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The Ascent of Olympus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Margaret B. Fergusson
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Extract

Olympus as an idea pervades Greek literature: Olympus as a mountain of earth and stone seems to have been little considered. Unlike Delphi, it was neither a Mecca to which pilgrims travelled nor a Jerusalem for which they would wage a Holy War. Apparently it did not occur to Greeks to climb mountains unless they wanted to get to the other side. Pausanias in his comprehensive wanderings mentions Olympus only to say that lions from Thrace used to roam there, and that an athlete once unarmed slew a lion, a great and mighty beast, on the mountain. The successor of Pausanias, Herr Baedeker, omits Olympus entirely: Le Guide Bleu to Greece informs us that ‘l'exploration méthodique de l'Olympe ne remonte pas au delà de la fin du XVIIIe siècle et début du XIXe’, and recommends Marcel Kurz, Le Mont Olympe, as the best book on the subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 7 , Issue 21 , May 1938 , pp. 129 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1938

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References

page 129 note 1 It is true that there was an altar to Zeus Akraios on the summit of Pelion, but Pelion is only 1,618 m. in height, and there is pasturage for goats almost to the top.

page 129 note 2 Pausanias vi. 5. 5.

page 129 note 3 These must be the πύλαι ούρανοῦ of Homer: ‘Heaven-gate, i.e. a thick cloud, which the Hours lifted and put down like a trap-door. II. v. 749, viii. 393’. Liddell and Scott.

page 130 note 1 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, iii. 112 ff., translated by R. C. Seaton.

page 130 note 2 viii. 10–26 (translation by Lang, Leaf, and Myers).

page 131 note 1 e.g. Euripides, , Orestes, 982–6.Google Scholar

page 131 note 2 It is interesting in this connexion to note that in former editions of Liddell and Scott under Ολυμпος we find: ‘In the Iliad it was conceived to be the seat of the gods, but expressly distinguished from heaven (ούρανός). In the Odyssey the distinction between Ολυμпος and ούρανός is less marked indeed in 20.103,113 the two seem to be made identical.’—In the latest edition the second sentence is omitted.