Chaos
conceptThe first thing to exist — a vast, formless void from which all of creation emerged. Chaos was not disorder but the gap, the yawning emptiness that preceded everything.
The Myth
In Hesiod's Theogony, the oldest surviving account of Greek creation, Chaos was the first thing to come into being. It was not the modern sense of "chaos" as disorder, but rather a gaping void — the primordial emptiness from which all things emerged.
From Chaos came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the Abyss), Eros (Love), Erebus (Darkness), and Nyx (Night). These primordial forces then generated the world as the Greeks knew it. Gaia produced Ouranos (Sky), and from their union came the Titans, who in turn produced the Olympian gods.
The concept of Chaos as the origin point was profoundly influential. It represented the Greek understanding that the ordered cosmos (kosmos itself means "order") emerged from formlessness — that creation was an act of imposing structure on void. This idea influenced philosophers from the pre-Socratics through Plato and beyond.
Parents
Self-generated (first being)
Children
Gaia, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus, Nyx
Symbols
Fun Fact
The word "gas" was coined in the 17th century by chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont, directly inspired by the Greek word "chaos."
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth: