Attitudes toward Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 459

to Mounts Hellicon and Parnassus. Mountains were also the haunts of nymphs, wild
beasts, and centaurs (Bernbaum 1997).
The wildness and isolation of mountains also impressed the ancient Greeks. Homer
was very much aware of mountain weather and describes its force vividly:
In spring, snow-water torrents risen and flowing down the mountainsides hurl at
a confluence their mighty waters out of gorges, filled by tributaries, and far away
upon the hills a shepherd hears the roar. As south wind and the southeast wind,
contending in mountain groves, make all the forest thrash . . . swaying their
pointed boughs toward one another in roaring wind, and snapping branches
crack, (ILIAD, Book 16)
The mountain that figures most prominently in Greek mythology and literature is,
of course, Mount Olympus in Thessaly. Olympus, a word that predated the Greeks, ap-
parently meant “peak” or “mountain” in a generic sense, for a number of other Greek
mountains are named Olympus. Several of these, like Olympus in Thessaly, were associ-
ated with weather cults. Olympus is often mentioned as the home of Zeus in his role as
the god of storms and weather. Through his ability to strike with lightning and thunder,
Zeus controls both gods and men from the mountaintop (Nilsson 1972).
Because of the association of mountain heights with deities, the ancient Greeks
placed many of their shrines and temples on the slopes and summits of mountains, or
oriented these structures with respect to sacred peaks. The early Minoan civilization of
Crete tended to associate mountains with female deities and saw in them reflections of
female shapes and body parts. They constructed a number of peak sanctuaries for mak-
ing offerings to goddesses and other deities. Some of these peak sanctuaries appear to
have been sites of human sacrifice (Sculley 1962).
The Greeks recognized the wild, rugged, and untamed nature of mountain scenery,
but they preferred the more harmonious aspects of nature. They were engrossed with
man and his works. Socrates, for example, was totally absorbed by the perplexities of
the city. He is quoted as answering the reproach of his friend Phaedrus, who complained
that he never left the city, by saying “he was fond of knowledge and could learn nothing
from the trees and the country, but only from the people in the city” (Hyde 1915-1916:
71). The human form was considered the highest level of beauty, and even their gods
appeared in human form. What was good in nature was that which provided comfort
and harmony for man. Beauty was symmetry and order. Ruskin, in his interpretation of
Greek art and literature, says, “Thus, as far as I recollect without a single exception,
every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a mead-
ow, and a shady grove” (1856, Vol. 4, ch. 13, sec. 15).
The observations of mountain weather in The Iliad noted above prefigure the scientif-
ic curiosity of later Greeks about the origins of mountains and the causes of phenomena
associated with them. Herodotus, for example, commented on the work of rivers and
their ability to erode and deposit. To him is attributed the saying, “Egypt is the gift of
the river.” Having discovered fossil marine shells in the mountains, he speculated that
the peaks had at one time been under water. He also thought it likely that earthquakes,
rather than the wrath of the gods, were responsible for breaking apart the Earth and