Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

454 The Olympians [ch.
The notion that Titan is a Sun-power lives on, like Phoebus,
in English poetry.
And Titau, tired in the mid-day heat,
With burning eye did hotly over-look them 1 .
But it would be a mistake to suppose that Titan is always and
merely the Sun. Empedokles 2 is nearer the truth because less
specialized. To him Titan is the ait/ier, the whole region of the
meteora.
Gaia and billowy ocean and air with its moisture,
And iEther, the Titan, embracing the All in a circle.
Special Titans specialize into Sun-Gods. The Titan Sisyphos
who climbs the steep of heaven rolling his stone before him, only
to fall adown the steep and climb it again next morning, is the
Sun, the Titan Phaethon is the Sun, the Titaness Phoebe is the
Moon, but Titan himself is rather Ouranos, the whole might of
the upper air.
Art has left us no representations of the Titanomachia as
distinguished from the Gigantomachia—but in literature it is
abundantly clear that the Titans are Ouraniones. In Homer
and Hesiod they, unlike the Giants, are always gods, TtTrjves deoi 3 .
They are constantly being driven down below the earth to nether-
most Tartarus and always re-emerging. The very violence and
persistence with which they are sent down below shows that they
belong up above. They rebound like divine india-rubber balls.
Their great offence in Olympian eyes is that they will climb up to
high heaven, which the human-shaped Olympians had arrogated to
themselves. The fight between Titans and Olympians always
takes place in mid air. In the Theogony 4 the Titanomachia is
but a half-humanized thunderstorm, where Zeus as much and
perhaps more manifestly than his opponents is but a Nature-
Power.
1 Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 177.
2 Diels, F.V.S. 38
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