Legendary Passages #0073 - The Gods of Atlantis - Sky, Sun, & Moon, from Diodorus Siculus' Library of History. Last time we reviewed the history of Atlantis. This time we focus more on the ancient gods born there that inspired the Greek religion. Their first King was a wise man named Uranus, who taught them laws, agriculture, astronomy, and the calendar. When he died, his people deified him as the universe made manifest. Uranus had many wives, but his most productive was named Titaea, and her eighteen sons were called the titans. When she died, she too was made a goddess, renamed Gê. Uranus' eldest child was a daughter named Basileia. She was kind and understanding, helping to raise all forty-four of her siblings, and became known as the Great Mother. After her father's death she was made Queen, and eventually married Hyperion. They had two children, a son named Helius, and a daughter named Selene. The sons of Titaea, not wanting the sons of Hyperion to be made king over them, stabbed the boy Helius, and drowned him in the river. Distraught, his sister Selene jumped from the roof, killing herself. While searching for her son's body, Basileia collapsed and had a vision of him. Helius told her not to mourn them, as men would come to call the sun 'Helius', and call the moon 'Selene'. Basileia wondered the land making noise with her daughter's cymbals, until, one day, during a storm, she vanished from sight. Afterwards, the Atlantians called her the goddess Cybele. Next time, we finish our history of Cybele & Atlantis. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3D*.html The Gods of Atlantis, a Legendary Passage, from Diodorus Siculus' Library of History, translated by C. H. Oldfather. [56] - [57] But since we have made mention of the Atlantians, we believe that it will not be inappropriate in this place to recount what their myths relate about the genesis of the gods, in view of the fact that it does not differ greatly from the myths of the Greeks. Now the Atlantians, dwelling as they do in the regions on the edge of the ocean and inhabiting a fertile territory, are reputed far to excel their neighbours in reverence towards the gods and the humanity they showed in their dealings with strangers, and the gods, they say, were born among them. And their account, they maintain, is in agreement with that of the most renowned of the Greek poets when he represents Hera as saying: For I go to see the ends of the bountiful earth, Oceanus source of the gods and Tethys divine Their mother. This is the account given in their myth: Their first king was Uranus, and he gathered the human beings, who dwelt in scattered habitations, within the shelter of a walled city and caused his subjects to cease from their lawless ways and their bestial manner of living, discovering for them the uses of cultivated fruits, how to store them up, and not a few other things which are of benefit to man; and he also subdued the larger part of the inhabited earth, in particular the regions to the west and the north.  And since he was a careful observer of the stars he foretold many things which would take place throughout the world; and for the common people he introduced the year on the basis of the movement of the sun and the months on that of the moon, and instructed them in the seasons which recur year after year. Consequently the masses of the people, being ignorant of the eternal arrangement of the stars and marvelling at the events which were taking place as he had predicted, conceived that the man who taught such things partook of the nature of the gods, and after he had passed from among men they accorded him immortal honours, both because of his benefactions and because of his knowledge of the stars and then they transferred his name to the firmament of heaven, both because they thought that he had been so intimately acquainted with the risings and the settings of the stars and with whatever else took place in the firmam