Chapter I: The Beginning of All Things

Long ago, in the beginning of time, there was nothing but a huge dark mass called Chaos. In this Chaos were hidden all things that now exist, the earth and the sky, light and darkness, fire and water, and everything else, but they were not yet severed one from the other, and were so mingled and confused that nothing had a separate form of its own. After the Chaos had lasted for a long time it parted asunder, and the earth was divided from the heaven. The sun and the moon and the stars mounted up above into the sky, but the water and the stones and the trees liked better to remain below with the earth.

There was a god in the sky called Uranus, and on earth there was a goddess called Gaea. They became husband and wife, and had several children, of whom six were ugly and twelve were beautiful. The ugly ones had, each of them, either a hundred arms, or else only one eye. Those who had a hundred arms had also fifty heads, and they were as big as mountains, and very {2} frightful. The others had only one eye apiece, and it was placed in the middle of their foreheads and was as large as a cart wheel. But the beautiful brothers and sisters were formed like men, only they were much larger and grander. Six of them were gods, and were called Titans; there were also six goddesses, who were called Titanides.

The gods lived on the summit of a very high mountain called Mount Olympus, which almost reached the sky, and Uranus was king over them all. He could not bear the sight of his hundred-armed and one-eyed children because they were so hideous, so he thrust them into a dark pit below the earth, called Tartarus, and would not let them come out of it again. But the mother Gaea loved even her ugly children, and was angry with Uranus for banishing them into darkness and misery. And she said to her son Cronus, who was the youngest of the beautiful gods, that if he would promise to fetch up his hundred-armed and one-eyed brothers out of Tartarus, she would help him to dethrone Uranus and himself become king of the gods. Cronus promised that he would do this, and Gaea created the bright cutting steel, and made with it a sharp sickle which she gave to her son, and told him to stab Uranus with it when he was asleep. Cronus did as she desired him, and thus Uranus lost his kingly power.

Cronus now ruled over the world in his father's stead, and the other gods had to obey him. He took one of the Titanides called Rhea to be his wife, and made her the queen. He also fetched up his ugly brothers from Tartarus, but he soon became afraid of them and drove them back into the dark pit. The {3} mother Gaea now saw how little she had gained by her treachery to her husband, and she told Cronus that he should lose his kingly power through one of his children just as Uranus had done. This frightened him so much that whenever Rhea had a child, he took it and swallowed it. He swallowed five of them in this way, and poor Rhea was very sad because she had no children left. Then Gaea told her, next time she had a child, to take a stone and wrap it in swaddling clothes and give it to Cronus to swallow as if it were the baby, but keep the real child in some safe place till it was grown up. Rhea did so, and Cronus swallowed the stone she gave him, thinking it was the little boy that had just been born, but Rhea hid the child in a cave in the island of Crete where a beautiful goat named Amalthea nourished him with her milk. And there were armed men there, who, whenever the baby cried, danced about and clashed their shields and spears together as if they were treading a war-dance for their own amusement, but it was really to prevent Cronus from hearing the crying. The boy was named Zeus, and in a year he was quite grown up, and was the most beautiful and most powerful of all the gods. When Cronus was asleep, Rhea used to go to the cave and talk to him.

At last the time came when Zeus was to wage war against his father, and then Gaea gave her daughter Rhea a bowl containing a sweet medicine for Cronus to drink. Rhea went to her husband and said, 'The mother Gaea is no longer angry with you, and she has sent you this sweet drink.' Cronus took the bowl and drank it up; it tasted very nice, but after he had {4} swallowed it he began to feel very uncomfortable, and presently he was sick. Then out came the stone and the children that he had swallowed, the youngest first, and the eldest last; there were two gods and three goddesses, and they were all quite grown up. The names of the gods were Poseidon and Pluto, and the names of the goddesses were Hera, Demeter, and Hestia.

