And glittering stars, and spacious heaven above;
How they grasped the crown and shared the glory,
And how at first they held the many-valed Olympus.
These [truths], ye Muses, tell me of, saith he,
From first, and next which of them first arose.
Chaos, no doubt, the very first, arose; but next
Wide-stretching Earth, ever the throne secure of all
Immortals, who hold the peaks of white Olympus;
And breezy Tartarus in wide earth's recess;
And Love, who is most beauteous of the gods immortal,
Chasing care away from all the gods and men,
Quells in breasts the mind and counsel sage.
But Erebus from Chaos and gloomy Night arose;
And, in turn, from Night both Air and Day were born;
But primal Earth, equal to self in sooth begot
The stormy sky to veil it round on every side,
Ever to be for happy gods a throne secure.
And forth she brought the towering hills, the pleasant haunts
Of nymphs who dwell throughout the woody heights.
And also barren Sea begat the surge-tossed
Flood, apart from luscious Love; but next
Embracing Heaven, she Ocean bred with eddies deep,
And Cæus, and Crius, and Hyperion, and Iapetus,
And Thia, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosyne,
And gold-crowned Phoebe, and comely Tethys.
But after these was born last[1] the wily Cronus,
Fiercest of sons; but he abhorred his blooming sire,
And in turn the Cyclops bred, who owned a savage breast."
And all the rest of the giants from Cronus, Hesiod enumerates, and somewhere afterwards that Jupiter was born of Khea. All these, then, made the foregoing statements in their doctrine regarding both the nature and generation of the universe. But all, sinking below what is divine, busied themselves concerning the substance of existing things,[2] being
- ↑ Or "youngest," or "most vigorous." This is Hesiod's word, which signifies literally, "fittest for bearing arms" (for service, as we say).
- ↑ "The majority of those who first formed systems of philosophy, con-
is pointed out by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. The Stagyrite detects in the Hesiodic cosmogony, in the principle of "love," the dawn of a recognition of the necessity of an effficient cause to account for the phenomena of nature. It was Aristotle himself, however, who built up the science of causation; and in this respect humanity owes that extraordinary man a deep debt of gratitude.
