Zeus the Volcano God

Zeus the Volcano God

 

 

Zeus was a lightning and volcano god of Greek mythology who battled Typhon on Mount Etna.

Mott T. Greene is an American historian of science, and John B. Magee Professor of Science and Values, at the University of Puget Sound. He graduated from Columbia College in 1967, and University of Washington with an MA and PhD in 1978. He lectured at Oregon State University. He is a member of the History of Science Society.

gloomy tartarus (the underworld), and the sharp pounding of feet

in the ineffable rush of their mighty blows.

For thus they hurled at each other their baleful missiles.

And the cry of both sides reached the starry sky

as they bellowed, and they came together in a great shout.

Not did Zeus hold back his might, but now indeed

suddenly his mind was filled with rage and he showed forth

his whole strength, and altogether from the sky and from Olympus

he came, hurling lightning continuously, and the bolts

flew thickly amid thunder and flashing

from his powerful hand, whirling swiftly with sacred flame

All around, the life-giving world resounded,

burning, and all around, the great boundless woods crackled with fire.

The entire land seethed, as did the stream of Ocean

and the harvestless sea. The hot blast surrounded

the earthborn Titans, and a boundless flame reached to the bright upper air;

the gleam blinded their eyes, for all that they were strong,

as it flashed with lightning and sparks.

A supernatural heat seized the yawning void; and it seemed, facing it

see with the eyes and hearing the sound with the ears,

just as if Earth and wide Heaven above

collided, for so huge a boom would roll forth

if Earth were being hurled up while Sky were falling down from above:

just such a din arose from the deities colliding in strife.

And the winds brought together quakes and dustclouds

and thunderclaps and lightning and smoking thunderbolts...\

And there in the forefront they stirred up the sharp fight:

Kottos and Briareos and Gyges, insatiable in battle -

three hundred rocks from their stalwart hands

in quick succession they launched, and with their missiles overshadowed

the Titans, and under broad-pathed earth

they sent them and bound them in grievous chains,

concurring them with their hands despite their audacity,

so far beneath the earth as sky is above it. (Hesiod, Theogony 678-721)

 

Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber state in 'When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth'...

Noise and quakes, missiles, lightning and thunder, fire and great heat; then a huge shaft of fire going sky-high, and indescribably loud noise, more flying rocks, and finally everything ending up as far below the surface as it had been above it. That's just about what the geologists reconstruct from the geology of Thera. In fact, Mott Greene, recognising a volcano like Thera as unlike any other in its specific eruption pattern, lines up the precise sequence of events in Hesiod and those reconstructed from the geology of Thera, thus demonstrating that this account could refer only to Thera, out of the whole Mediterranean zone. His table of events is as follows: