Before the Earth, there was Chaos—shapeless nothingness and confusion.

Two children came from Chaos:

Night and Erebus.

 Then, Love came into being.

 Love brought forth order and beauty…banishing the confusion of Chaos.

 Then, Love had Light and Day.

 Then, the earth was created, but the Greeks didn’t try to explain how it happened.

 The first 2 creatures were Mother Earth (Gaea) and Father Heaven (Uranus). They were monsters—human-looking and
nonhuman at the same time.
  They had overwhelming strength.

 Gaea and Uranus had 3 groups of children:

 Monsters
▪ Some had 50 heads and 100 hands.
▪ Some were Cyclopses.

 Titans—gigantic and strong

 Giants and Furies (from Uranus’ blood)

 Uranus hated the Hundred-Handers, so he imprisoned them. Angry, Gaea had her son Cronus injure Uranus.
 Now, Cronus was the leader of the world. He mated with Rhea, his sister, and their children were the gods.
 Cronus learned that one of his children were overthrow him, so he ate his children as soon as they were born.

 However, when the baby (Zeus) was born, Rhea hid him away and tricked Cronus by having him swallow a boulder.

 Zeus grew up, released his brothers and sisters, and started the war between the Titans and the Gods.
 Zeus was victorious. He was now the leader of the universe.

 The world was now ready for people.

 Now that there were no more monsters, it was time for people to be created.
 The job of creating creatures on earth went to a pair of Titan brothers: Prometheus and Epimetheus.

 Epimetheus created animals, but he gave all survival skills to them, leaving nothing to give to humans.

 To correct his bother’s mistake, Prometheus gave humans some survival help:

 He made humans stand/walk upright, like the gods.

 He gave humans the sacred fire:

▪ Good for safety, warmth ,and cooking.
▪ The fire could be the “spark” of intellect, meaning Prometheus gave humans a more intelligent brain than the other
animals.

 In another story, the gods created people, but they did so in a number of attempts:

 Gold—perfect beings

 Silver—low intelligence…spirits didn’t even live on after death

  Brass/bronze—terrible, strong, and violent

 Age of Heroes—time of heroes and adventure

 Iron—current age now…time of evil and sorrow…Zeus is supposed to destroy them/us

 Zeus created women because he was angry with Prometheus. Why?

 Prometheus stole the sacred fire to give to humans.

 Prometheus arranged it so that people kept the best part of a food sacrifice; the gods received the bones of the
animal.

 Illustration of Pandora
 As revenge against Prometheus, Zeus created a woman in order to bring about a disaster for the humans Prometheus
loved so much.
 In some myths, she causes problems because she is evil. In other myths, she causes evil because of her curiosity.

 She was given a box holding all the evils (or all the good things of life), and she was told not to open it. She opened it,
releasing all the evils into the world (or all the good things about life escaped). She shut it, trapping hope in the box.

 Then, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a mountain. Daily, a bird of prey eats Prometheus’ liver.

 This punishment was also a form of torture for information. Prometheus knew the name of Zeus’ child who would
overthrow him.

 Zeus flooded the earth to destroy mankind.

 It rained for 9 days and 9 nights.

 Prometheus knew the rain was coming, so he told his son, Deucalion, to build some kind of boat.

 Deucalion and Pyrrha were the only survivors. When they came upon land, they heard voiced say, “Cast aside the bones
of your mother.”

 Figuring out that this message meant to throw rocks, they created people in this way. Each stone grew into a person.
This is how they repopulated the land.