SOURCE: "The 'Kingship in Heaven' Theme," in Myth and Law Among the Indo-Europeans: Studies in Indo-European Comparative Mythology, edited by Jaan Puhvel, University of California Press, 1970, pp. 83-121.

In the essay that follows, Littleton studies various versions of the widespread and pervasive motif of the divine king, and concludes that the theme does not have a single Indo-European origin.

Introduction

By all odds the most important single episode in Greek mythology is the one that begins with the emergence of Ouranos out of Chaos and ends with the final triumph of Zeus over Kronos and his fellow Titans; for on this account of how Zeus came to succeed to the "Kingship in Heaven" depend, directly or indirectly, almost all other Greek myths, sagas, and folktales, to say nothing of their associated rituals and ceremonies. It formed, in the Malinowskian sense, the "charter"¹ that legitimized the position of the...