Chapter 8
Mythology
The ancient legends explained earthly and celestial phenomena and conditions, and thus provided help in orientation and existence. Accordingly, explanatory models also existed for fire and for ritualistic dealings with sacrificial fire. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was considered the bearer of fire. He came from the old family of gods, the Titans, who harked back to Uranus (the sky) and Gaia (the earth), which had then succumbed in the battle with the Olympian gods under Zeus. Prometheus was a symbol of uprising and rebellion, a champion of humankind against the hostility of the gods. The ‘forward-thinking one’, as his name can be translated, became the creator of the human race, and its saviour in the form of the bearing of fire. He was also seen as the god of craftsmen and inventor of all arts.1
After Prometheus had created the human race from clay, Zeus wanted to destroy the fragile humans and create new ones. Zeus tried to starve the people by demanding the best parts of their food as sacrifice. Prometheus then cut an ox into pieces, separating the edible and the non-edible parts, the meat from the bones. He disguised the two parts and tried to fool Zeus into choosing the bones. Zeus saw through the trick and planned revenge. He left the meat to the people, while the gods settled for the smoke of the burned bones as a sacrifice. Thus, people need meat, they get hungry and are therefore dependent, transitory – ultimately, mortal, while the gods are independent, undemanding and immortal. The legend explains and justifies the sacrifice as the separation of the people from the gods, a separation which is, however, overcome by that very sacrifice.
Since Zeus in his wrath wanted to withhold fire from people, Prometheus secretly brought it down to earth by carrying charcoal in a giant fennel from Mount Olympus, where he had taken it from the sky or sun chariot – or, according to a different version, from the smithy of Hephaestus, the god of fire. Thus did people obtain artificial fire, which had to be maintained continually – unlike the lightning bolts with which Zeus intruded upon the world's affairs. Fire distinguished people from the animals, since without it they too would have had to eat meat raw. Moreover, it created ties to the gods, although the people had also to accept the superiority of the gods.
Zeus was furious, and had the immortal Prometheus caught and chained to a cliff near the Okeanos. Zeus’ eagle fed daily on his liver. In the legend salvation finally appeared: Heracles killed the eagle and relieved Prometheus. The gods took cruel revenge on the people for this: Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create the first woman, Pandora, ‘the all-endowed’, and gave her a small box containing every evil. When she descended to earth and opened it, the sufferings and sins escaped to grip hold of humankind (Hes.theog. 571ff.; erg. 60ff.).
Parallel to the mythical explanation, fire had also been ritualistically venerated since ancient times in the form of Hestia, the goddess of the fireplace and the family hearth and domesticity. As the inventor of the building of houses, she protected those seeking shelter in any building, and brought personal safety and fortune; her fire was sacred. The domestic hearth was a centre and place of worship of the family; at the same time, it was an altar with a charcoal fire where an offering could be made before each meal. There was also a state hearth in the council building of the city, the prytaneion. Hestia was Zeus’ sister, and was the only Olympian divinity who was never involved in war or strife, hence she was the mildest, most charitable and most just of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. She remained a virgin under an oath to Zeus, and demanded the same of her priestesses, so as to fulfil the ideal of purity and overcoming of the material. Hence the negative aspect of the destructive or of a purgatory was lacking, so that death by fire could be seen as liberating, and cremation as justified. Despite its dangerous effects, fire was generally seen as a centre of the community and as a cleansing bearer of culture.
On the other hand, the sun was not among the phenomena ritualistically venerated by the Greeks; there was no sun worship. Instead, the concept of Helios – initially a being not worshiped – as the driver of the chariot of fire prevailed. Only in the course of time did he attain an important position as the driver who moved and directed, and only in the Hellenistic period, starting in the third century BC, did a Helios cult arise.
Water too was, like fire, a life-giving and cleansing element included in ritual ceremonies. The Okeanos, the world ocean, embodied one of the primeval forces from which the gods had arisen. The sea gods Poseidon and Amphitrite were ritualistically venerated by the Greeks. Waters and springs were generally associated with such divine beings as river gods and nymphs, to whom shrines and festivals were dedicated. The nymphs included the Nereids, or sea nymphs, and the naiades at the springs. In addition, however, there was the dangerous Styx, the river to the underworld. According to the myth, the great flood had once blotted out almost all life, but Deucalion had survived, and had made a new development possible, which had led to civilisation. This myth thus provided explanations for cyclical phenomena and processes of change in nature. However, no specific protection for the waters was ever derived from this.
Science: the four elements
In addition to mythology, the Greeks also developed natural science and philosophy, which sought rational explanations for natural phenomena. They developed the doctrine of the four elements earth, air, fire and water, of which, they believed, the entire earth consisted. They saw water, fire and air as the primal matter from which all things developed. The sun too was, in the view of Empedocles of Agrigentum (c. 495–435 BC), a powerful ball of fire (D/K 31 A 49 = fr. 43 M). Around the same time, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c. 500–428 BC) claimed that the sun was a glowing rock (D/K 59 A 42 = fr. 48 M).
