The Creation

Hesiod

In the beginning there was only Chaos, an empty void. But somehow this enormous vacancy gave birth
to Gaea, the earth, to Tartarus, the great region beneath the earth, and to Eros, the shining god of love
and attraction. Chaos also bore Erebus, the darkness of the netherworld, and Night, the darkness over
the earth. Then Erebus slept with Night, who gave birth to Ether, the heavenly light, and to Day, the
earthly light. Later, Night produced such beings as Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Nemesis, and a
long list of atrocities that steal upon men in darkness.

Meanwhile, Gaea, without help, gave birth to Uranus, the starry sky, to the Mountains, to Pontus, the
sterile sea. Uranus then became Gaea’s mate and equal, for he produced the twelve Titans, the three
towering wheel-eyed Cyclops, and the three terrible Hecatoncheires with fifty heads and a hundred
arms apiece.

However, Uranus proved to be a harsh husband and father. Each of the Hecatoncheires hated him, and
he hated them in return. In his anger, Uranus pushed them back into Gaea’s womb and kept them there.
Gaea withered in pain at this and plotted revenge upon her mate. She fashioned a flint sickle and called
upon her children to avenge her. The Titans and Cyclops recoiled in fear of their father, and only the
last-born Titan, Cronus, was daring enough.

That night when Uranus came to lie with Gaea, the crafty Cronus 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. Cronus heaved the
members into the sea, and from the foam arose Aphrodite, the beautiful goddess of love, who floated
along and stepped ashore at Cyprus. The mutilated Uranus either withdrew forever from the earth or
else he perish. But before he did so he promised that Cronus and the other Titans would be punished.

After confining the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires to Tartarus, Cronus established his reign. He
married his sister Rhea, and under his lordship the Titans produced many offspring. Yet Cronus could
not follow his own children to survive, for both Gaea and Uranus prophesied that Cronus would be
supplanted by a son. When Rhea, his wife, gave birth to the gods and goddesses, Cronus 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 Cronus a
stone wrapped in swaddling bands to swallow instead.

Attended by nymphs, Zeus grew to manhood on Crete. Cronus, meanwhile, was growing old. So Zeus
sought advice on how to defeat him from the Titaness Metis, who prepared an emetic potion. Disguised
as a cupbearer, Zeus gave this potion to Cronus, who vomited up Zeus’s brothers and sisters, as well as
the stone that Rhea had given him. The gods were alive and unhurt, and together with Zeus, they
triumphed over Cronus 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 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 Cyclops and the hundred-
handed monsters, the Cyclops awarded Zeus their weapons of thunder and lightning, and the
Hecatoncheires pelted the Titans with boulder. And at last, the Titans were defeated. 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.

Gaea was enraged at the downfall of her children, the Titans and through her union with Tartarus, she
gave birth to one last monster, Typhoeus, a dragon with a hundred heads that never rested. Terrified,
most of the gods fled. 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 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 Typhoeus, and the Giants, the rule of the Olympians was undisputed.