Greco-Roman Tradition
For Hesiod and the early Greek Olympian myth (8th century BC), Chaos was the first of the primordial deities, followed by Earth (Gaia), Tartarus and Eros (Love). From Chaos came Erebus and Nyx.
Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus.
Ovid (1st century BC), in his Metamorphoses, described Chaos as "a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap."
Fifth-century Orphic cosmogony had a "Womb of Darkness" in which the Wind lay a Cosmic Egg whence Eros was hatched, who set the universe in motion.
Read more about this topic: Chaos (cosmogony)
Famous quotes containing the word tradition:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)