Then the young gods made war against the old ones, and they sent for the hundred-armed and one-eyed monsters out of Tartarus, that they might help them. The One-eyed were very skilful at smith's work, and they were so grateful to Zeus for setting them free that they forged for him valuable weapons, thunder and lightning. The old gods took their stand on Mount Othrys, and the young ones on Mount Olympus, and between them was a wide far-stretching valley where they fought. When there was a battle the whole earth resounded at the tread of the gods. The Hundred-armed always threw a hundred pieces of rock at once, and Zeus hurled thunderbolt after thunderbolt, till the woods were in flames and the rivers boiled. The war lasted for ten years, but at last the young gods triumphed. They thrust their enemies into Tartarus, and set the Hundred-armed and the One-eyed to keep guard over them.

Zeus was now the king of the gods, and he married his sister Hera and made her the queen. He also gave an empire to each of his brothers: all the sea was made subject to Poseidon, and Pluto became king of the Lower World, where the dead are. These gods had children, who were also gods, and had each their part in the government of the universe. The good goat {5} Amalthea was already dead, but Zeus honoured her by making one of her horns a wonder, which became famous all over the world. Whoever had it might wish for anything he liked to eat or drink, and immediately it was there; and for this reason it was called the Horn of Plenty, because it produced in abundance everything that could be desired in the way of food.

The mother Gaea had planned the overthrow of Cronus because he had driven back his hundred-armed and one-eyed brothers into Tartarus. But she found herself worse off than ever, for the only result of her revenge was that now her beautiful children were imprisoned instead of the ugly ones. This made her very angry with the young gods, and she could not bear to see them powerful and happy. So she brought into the world some hideous monsters to make war against the young gods. They were called Giants, and had enormous strength and courage. They tore up masses of rock and dashed them up into the air till the vault of heaven rang again, but the gods only laughed at it, for the stones were powerless to hurt them by the time they had reached so great a height, and there was no mountain high enough for the Giants to climb from it to the top of Mount Olympus.

The Giants went on in this way for a long time, but they found that, do what they would, they could not inflict any injury upon the gods, and only got laughed at for their pains, so they resolved to try another plan. They made up their minds to build a ladder by which they might climb up to the abode of the gods, and they set to work to uproot a mountain called Ossa, and roll it on to the top of another mountain called {6} Pelion. But whilst they were doing this, Zeus hurled a mighty thunderbolt against Ossa and made it fall down again, and the gods rushed down to the earth to fight the Giants, shouting their war-cry. The fight lasted for a whole day, for the Giants were very strong, but at last the gods gained the victory, and they crushed each of the Giants beneath a huge mountain, which did not kill him, but prevented his ever getting up again. One of them tried to escape over the Mediterranean Sea, but the goddess Athene, who was the daughter of Zeus, tore off a great three-cornered piece of land and threw it after him. It hit him just as he was in the middle of the sea, and he fell down and was buried beneath it. After some time the land became covered with forests and cities, and it is now called the Island of Sicily. Every now and then the Giants turn on one side beneath their mountains, and then people say, 'It is an earthquake'; and sometimes they become quite furious with impatience, and then their fiery breath bursts through the mountains and puffs out molten iron and stones.

After the Giants were conquered, Gaea created a truly terrific being, far worse than they had been. She brought him out of a great crack that she made in the earth, and she called her son Typhöeus and was quite pleased to see how hideous he was, for she thought that such a monstrous creature would surely be able to conquer the young gods. He could see over the tops of the highest mountains, and when he stretched out his hands they reached right round the world. He had a hundred heads, each of them with a different kind of voice, so that he could speak like a {7} man, bellow like a bull, roar like a lion, bark like a dog, and hiss like a snake. All the other gods were afraid of him and hid themselves, but Zeus armed himself with thunderbolts and went out to fight him. Typhöeus threw large masses of rock at him, and screamed with all his hundred mouths at once, but Zeus scorched him with lightning, till at last bright flames burst out all over the giant's body. Then Typhöeus howled and dashed himself to the ground, rolling over and over to try and put out the flames, but he could not succeed in doing so, for Zeus went on hurling thunderbolts at him, and the trees all round became red hot. At last Gaea began to fear that the whole earth would melt, and so she seized Typhöeus and flung him down into Tartarus, where he died.

After this Gaea gave up fighting with the young gods, for she knew that they were stronger than she was, but it was a very long time before she really made friends with them.

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