Chapter 7 focuses on Empedocles’ cosmic cycle, exploring whether and how it accommodates his doctrine of rebirth. First, through a new definition of his concept of double zoogony, the chapter opens with a reconsideration of Empedocles’ cosmic cycle as a regular alternation of two phases, Love’s Sphairos/One and Strife’s Cosmos/Many. Second, zooming in on the phase of the Cosmos and through the analysis of the metaphor of conflict in Empedocles’ cosmological narrative, the chapter investigates the origin and place of humans and gods in the world and argues that the spatial and conceptual mortal/immortal antinomy structures the action of Love and Strife in the cycle. Third, returning to the metaphor of conflict, it is argued that cosmic cycles are loaded with ethical import and that human moral agency determines the shape of our world. Finally, by showing that the moral import of the cosmic cycle seems to ground Empedocles’ religious concept of rebirth on the level of physical principles, it is shown that Empedocles’ physics does not merely accommodate, but seems in fact to be motivated by his belief in rebirth.

The epilogue charts a return to the earliest Greek poets on record, Homer and Hesiod, and a discussion of how these poets used monumentality to depict matter shaping time.

This chapter discusses the place of the traditional and cosmic gods in the cosmological theogony of the Timaeus. It argues that Plato’s cosmology follows the Greek theogonic tradition to a certain degree and accommodates both the traditional and cosmic gods via a shared pair of the first gods, but adopts different explanatory frameworks for the two types of gods. It also proposes a new reading of the Timaeus as a theogony of Ouranos. For Plato, Ouranos is a traditional god and a cosmic being, and as such he is the most senior deity of both families. These new findings lead to a more detailed examination of the double identity of gods (cosmological and religious) in Plato’s later dialogues, which shows that there are at least three ways to understand the double identification of gods.

This chapter explores coincidences and divergences between Hesiod’s conception of language and those found in Akkadian literature. First, it provides a synopsis of Hesiod’s ideas about language and the interrelation of these ideas with the poet’s broader poetics. Then it discusses how Hesiodic conceptions of language are deeply intertwined with the interpretation of divine names. The chapter also investigates how Hesiod’s particular ways of interpreting theonyms is used to endorse hermeneutic practices anchored in an oral tradition. It explores the differences between the Theogony and its cuneiform counterparts, especially by comparing how wordplay and etymology are deployed in the analysis of divine names.

This chapter analyses John Tzetzes’ Theogony, a long poem in political verse that narrates genealogies of mythical gods and heroes following the example of Hesiod. The poem was dedicated to the sebastokratorissa Irene, a powerful patron of the Komnenian aristocracy, and is an important witness to the role of classical learning in twelfth-century Byzantium. The first part of the chapter examines the relation of Tzetzes’ poem to Hesiod’s Theogony, the Homeric epics and the Catalogue of Women, a fragmentary ancient work ascribed to Hesiod. It also provides a list of the main literary sources of the poem, which demonstrates Tzetzes’ dependence on other ancient poets. The second part analyses the narrative voice of Tzetzes, his linguistic style and the didactic character of the poem. The chapter concludes with an examination of the audience of the Theogony and its function as a didactic poem, which reflects patronage relationships in the Komnenian period. The chapter thus sheds light on Tzetzes’ attitude towards the ancient authors by situating the Theogony within his broad activity as a professional poet and commentator of ancient texts.