Nyx Erebus
Eros Tartarus Gaia
Depending on the Greek tradition you read, this may change. The Orphic tradition for example has the story of the dancing swan goddess Eurynome and the snake coiling around the Orphic Egg where everything emerges from. Some traditions have Oceanus, the child of Gaia, one of the titans, as the consort of Gaia and therefore the father of the titans themselves. For the sake of simplicity and more of an organized feel to the wonderful chaos and contradictions that is the great expanse of Greek Mythology, we shall focus primarily on Hesiod’s Theogony as our key source of reference for these stories with the occasional intervention here or there by other greek historians and writers.
In this tradition, the world, existence, time, space, and everything in between began with Chaos. Chaos was nothingness and everything, a void often described as a soup of all matter and material that will eventually form into five principal deities: Nyx, Erebus, Eros, Tartarus, and Gaia.
Nyx
Roman Equivalent – Nox
The Goddess of the Night. She is connected with sleep, fear, madness, and death either because she birthed these very concepts or houses them in her abode of darkness. Even though Nyx was not a particularly active goddess in the myths and legends of the Greeks, it was known that she was to be feared. Not even Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods would dare to tangle with her or fall on her bad side.
Here abode is its own separate world connected to ours through the night. Nyx’s consort was Erebus, a Primordial god of darkness born from chaos as well, and together they had several children including:
Thanatos – the embodiment of death
Hypnos – twin brother to Thanatos and the god of sleep
Nemesis – the goddess of revenge and the wrath of the gods. It should be noted that several sources have nemesis not as a child of Nyx but as a…
Erebus
Roman equivalent – Scotus
The god of the infinite darkness.
Erebus is the dark and deep abyss of infinity that no light can reach. This god is not active in the Greek myths but he was the consort of Nyx and together they had several children.
Eros
Roman Equivalent – Cupid
Eros was the original god of love and connectivity throughout the universe. Eros flew around the world with his bow and arrow.
There are not that many myths about this version of Eros. His roman counterpart, Cupid is more popular, especially in modern society. He has also been regarded as a child of Aphrodite and Ares. In some stories, he is even regarded as the child of Nyx and Erebus
One such story and perhaps his most famous story was the courting of Psyche, a beautiful young woman that fell in love with him. Though that story does have several twists in the end, after her death, it was Eros who begged the gods to bring her back to life and ascend her to the status of godhood.
Tartarus
The realm of the deep underworld. It is the deepest layer and the one that houses the most torment and misery for those who inhabit it. This is where the cruelest and most torturous punishments given by the gods are held. Those who greatly offended the gods, such as Sysiphus, Tityos, Ixion, and Tantalus lie. It is in Tartarus that Uranus condemned his first sets of children the cyclops and the Hecatoncherries. Then after the fall of Uranus Cronus kept his siblings there. It was not until Zeus and the Olympians helped free the cyclops and Hecatoncherries to take on the titans in the Titanomachy.
Gaia
Roman Equivalent – Terra
Arguably the most important of the five children of chaos. Gaia is the mother of all and the ancestor to all humanity and most of the gods and natural beings of the earth. She is the earth, she sleeps and rest but has taken on an active role in the great myths.
She birthed the great sky, the old sea, and the first mountains and their springs
She convinced Cronus to act and castrate his father.
She is the mother of titans and the giants that eventually challenge the gods
She gave Zeus and Hera the great apple tree that was then guarded by the Hesperides
She was the mother of many a monster, a supernatural being of the ancient Greek world.
It was Gaia who bore witness to the marriage of Aeneas and dido in the Aeneid
As it was mentioned in the beginning, these five primordial gods are the first beings to emerge from chaos according to Hesiod’s Theogony, there are other myths of creation such as that of orphic traditions, and other lesser-known cults and writings.
The Orphic Traditions
Eurynome was the dancing goddess that emerged from chaos fully formed and alone able to transform into a swan. Soon after her either emerging from chaos as well or was birthed by her was Orphion, the first king of the gods and father of all. Orphion transformed into a snake.
The main symbol of the orphic traditions was that of a serpent coiling around an egg laid by a swan and from this egg all other primordial gods emerged.
This story is of course much more complex than that. Choices were made, gods fell, and Eurynome and Orphion fell into the background of traditions.
Other Gods of Beginnings
Chronos and Aether
Chronos – the original father time. The god we celebrate every year as he reaches old age only to re-emerge as a babe for the New Year. From him, we get words such as Chronology, chronometer, and Chronological. Because he is a god of time he is outside of it, not taking part in the main stories and epic tales of gods and men, and yet people knew he was ever there. However, because of the similarity between the names of this primordial god, Chronos, and the youngest child of Gaia, the Titan King, Cronus, they became more and more associated with one another. This happened so much that many assumed the great Titan was the god of time as well.
Aether – the aether is the ancient sky, the great air that is breathed by the gods themselves, it is an entity that lives outside of the stories and time. She was always there and present. However, in later stories, she is considered a daughter of Nyx and Erebus
Myths Reborn 