Genealogy of primal forces

Genealogy of primal forces

  At first there was Chaos, a void, shapeless, lightless, formless and lifeless. Then came Mother Earth, Gaia, the dark and murky Tartarus, the region under the Earth and Eros, overcomes the sense, discretion and judgment of both gods and men, Erebus the darkness under the Earth, Night the darkness above the Earth.

Night and Erebus, having joining together in mutual attraction, gave birth Aether, the light of the heavens and to the huge mountains and Hemera, the Day. Eros also, affected Gaia and she consequently gave birth to  Ouranos, the  Sky, huge mountains and to Pontus, the Sea. Ouranos and Gaia joined together. From this union came the Hecatoncheires, giants with a hundred hands and fifty heads, whose names were Briareus, Gyes  and Cottus, Cyclops, creatures who had only one large eye in the midst of their forehead and often called Goggle-Eyes; they were Brontes the Thunderer, Steropes the Lathing-Hurler and Arges the Thunderbolt and  they were full of strength, violence. Finally there were the  Titans, enormous and powerful creatures, elemental forces in the universe. there were  twelve of them; Oceanus, the Ocean, the sources of rivers Coeus; Crius; Hyperion, or Light, who fathered Helios the Sun, Selene the Moon and Eos the Dawn; Iapetus, later to become important as the father of Prometheus, Epimetheus and Atlas; Theia; Rhea; Themis or Justice; Mnemosyne, or Memory; Phoebe and Tethys and finally Cronos, the youngest and most dreadful of the brood.
  Ouranos hated  Hecatoncheires and Cyclops. When they born, Ouranos  would take  and hide them in the recess of the Earth (in the Tartarus).Gaia got angry  and she called together other children  Titans for helping. none of them agreed except Cronos. He hated his father. So, Cronos threw off his organs, drops of blood were spilled upon the Earth. From these drops came a race of Nymphs, a race of Giants, Furies or Erinyes; Alecto, the Relentless; Tisipone , the Blood-Avenger and Megaera, the Grudge-Bearer. Furies/Erinyes have horrible creatures, winged with snakes in their hair, black, their eyes dripping with blood and wretchedly foul.
  Ouranos' organs themselves landed in the sea. They were taken by the waves for a long time  and the white foam  formed from the friction of flesh and water. This foam floated by the island of  Cythera to the island  of Cyprus where from it came a beautiful young maiden, the goddess Aphrodite, the "foam-sprung" goddess, who is sometimes called Cythera because she touched Cythera and at other times called Cyiprs, Cypria, or the Cypriate because she actually took shape on Cyprus.

   So, we are now in the age of Cronos, The period of Titans. Ouranos has apparently disappeared from the scene; at least he no longer appears in the stories. Before he disappeared, he prophesied that one of Cronos' sons would some day surpass Cronos himself.
   Cronos had married his sister Rhea. For each of five years Rhea bore him a child and consumed(swallowed) each one of the five. Rhea was becoming more and more distressed  and angry. When she realized that she was ready to give birth to another child, she devised a stratagem. She sneaked off to Crete and gave birth to her sixth child  in secret. She then entrusted  that child to two Nymphs of the region, Meliae, Adrasta and Ida, who cared for it in a deep cave and brought it up.
   Meanwhile Rhea's newest son was thriving in Crete, having grown up very rapidly, as is the way with gods. His name was Zeus. When he came of age, he went to Metis, his cousin, to obtain advice on how to take vengeance on his father. Metis was the daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys and she was known for her wisdom. She devised a potion which caused Cronos, having been tricked by Rhea into drinking it, to have such stomach trouble that he vomited. And, up from the depths of his belly came the rock and each of his first five children, fully grown, having managed somehow to survive intact inside him during all these years. their names were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.

The Olympians

  The home of the new generation of  gods was Mount Olympus. There, twelve members of the divine family lived- five children of Cronos; Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hera and Hesteia; and seven of their offspring; Apollo, Hermes, Ares, Hephaistus, Athena, Aphrodite and Artemis. Hades, though one of the sons of the Cronos, was never included as one of the Olympians. His realm was beneath the earth. The gods lived in luxury on Olympus. Hephaistus, the master craftsman, built a place for Zeus and in the folds of the mountain he built separate houses for the other members of the divine family. The homes and assembly halls were decorated with gold and silver; the roads were paved with marble. The food of the gods was ambrosia, their drink was nectar and in their veins flowed rather than blood. They were deathless and they could never grow old. They were not immune to injury and pain both physical and emotional.


Resources: book-Mythology Greek and Roman by Thomas H. Carpenter and Robert J.Gula.