Upper world (Greek mythology)

In Greek mythology, the "Upper World" (Ancient Greek: ὁ ἄνω κόσμος, romanized: ho anô kosmos, lit. the "Upper/Over World/Realm") refers to the 'mortal realm', the terrestrial/surface known world where living mortal things ("all things that live and move", as Hades once said to Persephone) all exist; Humans, Animals and Plants. In mythological and everyday contexts the realm of the living, the known-world (Ecumene, oikouménē, οἰκουμένη), was also referred to as hê oikoumenê (ἡ οἰκουμένη), meaning "the inhabited world," or as epi chthoni (ἐπὶ χθονί), meaning simply "upon the earth". The Upperworld, where mortals lived, was considered shared territory available to all deities, with no one ruler, save for Gaia. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus' compendium, the "Bibliotheca", in the events leading-up to the Trojan War, when Paris of Troy was chosen to judge which goddess (Hera, Athena and Aphrodite) was the Fairest of them all, each goddess offered Paris a bribe, and the bribe that Hera offered was to make Paris the ruler of the known-world (specifically Europe and Asia). In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, the kingdom of Colchis, in Eastern-Asia Minor (on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea) was considered as the very edge of the known world. The Mycenaean Greeks and earlier-Ancient Greeks believed that the Upperworld was a flat disk (before scholars and philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, and later Ptolemy, in the later-Ancient Greek period determined otherwise), comprising the following continents:

(Northern) Africa (Libýē/Libúē, Λιβύη; named after Libya a mythological Egyptian princess). (Western) Asia (Asía, Ἀσία; named after Asia, an Oceanid). (Southern) Europe (Eurṓpē, Εὐρώπη; named after the mythological Phoenician princess, Europa, who was abducted by Zeus). Greece (Hellas (Ἑλλάς)) was considered to be at-or-near the centre of the world. The entire 'flat earth disk' fully-encompassed by the Titan, Oceanus (who is both the great river which encircled the entire world and the god of said-river, the firstborn son of Gaia and Ouranos). The Ancient Greeks also believed that, whenever Selene, Eos, Helios and Astraeus (and others, such as the stars and the Planetae) had each finished making their respective journeys across the sky, once they'd each passed-under the western horizon, they would each sail back to the eastern horizon, via the currents of the Oceanus world-river carrying their vessels along the northern rim of the world all the way back to the East. The land beyond the north of the known-world was known-as Hyperborea. This term, Upperworld, is used to differentiate the world of the living in the tripartite Greek Cosmos From:

The subterranean Under World (Ancient Greek: ὁ κατά κόσμος, romanized: ho katá kosmos, lit. the "Deep/Under World/Realm", katá chthoni (κατά χθονί), meaning the "deeper/deepest earth", or dôma/dómoi Aïdao (δῶμα/δόμοι Ἀΐδαο, lit. the "House of Hades") but was much better-known simply as "Hades" after King Hades, home of the Chthonic (earth/underworld) deities and locations of the realms of the dead (Tartarus, the Asphodel Meadows and Elysium, where Shades (Skia (σκιά)), the souls of dead mortals are assigned), and is co-ruled by King Hades and Queen Persephone. The oceans/seas, the home of the Thalassic (sea) deities, realms of sea gods such as Pontus (Πόντος), Thalassa (Θάλασσα), and other sea gods, the Nesoi (island deities) and sea nymphs like the Nereids, all ruled by King Poseidon and Queen consort Amphitrite. Olympos/Olympus, home of the Ouranic (sky) deities, the realm of the Twelve Olympians and other major gods, situated atop-of Mount Olympus (located on the border between Thessaly and Macedon), ruled by King Zeus and Queen consort Hera. The Upperworld, as the realm of the living, is also home to deities that are parts of it, such Primordials deities like Gaia (Γαῖα, the earth-herself), the Ourea (Οὔρεα, Oúrea, the mountains), Aër (Ἀήρ, the 'lower air/sky', the breathable atmosphere surrounding the earth, populated by mortals, animals, plants and lesser deities), and others beings such as minor deities, daimons, Potamoi, Nymphs (such as Aurae, Nephelai, Oreads, Dryads, Oceanids, etc.) and Satyrs. Intersecting passageways between the Upperworld and the Underworld were typically-depicted as caves, holes, tunnels (some known as Ploutonions) and certain rivers (real and mythological), such as the Acheron and the Cocytus, keeping the Upper and Under Worlds connected. During Cronus' overthrow of Ouranos, four of his sons, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion and Iapetus, aided their youngest-brother by each physically-restraining one of Ouranos' limbs at the cardinal points of the Upperworld (with Coeus in the North, Crius in the South, and differing accounts (Homer and Hesiod) place Hyperion (as a sun god and the father of Selene, Eos and Helios) and Iapetus each in either the East or the West). After the Titanomachy, when the Olympians overthrow the Titans, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion and Iapetus were all cast-down into Tartarus (in the Underworld), and Iapetus' son, Atlas was forced to bare the full burden of weight of the heavens that his father and his uncles had shared between them by himself, by Zeus' decree. Theories range speculate that Atlas was forced to do this in North-West Africa (where the Atlas Mountains are located) and near where his daughters, the Hesperides tended to Queen Hera's sacred garden (mentioned in the 11th Labour of Heracles). Atlas' brother, Prometheus, after Prometheus' deceiving of Zeus at Mecone (at Sicyon, Peloponnese) and his theft of fire from the gods for mortalkind, Zeus had Prometheus captured, and chained to a mountainside in the Caucasus Mountains, in (between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea) in east Asia-Minor.

See also

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