The Greek Gods

According to Greek mythology Greek Gods and Goddesses are the explanation that the ancient Greeks may have believed about how the universe came into being. The Greeks made up amazing myths concerning the creation of the world. The Greeks tried to imagine how it all came about by making up human like gods which were each given a certain task in the creation of the world. To do this they had to justify the different aspects of life such as love, birth, death, and everything else.

There are many translations of these myths and some of them are very different. One just has to consider the source and decide if it is reliable or not and base your own opinions accordingly. One source of the origins of the ancient Greek religion are found in the Theogony, which was the famous poem of the Greek writer named Hesiod somewhere between 800-700 B. C. He believed the creation of the gods needed to be divided into 4 different parts.

The first part was the existence of Chaos, which was a black abyss with nothing in it, silent, formless, no sign of any life form. Chaos created the Earth (also known as Gaea, Gaia, or Mother Earth), and Eros (also known as Desire). Gaea then created Uranus (the Sky, or Heaven), Pontus (the Sea), and the Mountains, rivers, low lands, and lakes. Chaos also gave birth to Erebus, the symbol of dark silence, and Nyx, the embodiment of the night. Erebus and Nyx united and created Aether (the Atmosphere) and Hemera (the Day).

The second part of the creation was when Gaea and Uranus married and gave birth to the original 12 Titans, Olympians, the three Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, heady Arges, and three Hecatonchires (100 headed creatures). The 12 Titans consisted of six males and six females. They were named, Okeanos, Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetos, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus. It is written that Uranus was fearful of his children and also ashamed of the way they looked so he put them inside the Earth (Gaea), in the deep pit known as Tartarus. Gaea was very angry and she was also tired of lying with Uranus every night so she begged her children to help her castrate Uranus. The only one who offered to help her (there are other versions of this story) was Cronus. He wanted to overthrow his father and be the ruler of the gods. Gaea made a sickle and Cronus castrated Uranus when he came down to lay with Gaea. This separated the Sky (Uranus) from the Earth (Gaea).

The third part of the cycle was when Zeus and the other children of Cronus were freed from him. Zeus was hidden when he was born but the other children had been swallowed by him because he was afraid they would overthrow him. This is just what eventually happened.

The fourth part of the creation was the victorious battle of the Olympian gods against the Titans.