Chaos: The First Four

On Mount Helicon, nine goddesses stop beside a shepherd named Hesiod, insult him, hand him a laurel staff, and command him to sing how everything began. His answer opens the poem: first came Chaos — not disorder, but the yawning gap — then wide-bosomed Gaia the Earth, dim Tartarus the pit beneath her, and Eros, desire itself. From Chaos come darkness and Night; from Night, astonishingly, come their opposites, bright air and Day. The stage of the universe is set, and the force that will drive every scene on it is already loose.