(ORDO NEWS) — All gods have their own stories, because humanity could not begin to worship them from its very inception.
Some of the most ancient gods were actually invented by two ancient writers. But they also owe their appearance to many other people.
According to Herodotus, it was the poets Homer and Hesiod, writing in the 8th century BC, who gave the Greeks their gods.
Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC, was himself a Greek from the city of Halicarnassus in what is now Turkey. He was right about Homer and Hesiod, or rather the works attributed to them.
Where did the Greek gods come from
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, together with Hesiod’s Theogony, are the oldest existing works of literature in the Western world. In both of these poems, all the major gods appear as characters with different personalities and abilities.
In his Theogony, which translates to ‘Origin of the Gods’, Hesiod explains exactly how the Greek gods came into existence. The myth of the divine creation of Hesiod is also cosmogony, the history of the origin of nature and the universe.
The first gods were elementals. They were deified physical parts of the universe, but gradually became anthropomorphized, acquiring – at least sometimes – a human form and human qualities and emotions.
Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon and other familiar Olympian gods did not exist at first, but appeared only after the creation of the Earth and Sky, which were also considered gods.
According to Hesiod, the universe first existed as a vast nothingness, empty space, for which the Greek word is ‘Chaos’. From Chaos arose Gaia, who was conceived both as our planet Earth and as a great mother goddess. Other primordial elemental gods will follow.
Eros, the god of desire, also arose from Chaos, and then came Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). Erebus and Nyx together gave birth to Ether (bright sky) and Hemera (Day).
Desiring communication and protection, Gaia herself gave birth to Uranus (Sky), so that he would cover her from all sides. Then other gods appeared, whom we all know – from Zeus to Dionysus.
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