the fiction of poets? Everyone who deals with the culture of
Hellas knows that this is a crucial question. Every student is on the horns of a
dilemma until a satisfying answer to it can be given.
It is significant to note how George Grote, 37 the author of a standard
work, A History of Hellas, struggled with this problem. Fully aware of the
fundamental importance of the myths and legends for the understanding of
the whole civilization of Hellas, he apologizes for not being able to arrive at
any satisfactory interpretation of the content of Greek mythology: “I describe
the earlier times by themselves as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first
Greeks, and known only through their legends—without presuming to measure
how much or how little of historical matter these legends may contain. If the
reader blame me for not assisting him to determine this—if he ask me why I
do not undraw the curtain and disclose the picture—I reply in the words of the
painter, Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on exhibiting
his masterpiece of imitative art: ‘The curtain is the picture.’ The curtain conceals
nothing behind and cannot by any ingenuity be withdrawn.”
These are the agnostic words of the great historian of the nineteenth
century. Yet how astonishing it is to find soon after the preface in the same first