Olympian Vs Chthonian

This week we have looked at another scholarly way of grouping deities, we built upon the Olympian twelve grouping and added the Chthonian group. The concept of Olympian and Chthonian deities was the concept of Georg Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1851) and Karl Otfried Muller (1797- 1840). Muller described the contrast between the Olympian deities and the Chthonian deities.  

The Chthonian group is the group of deities living in and relating to the underworld or the dark side of the world. Some of the Chthonian Gods were Hades, Hecate, Persephone and more. The image depicts Hades and Hecate these deities were both in the Chthonian group as they were both linked to the underworld. Hades ruled the underworld and the underworld was also called Hades.

The Chthonian Gods were ruled by Hades and the Olympian Gods were ruled by Zeus in Olympus. The Chthonian Gods were seen to be the complete opposite of the Olympian ones. The Olympian gods were male dominant, patriarchal and rich whereas the Chthonian Gods were indigenous dominant, matriarchal and poor/localised Gods. The Olympian Gods were seen as the strong men rulers and the Chthonian Gods were seen as the weak female rulers. Also Muller describes the Chthonian Gods as Murky Gods that embraced all areas of life and death. Muller describes the Olympian Gods as simple and ‘of the bright upper world’.  This shows there was a binary to Ancient Greek religion Parker states that the issue is the shape of the divine world as seen by the Greeks. I take this to mean that the Ancient Greeks tried to group their Gods and show that nobody was as good or superior to the Olympian twelve they had to make the Chthonian Gods the opposite as they were to do with the underworld they had to be inferior to the Olympian Gods which caused conflict between the two groups as some of the Chthonian Gods such as Hades resented being the ‘inferior’ group.

Is the idea of Olympian and Chthonian deities a scholarly fantasy? Scholars such as Muller and Creuzer came up with this idea of grouping deities but they could not always stick to it. This would suggest that this way of grouping Gods was only a scholarly fantasy as they could not even stick to the grouping methods themselves so how can everyone else? There are always challenges when things/people are put into groups as some people may not agree about the grouping so there will always be arguments regarding this between scholars. I think it id difficult when looking at these two groups as yes most of the Gods fit ‘perfectly’ in the ideals of the groups but there are Gods like Persephone that would be in one group for one half of the year and the another group for the other half of the year, as Persephone only lived in the underworld (Hades) for six months at a time.

 

Bibliography

Book

R. Parker. (2011) On Greek Religion, Cornell University Press.

Website

http://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/underworld-gods.html

Journals

Schlesier, R.1991.2. “Olympian versus Chthonian religion.” Scripta Classica Israelica 11: 38-51

Image

http://www.owlsdaughter.com/2012/09/goddess-sunday-the-last-day-of-the-month-belongs-to-hecate/