Primordial

The Primordial section is about the oldest powers of Greek mythology, the beings who existed before the Olympians or took shape at the beginning of the world. Our fullest account is Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem on the birth of the gods composed around 700 BC.

Hesiod’s first beings

Hesiod says that first of all Chaos came to be, and next broad-breasted Gaea, the Earth, the sure seat of all the gods; then Tartarus in the depths of the earth, and Eros, the fairest of the immortal gods (Theogony 116–122). From Chaos came Erebus and black Night, or Nyx, and Night in turn bore Aether and Day (123–125). Gaea by herself bore Uranus, the starry sky, the mountains and the sea, Pontus (126–132), and Night bore a brood of dark powers, among them Death, Sleep, the Fates and Nemesis (211–225). These six – Chaos, Gaea, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus and Nyx – are the best-known primordial gods, and each has a page of its own.

Gods of this section

The pages listed below cover further ancient powers and the old gods of the sea. Chronos, Time, and Ananke, Necessity, come first in the theogonies of the Orphic poets rather than in Hesiod. Phorcys and Keto, children of Pontus and Gaea (Theogony 237–239), are the parents of the Gorgons and other monsters. Proteus is the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea whom Menelaus wrestles on the island of Pharos (Odyssey 4.384–570). Thalassa is the Sea itself as a goddess, named in the Roman mythographer Hyginus. Lyssa, Madness, the daughter of Night whom Hera sends to drive Heracles to kill his children in Euripides’ Heracles (822–873), the Maniae, and the Cretan goddess Britomartis, daughter of Zeus and Carme, who fled from Minos for nine months and leapt from a cliff into fishermen’s nets, whence the Cydonians call her Dictynna, “Lady of the Nets” (Callimachus, Hymn 3.189–200; Pausanias 2.30.3), are grouped here with them.

See Also: Chaos, Gaea, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus, Nyx, Chronos, Phorcys