From Chaos to Creation

  From Chaos to Creation



 In the beginning, there was only Chaos, a primal emptiness - a dark, silent, formless and infinite oddity with no trace of life. The, out of this gloomy darkness, Gaia the Earth goddess appeared, followed in quick succession by Eros (Love) and Tartarus (the endless abyss of the Underworld).

Chaos then bore Erebos, the darkness of the Underworld, and Nyx (Night). Nyx mated with Erebos, and produced Aether, the Upper Sky, and Hemera, or the Day. Nyx then alone produced Moros (Doom), Nemesis (Revenge), Oizys (misery), Geras (Old Age), Hypnos (Sleep), Momus (Laughter), Eris (Discord) and others.

Meanwhile Gaia produced Ouranos (Sky), Pontus (the sterile Sea) and the Ourea, (the Mountains) without help. Ouranos then became her mate and equal, surrounding and covering her on all sides. This primordial couple, sky and earth, produced the twelve Titans, the three towering wheel-eyed Cyclopes, and the three terrible Hekatonkheires with fifty heads and a hundred arms apiece.

However, Ouranos proved to be a harsh husband and father. Horrified by the mere sight of the Hekatonkheires and Cyclopes, he threw them back into Gaia's womb. Gaia writhed in pain, and plotted revenge. She fashioned a flint sickle, and asked the Titans to avenge her by castrating Ouranos with it. The Titans recoiled at the name of their father, and only the youngest born, Kronos, was cunning enough to do it.

That night when Ouranos came to lie without Gaia the crafty Kronos was hiding in ambush. He grabbed his father's genitals and severed them with his mother's sickle. As the blood fell to earth the Furies, who punish crimes, the Ash-Tree Nymphs, and the race of Giants were created. Kronos heaved the pieces into the sea, and from the foam arose Aphrodite, the beautiful goddess of love, who floated along and stepped ashore at Cyprus. The mutilated Ouranos either withdrew forever from the earth or else he perished. But before he did so he promised that Kronos and the other Titans would be punished.

Kronos did not free the Titans as Gaia had requested though, and began to establish his own reign. He married his sister Rhea, and under his lordship the Titans produced many offspring. Yet Kronos could not allow his own children to survive, for both Gaia and Ouranos had prophesied that Kronos would be supplanted by a son. When Rhea, his wife, gave birth to the gods and goddesses Kronos swallowed Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon shortly after each was born. Rhea was furious and took pains to save her sixth child, Zeus, from his father. She bore Zeus in secret and then gave Kronos a stone wrapped in swaddling bands to swallow instead.

Zeus grew to manhood on Mount Ida in Crete, attended by nymphs. Meanwhile, Kronos was growing old. Zeus sought advice from the titaness Metis, and gained a position of the cupbearer in Zeus' palace. Mixing mustard into his wine, Zeus offered it to Kronos, and forced him to disgorge first the stone, then his siblings in reverse order. The gods being immortal, were alive and unhurt, and together with Zeus they triumphed over Kronoss and bound him in Tartarus. Zeus then set up the stone at Parnassus, a monument to his victory over the Titan king.

Zeus's triumph, however, was far from secure. The other Titans, with the exception of Prometheus, Epimetheus and Oceanus, rebelled under these upstart gods. For ten years the fighting lasted, a cosmos-shaking battle in which the elements of nature raged without check. Neither the gods nor the Titans could secure a decisive victory. But then Zeus went down to Tartarus and released the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed monsters. The Cyclopes awarded Zeus their weapons of thunder and lightning, and the Hekatonkheires pelted the Titans with boulders. And at last the Titans were defeated (a more detailed account will be found at the Titanomachy page). Zeus imprisoned them in Tartarus, and he condemned the rebel Atlas to stand forever at the edge of the world and bear the heavens on his shoulders.

Gaia, however, resented the way Zeus had treated the Titans, for they were her children. She rose in all her fury, and took Tartarus as a husband, producing the giant Typhon as a result. All the gods fled as Typhon arrived. But Zeus was captured and confined. Released by Hermes, Zeus finally destroyed the dragon by hurling lightning at it again and again, and by burying it under Etna in Sicily.

There was one more attempt to dislodge Zeus and the other Olympians from their mastery of the world. The Giants, who had sprouted from Uranus' blood, were dissatisfied, so they laid siege to Olympus by piling mountain upon mountain in an attempt to scale it. It required all the prowess of the gods and the assistance of the mortal Heracles to subdue and kill the Giants. Having vanquished the Titans, the dragon Typhon, and the Giants, the rule of the Olympians was undisputed.

That version of the creation was taken largely from Hesiod, a Greek poet of the seventh century B.C.. But here is an earlier story by way of contrast.

Eurynome, the goddess of all creation, arose from Chaos and separated the sea from the sky. Then, dancing naked upon the waves, she created the wind and rubbed it in her hands to create the serpent Ophion, who made love to her. Pregnant, Eurynome became a dove and laid the World Egg, and Ophion coiled about the Egg and hatched it. This Egg brought forth the cosmos and everything in it. Then Eurynome and Ophion settled on Olympus, but their union was unhappy. When Ophion proclaimed himself the Creator, Eurynome banished him to the netherworld. Finally Eurynome established the seven planets, each with a Titan and Titaness to rule it. When man appeared he sprang from the soil, and the first man, Pelasgus, taught the others to eat acorns, build huts, and make a rude garment.

 