ony lengthened it still further.[1] First came Chronos, or Time, as a person, after him JEther and Chaos, out of whom Chronos produced the vast mundane egg. Hence emerged in process of time the first-born god Phanês, or Mêtis, or Hêrikapæos, a person of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos, or mundane system, and who carried within him the seed of the gods. He gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat Uranos and Gæa; as well as to Hêlios and Selêne.[2]
From Uranos and Gæa sprang the three Mœræ, or Fates, the three Centimanes and the three Cyclôpes: these latter were cast by Uranos into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would rob him of his dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of her sons, Gæa produced of herself the fourteen Titans, seven male and seven female: the former were Kœos, Krios, Phorkys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperiôn and lapetos; the latter were Themis, Têthys, Mnêmosynê, Theia, Dionê, Phœbê and Rhea.[3] They received the name of Titans because they avenged upon Uranos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, headed by Kronos the most powerful of them all, conspiring against Uranos, castrated and dethroned him: Oceanus alone stood aloof and took no part in the aggression. Kronos assumed the government and fixed his seat on Olympos; while Oceanus remained apart, master of his own divine stream.[4] The reign
- ↑ See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann's edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to understand and piece together, even with the aid of Lobeck's elaborate examination (Aglaophamus, p. 470, etc.). The passages are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the later Platonists, who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own philosophical ideas.
The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief summary of the chief points of the theogony.
- ↑ See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472-476, 490-500, Μῆτιν σπέρμα φέροντα θεῶν κλυτὸν Ἠρικεπαῖον; again, Θῆλυς καὶ γενέτωρ κρατερὸς θεὸς Ἠρικέπαιος. Compare Lactant. iv. 8, 4: Snidas, v. Φάνης: Athenagoras, xx. 296: Diodor. i. 27.
This egg figures, as might be expected, in the cosmogony set forth by the Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an egg, oul of which steps the golden Erôs, from Erôs and Chaos spring the race of birds.
- ↑ Lobeck, Ag. p. 504. Athenagor. xv. p. 64
- ↑ Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timaeus, p. 41. In the Διονύσου τρόφοι of Æschylus, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were said to have been
