Think of Stephen Fry's work as a journey through different periods of Greek mythology, and the "Age of the Gods" is right there at the very beginning, the foundational layer of this rich tapestry! According to the sources, "The Age of the Gods" forms the first part of his book _Mythos_. It sets the stage for everything that comes after, including the tales of heroes and the eventual human-focused events leading up to and including the _Odyssey_. So, what was this initial age all about? The sources tell us it begins with the very birth and rise of the gods. It's a time when these powerful, major divine entities establish themselves on Mount Olympus. At the head of this divine family sits Zeus, the Sky Father, though interestingly, his sister-wife Hera is noted as ruling him in some way. The other ten Olympian gods are given their own duties and domains, sort of parceling out responsibilities in the mortal sphere. In these very early days, the divine wasn't distant; it was deeply intertwined with the human world. The sources describe a period where the gods "trod the earth with mortals," actively engaging in their lives. This engagement wasn't always gentle – they befriended humans, yes, but they also ravished, coupled with, punished, tormented, transformed them into various natural forms (flowers, trees, birds, bugs), and generally "interacted, intersected, intertwined, interbred, interpenetrated and interfered" with humankind. It sounds like a time of intense, sometimes volatile, divine presence! The sources also link this initial divine presence to how humans first understood the world around them. In this period, humans were moving from a state of fear regarding nature, its monsters, and unpredictable phenomena like fire, thunder, tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and plague. A way to try and understand or even manage these forces was to give them divine identities. This suggests the gods of this age were deeply connected to the natural world and its awesome, sometimes terrifying, power. Looking at the broader mythological context provided by the sources, we see Zeus himself is linked to the Indo-European influx into Greece, arriving with these people in the fourth, third, and second millennia BC. He is noted as having no connection to the older Goddess cults of the area. This hints at a shift in the perceived dominant divine forces, from older, possibly chthonic (earth-related) or Goddess-centric powers to the sky-oriented, patriarchal gods like Zeus who came to define the Olympian pantheon of this age. The mythological landscape itself was evolving, with older divine principles sometimes being overthrown by new ones, as seen in various mythological or philosophical accounts of divine genealogies and cosmic order. Critically, this "Age of the Gods" wasn't static. While the gods were intensely involved initially, the sources explain that "over time, as age has succeeded age and humankind has grown and prospered, the intensity of these interrelations has slowly diminished". This sets the stage for the next periods. Prometheus's gift of fire is highlighted as a turning point, giving humankind the ability to run their own affairs and build their own societies. This fire wasn't just physical; it represented an "inner fire," a "divine spark," the "creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods". This emergence of human consciousness and agency directly leads into the "Age of Heroes". In this subsequent age, the world becomes safer due to heroes vanquishing monsters, and human civilization develops further. Humans start devoting more time and interest to their own concerns, and while the gods still interfere occasionally, they become "more wary (or weary?) of interbreeding and interfering". This transition culminates in the "Age of Man," characterized by events like the Trojan War, which is largely a mortal enterprise, even with divine interest and intervention. So, Fry's "Age of the Gods," as described in these sources, is the starting point – a time of powerful, present, and often capricious divine beings who are deeply involved in the creation and early lives of humans. It's a period where the lines between divine and mortal are frequently crossed, and the world is still very much shaped by raw, often feared, natural and supernatural forces given divine names. It represents the primordial soup from which the later stories of heroes and the more human-centric dramas, like that of the _Odyssey_, emerge. **Ideas for Further Exploration:** - **The Nature of Divine Power in the Initial Age:** How do the descriptions of the gods' interactions – punishing, transforming, interbreeding – shape our understanding of divine power compared to, say, the more ordered or removed divine concepts found in some other traditions? - **Mythological Ages Across Cultures:** The sources mention other mythologies with concepts of different ages or worlds. How does the Greek sequence of Age of Gods, Heroes, and Man, as presented by Fry, compare to or differ from these other structures? - **The Shift from Goddesses to Gods:** The sources note the historical/mythological shift with the Indo-European influx bringing gods like Zeus and the decline of older Goddess cults. How might this larger cultural transformation be reflected in the transition from a primordial "Age of the Gods" to later periods? - **The Impact of Divine Intervention:** Given the intense divine interference in the Age of Gods, how do the subsequent ages grapple with the legacy or consequences of this earlier divine meddling? - **Fry's Framing:** By presenting these periods sequentially (Mythos -> Heroes -> Troy -> Odyssey), how does Fry's structure influence our perception of the relationship between gods, heroes, and humans across mythological history?