According to Anaximander (c. 610–545 BC), who considered the universal substance to be the Indefinite (apeiron), living beings had arisen from the primal dampness (D/K 12 A 30 = fr. 26 M). In Empedocles’ view the four elements earth, air, fire and water were eternal, and appeared in various mixtures or aggregates; the earth had, he believed, brought forth single body parts, such as heads, arms and eyes, from the water and fire, after which these had united to form human bodies (D/K 31 B 57, 62 = fr. 89, 95 M). In medical discourse, too, the four elements began to play a central role in connection with the four bodily fluids, or ‘humours’, blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. A disturbance of the balance between these basic elements would, according to Hippocrates, cause illness in the body (nat. hom. 1.1, 4.1–3). If the heat formed by the fire in the blood became too great, the blood would disintegrate and cause water to be excreted in the form of sweat; if it were reduced, sleep would follow; if it were extinguished entirely, the result would be coldness and death (Hippocr. morb. sacr. 7.13–14; flat. 14.2). Thus did natural-scientific explanation arise, juxtaposed with the myth according to which Prometheus had formed the first human out of clay, and Athena breathed life into him.
While the Okeanos was, in Homer (Il. 18.607–8), still a river flowing ring-like around the flat earth, later concepts saw the sea as carrying the land masses and permeating all waters. Thales of Miletus (c. 625–545 BC), whom Aristotle saw as the ‘father of philosophy’, was the first to try to explain the world rationally; he saw water as the very basis of all things. In his view, the world had developed from an original state in which there was only water; the earth too was now a plate floating upon it (D/K 11 A 12 = fr. 10 M). Along with Plato's concept of an underground water cycle, the model of an atmospheric water cycle, as proposed by Xenophanes, Empedocles and Anaxagoras, established itself. In his meteorology Aristotle developed the theory of evaporation, condensation and cloud formation. Water was thus not only the primal element, but also constituted the prerequisite for all life. Since there was a chronic water shortage in southern Europe, even in antiquity, it was already necessary from an early stage to channel and supply water artificially.
Hydraulic engineering and water poisoning
Major achievements in the supply of water can be attributed to the ancient Greeks. Generally, drinking water was obtained from spring catch-works and wells (krenai), which were fed both by groundwater and by water brought in artificially. For the supply of a city, moreover, cisterns were indispensable (Aristot. pol. 1330b 5ff.). Water brought in by aqueduct and rainwater were stored in both private and public cisterns.
Fresh-water mains and sewage ditches can be found in Greek cities even in archaic times. In the second half of the sixth century BC, a real breakthrough was achieved in hydraulic engineering. Samos built a 2 km long aqueduct into its municipal area, which ran through a tunnel 1 km long (the Eupalinos Tunnel). Athens had an archaic network of clay pipes, connected to a fountain house on the Agora.2 Themistocles, who attained fame primarily as a politician and military commander during the Persian Wars, also served as the supervisor of the aqueducts at the beginning of the fifth century BC (Plut. Them. 31).
Moreover, around 400 BC, pressurised water lines of clay pipes appeared, as the example of Olynthus demonstrates. Another technical innovation appeared in Pergamum in later times, where high-pressure water mains were installed in the second century BCto supply the mountain fortress; still later, in Roman times, this system was supplemented by aqueducts. Here, the clay pipes had a diameter of 16–20 cm, and consisted of several segments, each up to 42 km long. Special officials (astynomoi) took care that the cisterns were properly maintained, and that the town-dwellers kept the streets adjacent to their houses clean (SEG XIII 521 = OGIS 483).3
Pollution was nonetheless an issue in the cities; in Athens, the Eridanos River was ultimately badly polluted (Strab. 9.1.19). In Hellenistic times, too, river poisoning seems to have been a problem: at all events, a mass poisoning of Nile water is recorded, with many casualties (Athen. 2.42a). Thucydides (2.48.2) notes reports of hostile well-poisoning in Athens during the Peloponnesian War; later, the Athenians would themselves attempt to destroy the water pipes of besieged Syracuse (6.100.1).
Under the Macedonian king Alexander the Great a technical intervention in the water balance of Boeotia was undertaken, in which the outflows of Lake Copaïs were dredged, so that the level of the lake dropped, and an unwelcome marshland was reclaimed for agriculture (Strab. 9.2.18). Here, older efforts at drainage, such as those carried out in Arcadia in the Peloponnese, provided a precedent (Thuc. 5.65.4). In Larisa in Thessaly a lake was drained, which led to a cooling-off of the climate in this area (Theophr. caus. plant. 5.14.2–3). In many other areas, however, aridity and drought were a recurring problem; nonetheless, the dams and dykes built in ancient Greece for water management served neither for extensive irrigation nor for water supply, and were only used again on a large scale by the Romans.4
1 Böhme and Böhme 1996, 64ff.
2 Tölle-Kastenbein 1994.
3 Klaffenbach 1954; G. Garbrecht, ‘Die Wasserversorgung des antiken Pergamon’, in Frontinus-Gesellschaft 1991, 19ff.
4 Tölle-Kastenbein 1990, 115ff.; Krasilnikoff 2002.