First  there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.                            [Milton]

From the formless confusion of Chaos, brooded over by unbroken darkness came three children; into this shapeless nothing they were thrown. Erebus, which is the unfathomable depth where death dwells and his two sisters, Nyx, or night, and Gaea, the earth. In the whole universe there was nothing else; all was black, empty, silent, endless.

                    .... Black-winged Night
Into the bosom of Erebus dark and deep
Laid a wind-born egg, and as the seasons rolled
Forth sprang Love, the longed-for, shining, with
wings of gold.
                                [Aristophanes]

Love. This new found hope created from nothing, started to drive away all of the nothingness and confusion of Chaos. Love created Light and with Light came its friend Day, (Erebus and Nyx became the parents of a daughter Hemera (Day) and a son Aether (Air)).

The creation of Earth was never questioned it simply came into being as Love did.

                Earth, the beautiful, rose up,
Broad bosomed, she that is the steadfast base
Of all things. And fair Earth first bore
The starry Heaven, equal to herself,
To cover her on all sides and to be
A home forever for the blessed gods.
                                [Hesiod]

At this point in the procedings, no 'Earthly' thought had been given to the differentiation of people and places. The Earth was a very tangible thing, solid and imense, yet seemed to have a personality all of its own. The heavens were the blue vault above Earth, it too would behave as a human might, mindful and with purpose, and so Gaea gave birth to a son, Uranus, and thus Father Sky - the heavens - came in to being. Later Gaea and Uranus were to become husband and wife, and they stood at the head of the first dynasty of gods. Their earliest offspring were the Mountains and Pontus, the sea

Of course, out of a union of this magnitude, there has to be children. The first children to appear on the earth were monster creatures, the offspring of Gaea and Uranus. These first creatures were thought of as similar to humans but not quite. These creatures had shattering, overwhelming power of earthquake, hurricane and volcano. Three of these creatures had one hundred hands and fifty heads and they were incredibly strong - The Hecatoncheires. Three others had just one eye in the centre of their head and these creatures were given the name Cyclops (The Wheel-eyed). The Cyclops too were giant and strong. The last of the creatures were The Titans. The Titans formed the second dynasty of gods and were the later offspring of Uranus and Gaea, headed by Cronus and Rhea These creatures were also strong and giant but these creatures were not all bad. In fact it would be some of these creatures that would eventually lead to the creation of the gods.

It was the Greeks that decided that these creatures were to be of Father Sky and Mother Earth and not simply brought forth from Mother Earth's dark depths alone. However, the Greeks made father Sky out to be a very poor father indeed. He hated things with fifty heads and one hundred hands, even though they were his sons, and as each one was born he imprisioned it within a secret place within the earth. Mother Earth hearing of this, was very angry at Father Sky for the maltreatment of her children so she went to her children and begged for their help. Only one of her children was brave enough to help her, the Titan Cronus. Cronus laid in wait for his father, attacked him and wounded him massively, from his blood sprang the Giants the fourth race of monsters and the Erinyes (The Furies). After this, Cronus and his sister, Rhea, became the King and Queen of the universe.

Cronus and Rhea had six children who were to become the first Olympians, the fourth dynasty and were lead by Zeus the youngest of the six children. It is the Olympians that appear most often in the myths and legend of the Greeks. Some say, that during a great council meeting Zeus was granted supreme right to preside over the entire world, that is, heaven and earth, or the world itself and the over-world. Others say that Zeus rebelled against his father, Cronus, after Cronus had learned that one of his children was destined to dethrone him some day. On receiving this news every child that Rhea bore was swallowed by Cronus until the sixth one was born, Rhea could not bear to have Zeus swallowed too, instead she gave a rock wrapped in a blanket to Cronus who promptly swallowed it, and Rhea secreted Zeus in Crete. Later, when Zeus was grown up he, with the help of Gaea, his grandmother, forced Cronus to disgorge the rock and the children. Upon receipt of his lost siblings, Zeus gave rulership of the sea to his brother, Poseidon, and to another brother, Hades, he gave dominion and control of the lower regions, or the underworld.

After this there was a great war between Cronus and The Titans, and Zeus and his five brothers and sisters - a war that almost wrecked the universe. The Titans were conquered, partly because Zeus had been helped by the Hecatoncheires that he had released from the depths of the earth, and their use of thunder, lightning and earthquake - and also because of the help of one of the sons of the titan Iapetus, Prometheus, who was very wise and took sides with Zeus. After the war was won all of the monsters were banished to Tartarus. They were,

Bound in bitter chains beneath the wide-weyed earth,
As far below the earth as over earth
Is heaven, for even so far down lies Tartarus.
Nine days and nights would a bronze anvil fall
And on the tenth reach earth from heaven.
And again falling nine days and nights,
Would come to Tartarus, the brazen-fenced.

Prometheus' brother Atlas, suffered a still worse fate. He was condemned,

To bear on his back forever
The cruel strength of the crushing world
And the vault of the sky.
Upon his shoulders the great pillar
That holds apart the earth and heaven,
A load not easily borne.

Bearing his burdon he stands forever before the place that is wrapped in clouds and darkness, where Night and Day draw near and greet one another. Even after the conquering and crushing of the Titans, Zeus was not completely victorious. Gaea gave birth to her last and most frightful offspring, a creature more terrible than any that had gone before. His name way Typhon.

A flaming monster with a hundred heads,
Who rose up against all the gods.
Death whistled from his fearful jaws,
His eyes flashed glaring fire.

But Zeus had now got the thunder and lightning under his own control. They had become his weapons, used by no-one else. He struck Typhon down with,

The bolt that never sleeps,
Thunder with breath of flame.
Into his very heart the fire burned.
His strength was turned  into ashes.
And now he lies a useless thing
By Aetna (Etna), where sometime there burst
Rivers red-hot, consuming with fierce jaws
The level fields of Sicily,
Lovely with fruits.
And that is Typhon's anger boiling up,
His fire breathing darts.

Still later, one more attempt was made to unseat Zeus: the Giants rebelled. But by this time the gods were very strong and they were helped, too, by the mighty Herecles, a son of Zeus. The Giants were defeated and hurled down to Tartarus; and the victory of the radiant powers of Heaven over the brutal forces of Gaea was complete. From this point on, Zeus and his brothers and sisters ruled, undisputed lords of all. The new world was now ready for the creation of mankind....