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In the Beginning:
From Chaos to Cosmos
in Four Steps
To the Greeks and Romans, the world started bright, fresh and new. As with many young things, there was a large degree of disorder, but also immense vitality and energy. Those living later in the classical era considered that the golden age was done and their universe was relatively orderly only because it lacked the wild exuberance of youth.
The birth of myth
Just as the Romans believed newborn baby bears were without form until licked into shape by their mothers, it took the great storytellers of antiquity, from Homer to Virgil, to mould the inchoate stories of Greek and Roman myth into what became their standard forms. The pages which follow tell of the Creation much as it was given shape by Hesiod in about 720 bc. His version, called the Theogony, became for the Greeks and Romans the most widely accepted (but not the only) story of the creation of the universe.
Step 1
Chaos Theory
Before there was earth or sea or the sky that
covers everything, all nature was the same the wide world across.
[It was] that which we call chaos;
a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter,
badly combined discordant atoms of things,
all mixed up in the same place.
ovid metamorphoses 1.10ff
At first all was Chaos. Time, heaven, earth, the skies and the waters were all co-mingled and there was neither reason nor order in the mingling. Chaos was infinite and dark, a yawning chasm through which the jumbled elements that would later make up the world were forever falling. Chaos contained all things that ever were to be, though none yet existed in organized form. It was, as the followers of Orpheus later described it, ‘the egg of the world’. It was here, in the uncountable space before time existed, that certain forces began to take shape which became the first organized entities in the universe. These were the big four: Eros, Gaia, Tartarus and Nyx/Erebus. Every divine entity among the thousands and thousands in the ages to come would be descended from these.
Eros
The first to emerge from Chaos was the proto-god Eros (Love). The primeval Eros was a mighty force, arguably the greatest of all, for without Eros the other beings who sprang from Chaos would have remained static and unchanging, eternal yet sterile. For Eros embodied not only love but also the entire reproductive principle. In later eras he would offload many of his duties to other deities and become the cuddly Cupid of Roman times. But we would do well to remember, through the occasionally gruesome tales that follow, that the universe of myth was created through Love.
Eros and his potent bow.
* * *
later art and culture:
eros
The famous painting of Eros Triumphant by Caravaggio, 1602, shows Eros as a bawdy youth with an irrepressible grin standing mockingly over the fields of human endeavour (symbolized by armour, a lute and a compass, among other items), which are swept aside by his power.
By far the most famous statue of Eros is that which has been a London landmark in Piccadilly Circus since 1893 – although the sculptor, Alfred Gilbert, actually intended the statue to be a companion god to Eros called Anteros, or ‘love requited’. This was one of the first statues ever cast in aluminium.
* * *
Gaia
The first upon whom Eros worked his magic was Gaia, the Earth, for only the Earth is able to bring things from itself by itself – a principle known to ancient Greeks and modern man alike as parthenogenesis, or ‘maiden birth’. And so, says Hesiod, ‘without the sweet union of love’ Gaia brought forth from herself Uranus, who was the sky (Caelus to the Romans), and Pontus, the waters.
Tartarus
This was the dark opposite of Gaia. Where Gaia was fertile, and alive, Tartarus was sterile and dead. In later ages Tartarus would be the prison for giants and monsters (human or otherwise) too powerful or dangerous to walk the earth. Even Eros could do nothing with Tartarus, who produced no offspring.
Nyx
Eros had an easier time with Nyx, ‘the black-winged night’, which had already a certain duality, being also Erebus, the night of Tartarus. And, through Eros, Nyx and Erebus came together to produce Hemera, which became the Day, and Aether, which became the heavens, the upper air, the breath of the gods and the border between Tartarus and Gaia. (Aether was one of the primordial forces of the universe, but not a particularly creative one, so it is no surprise that when he did later come together with Gaia their offspring was Aergia, the goddess of Laziness.). With the birth of these entities, the basic foundations of the universe were complete.
Step 2
The Big Bang: The Line of Gaia and Uranus
Of Gaia I shall sing, mother of everything,
deep-rooted and eldest, who nourishes all.
homeric hymn 30
The dynamic duo of the early universe were Gaia and her ‘son’ Uranus; the earth and the sky. Like her fellow proto-gods, Gaia was not human in thought or nature, and each force acted upon the other with no regard for such human concepts as mother–son relations or incest. It was enough that Gaia was the female element and Uranus the male, who every night covered the earth in his starry splendour. Of course, there was no measuring the time in which this happened, for time was yet to be born, and Chaos, from which the four first forces had sprung, still lay between the earth and the heavens. And as we well know, chaos has never completely gone away.
Gaia today – literally everywhere
Gaia is best known today in the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the earth is in fact a single living organism. As a result, the Gaia name is now used in everything from government programmes to vegetarian sausages.
However, our dictionaries know Gaia best in her aspect of Ge (see here for aspects), the Earth. A picture (graphe) of Ge gives us geography, and we also have geostatic satellites and geophysical studies. The study of Gaia’s bones gives us geology, and the measurement of the earth gives us geometry. Those farmers who work the earth – ge-eurgos – have given us the name of George, and the two states of Georgia.
Uranus today
Uranus is best known today as the seventh planet of the solar system. In fact, the planet was unknown to the ancients, being discovered only in 1781, and coincidentally was originally named after King George, who, as we have seen, had Gaia, Uranus’ consort, as his namesake.
The metallic element uranium was discovered soon afterwards, and received its name as a tribute to the discovery of the planet. Just as Uranus was believed to be the last of the planets, uranium was once believed to be the last of the elements.
The Titans
The union of Gaia and Uranus was fruitful, and produced a horde of creatures who are collectively known as the Titans. These assumed different forms. Many were monstrous, and, being immortal, survived to trouble humanity in later ages. Others were integrated into the pattern of the universe as it continued to take shape, and became indispensable to its proper functioning. Among the latter were Oceanus, who embodied the world-river that flowed around all of Ge, or rather around the Eurasian landmass and north Africa, which is all the ancients knew of the earth. There was also Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, and Hyperion, from whom in turn were born Helios (the sun), Selene (the moon) and Eos (‘the rosy-fingered dawn’).