The Mythology Book

20 ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

I

n the beginning was Chaos,

an open chasm of emptiness—

infinitely deep, dark, and

silent. In his vision of the universe’s

origin, set down in Theogony, the

Greek poet Hesiod saw creation as

the imposition of a positive reality

on this negativity and absence. Key

to that reality was the capacity for

change. The nothingness of Chaos

could have continued, eternally

unaltered, but existence, once

created, brought with it endless

cycles—the comings and goings

of the seasons, generations of

humans, birth, and death. These

cycles were set in motion by the

making of the original division

between night and day; time was

now measurable and meaningful.

Earth mother

The first Greek goddess, Gaia, was

the earth in its mineral form—its

rocks and soils, its mountains and

its plains. From its solid and

seemingly inert state, it became

vibrant with the potential for new

life. The first manifestation of that

new vitality was Ouranos, god of

the sky, spontaneously conceived

within the womb of the great Earth

Mother Gaia, with whom he would

subsequently father children.

Though he was Gaia’s son,

Ouranos was her equal. Hesiod

wrote that she bore him specifically

so that he could “cover her.” While

this was a statement of fact—the

sky lies above the earth—it adds

more than a hint of sexuality to the

relationship between the earth and

heaven. The Greeks were as

horrified at the idea of incest as we

are. Its function in their mythology

appears to have been to show that

all the different aspects of existence

are intensely conflicted, yet

intimately linked. The sky was not

simply positioned above the earth; it

conjoined with it dynamically and,

ultimately, creatively, just as night

does with day, darkness with light,

and death with life.

Kinship and conflict

While creative, these conjunctions

inevitably cast opposing principles

into a never-ending struggle for

supremacy. Hesiod’s portrayal

of primal sexual relations was

essentially violent: male and female

forces as complementary but also

competing. It was far from an

idealized world view, and the

depiction of Ouranos was even

more extreme; the despotic

patriarch would brook no rival—

not even his own children.

Ouranos’s jealousy of his sons

and daughters was such that, at

each birth, he took them away and

stowed each one in some hidden

recess of the earth—which was

actually his wife’s body. He did this

to establish his ownership of Gaia.

IN BRIEF

THEME

Creation by Mother Earth

SOURCES

Theogony, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce;

Argonautica, Apollonius of

Rhodes, ca. 250 bce; Natural

History, Pliny the Elder, 79 ce;

Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus,

ca. 10 0 ce.

SETTING

Chaos—a vast and infinitely

dark void at the origin of the

universe.

KEY FIGURES

Gaia The primordial earth-

mother goddess, and

personification of the

solid world.

Ouranos The sky god, Gaia’s

spontaneously conceived

son; later father of the Titans,

the Hecatoncheires, the

Kyklopes, the Erinyes,

Aphrodite, and many other

gods and goddesses.

Kronos A Titan who castrated

his father, Ouranos; also

associated with the harvest.

Gaia, the Earth Mother, sits with

her two godly progeny at her side in

an ancient Greek stone relief. It was

said that an oath sworn by Gaia

would prove irrevocable.

Out of the Chasm came

Night, and from Night in

turn came Day.

Theogony

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ANCIENT GREECE 21

Her sexual attentions had to be

entirely and eternally available to

him, so their offspring could not

be allowed to see the light of day.

Successive infants were consigned

to subterranean depths.

First came the 12 Titans—the

sisters Theia, Mnemosyne, Phoebe,

Themis, Tethys, and Rhea, and

their brothers Oceanus, Coeus,

Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and

Kronos. Each in his or her turn

was rammed into some convenient

crack or crevice of the earth and

left there, trapped. After the Titans

came three giant brothers, the

Kyklopes, each of whom had a

single eye at the center of his

forehead. Like their siblings, they

were consigned at birth to be

buried in the heart of the earth.

Then came three more giants

of even greater strength—the

Hecatoncheires, whose name ❯❯

See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ The war of gods and Titans 32–33 ■ The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ The fate of

Oedipus 86–87

The sky god Ouranos is depicted as

a benign father with offspring draped

around him in a wood engraving after

a fresco by the Prussian artist Karl

Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841).

Hesiod and his

Theogony

The ancient Greek poet Hesiod

may well be a myth in his own

right, for there is no evidence that

any such person actually existed.

The works attributed to him—

assorted poetry from the 8th and

7th centuries bce—may simply

have been conveniently bundled

together. They include a

miscellany of poems, from brief

narratives to genealogies that

record the heroic ancestries

of important families.

The importance of these works

in tracing back traditions and

uncovering origins is undeniable.

The genealogical poems discuss

human beginnings, while the

Theogony, Hesiod’s most famous

work, focuses on the birth of the

gods and is the source for much

of what we know about Greek

myth. Hesiod was not the only

available authority; other more

mystic-minded thinkers and

writers promoted an alternative

“Orphic” tradition, built around

the myth of Orpheus, the bard

and musician. For the most part,

however—and for well over

2,000 years now—it has been

the version of mythical events

attributed to Hesiod that has

held sway.

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