Locations of Mythical Exile: Two Mythical Models Accounting for the Phenomenon of the Diurnal Solar Movement

Abstract

Abstract Various mythical ‘exiles’, gods (Cronus), heroes (Cadmus), and other individuals (Ophion, Typhon, Ogygus, Briareus) or groups (Cyclopes) were conceived as exiled for various reasons, but mainly because of a struggle with Zeus. Locations of their mythical exile were regularly conceived as distant, extreme, inaccessible, and, sometimes, out of this world. Consequently, the terms sometimes associated with those mythical exiles are ἔσχατα, ἄκρος, and πέρατα. Most of the exiles were at some point placed in Tartarus, a term more or less applicable to a section of Hades; but they were regularly conceived as continuing their existence by the shore of the mythical Oceanus, most probably in the farthest West. In a number of cases, both versions of the story existed, and they probably referred to the same thing: one can be at the ἔσχατα, ἄκρος, or πέρατα both under earth and at its western extremity. This fact is explained by the existence of two mythical models accounting for the diurnal solar movement.