Chaos (2)

Chaos in Greek mythology, was the primitive element, the formless, out of which everything arose the deities, as well as heaven, air, earth, and sea, and all their inhabitants. Chaos united with Darkness (Caligo) and produced Ether, Day, Erebus, and Night. The pairs again united, and thus Ether and Day produced Heaven, the Earth, and the Sea. Erebus and Night had as their children, Fate, Age, Death, Sleep, Dreams (Phantasus, Morpheus, Momus); the Parcse, Discord, Misery, Revenge, Sympathy, and finally the Hesperidas (Egle, Hesperia, Arethusa). From the Earth and the Sea there descended a no less numerous offspring, Pain, Crime, Fear, Falsehood, Perjury, Intemperance, the Furies, Pride; also the Ocean, Pontus, Tartarus, Themis and the Titans. It is plain that here are only personified powers or attributes of nature, and that these in the course of production were gradually separated more and more until the Titans and the deities quarreled about the land, which finally was peopled with human beings by Prometheus when he secured the fire from Olympus. SEE COSMOGONY.