Last of all were the gigantic Titans.īut Ouranos hated his own children. Three of their children had 100 hands and 50 eyes, and three were born with one eye each – Cyclops. The only difference is that the Greek monsters had more human qualities.

It’s just that their monsters were often a bit more human – it wasn’t a world populated by giant lizards or mammoths. We know that the world was once filled with monsters. Here we have a connection with the Greeks. Gaea and Ouranos had a series of monstrous children. That’s why Mother Earth also goes by the name of Gaea, while Ouranos is commonly used for Father Heaven. You might also have spotted that in these myths there is no difference between an object and a personified agent – sure, Earth and Heaven are places, but they also operate as individuals. The Greek poet Hesiod simply wrote that Earth came to be, and afterward gave birth to starry Heaven, equal to herself. The same was true for the creation of the Earth itself. No god was an architect or initiator things just happened.

What’s really interesting about the Greek creation myth is there was no attempt to explain the rationale. Love then created two new entities of its own, Light and Day. Night then laid an egg in Erebus and from the darkness within Night and the death within Erebus, Love was born, bringing order to the chaotic void. Two children emerged from this oblivion, by the names of Night and Erebus, in which darkness and death were each said to reside.

Then, though no one quite knew how, something happened. There was just nothingness, the void that was Chaos. In the beginning – as far as the Ancient Greeks were concerned – there was nothing.

Edith hamilton greek mythology book