Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies

An Ontological Exploration

Olaf Almqvist

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350221888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie ancienne et classique

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni Theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions – analogism, pantheism, and naturalism – found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.

1

Cosmos and Chaos in Hesiod’s Theogony

Geoffrey Lloyd has stressed that ‘there is no such thing as the cosmological model, the cosmological theory, of the Greeks’.¹ This is undoubtedly true, yet few cosmologies were as influential as Hesiod’s description of the creation of the world and the birth of the gods in his Theogony. Hesiod composed his poetry between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. This was a particularly vibrant period in Greek history and saw the early formation of the Greek city-state and the cultural, artistic and social institutions that were to define Classical Greece. Hesiod was a pivotal part of these cultural transformations. Indeed, not only was his poetry the cornerstone of a good Greek education, according to the historian Herodotus (2.53) Hesiod, alongside Homer, ‘taught the Greeks the descent of the gods, and gave the gods their names, and determined their spheres and functions, and described their outward forms’.² Few philosophers and poets escaped his influence and over a thousand years after the Theogony, Hesiod’s narrative remained the standard version of the Greek creation myth (Apollodorus 1.1–4). His influence even extended beyond Greece and when the Roman poet Ovid described the world’s creation in his Metamorphosis, it was largely to Hesiod that he turned for inspiration. In this respect, if any single cosmology can be called the cosmology of the Greeks, it was not that of Plato or Aristotle, but that of the poet Hesiod.

Despite Hesiod’s fame and influence, the little we know about him comes from his own words and even this information is open to doubt.³ Hesiod describes himself as a shepherd from Boeotia (Theog. 22–23) who has a brother called Perses (WD 27–41). At some stage Hesiod won a prize for his poetry in Chalkis (WD 651–9). This may well have been awarded for the Theogony, a poem that Hesiod tells us was directly inspired by the Muses while tending his flocks on the foot of Mount Helicon. In Hesiod’s words, the goddesses

ἐνέπνευσαν δέ μοι αὐδὴν

θέσπιν, ἵνα κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα,

καί μ᾽ ἐκέλονθ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων,

σφᾶς δ᾽ αὐτὰς πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον αἰὲν ἀείδειν.

breathed a divine voice into me, so that I might glorify what will be and what was before, and they commanded me to sing of the race of the blessed ones who always are, but always to sing of themselves first and last.

Theog. 31–34⁴

Yet Hesiod’s poem is more than a description of the gods – it is a discussion about the origins of the world itself, of Gaia (Earth) and Ouranos (Sky), and of humanity. Because of this, Hesiod’s poem is often considered to be the first Greek cosmology. Indeed, for scholars such as Cornford and Clay, Hesiod’s poem even anticipates the ordered worlds of the first Presocratics, the Milesian monists.⁵ In this chapter, I will argue against this view and propose that while Hesiod is indeed writing a cosmological poem, his notion of cosmos is worlds away from that of the Milesians. Far from the neatly unfolding monism of later philosophers, Hesiod’s poem describes a world of conflicts, multiple genealogies and wayward kings, a fractured and volatile cosmos in need of imposed order. And nowhere is this clearer than in his description of the first-born god, Chaos.

Etymologizing Chaos and the search for order

After a lengthy description of his encounter with the Muses, Hesiod finally begins the cosmological section of his poem and makes the staggering revelation that (Theog. 116–20)

ἦ τοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα

Γαῖ᾽εὐρύστερνος, πάντων ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ

ἀθανάτων, οἳ ἔχουσι κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου,

Τάρταράτ᾽ἠερόεντα μυχῷ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης,

ἠδ᾽ Ἔρος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι

In truth, first of all Chaos came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, the ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’ peak and murky Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth, and Eros, who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods.⁶

Gaia (Earth) and Eros (Love) are well-known gods intimately associated with creation, yet who or what precisely is Chaos and what is he doing at the beginning of the cosmos? Although later Greeks were often as puzzled about Chaos’ presence as we are today, this did not stop them from talking about it. Indeed, Plutarch notes that Hesiod’s Chaos was an extremely popular topic of discussion (Plu. Mor. 678 F).⁷ More than an object of conversation, for many poets Chaos was an essential ingredient in a good theogony.⁸ Yet despite its popularity, Chaos remains a very puzzling way to begin a cosmology. Indeed, the very word ‘cosmology’ is a near antonym. In Classical Greek, κόσμος is synonymous with order and a cosmology is an account of such order. As Socrates explains in Plato’s Gorgias (507e–8d), wise men say that

οὐρανὸν καὶ γῆν καὶ θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους τὴν κοινωνίαν συνέχειν καὶ φιλίαν καὶ κοσμιότητα καὶ σωφροσύνην καὶ δικαιότητα, καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦτο διὰ ταῦτα κόσμον καλοῦσιν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, οὐκ ἀκοσμίαν οὐδὲ ἀκολασίαν.

heaven and earth and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness, temperance, and justice; and that is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of order (κόσμος), not of disorder or dissoluteness.⁹

As Socrates stresses in this passage, a good cosmology consists of communion, friendship and above all else, order. Hesiod, however, by giving pre-eminence to Chaos, seems to entirely miss the point. This is not really surprising. When Hesiod wrote the Theogony the idea of a cosmology had yet to be invented. He was familiar with the word κόσμος but rather than understand it as world order, he uses it in the sense of adornment or decoration. For example, the word is used to describe the garlands and crown given to Pandora by the goddess Athena (Theog. 587).¹⁰ However, if Hesiod had little notion that the world was a κόσμος, scholars are as quick to tell us that Chaos has no relation with its English homonym. Rather based on the root χα ‘gap’ and χάσκειν or χαίνειν ‘to gap’, it refers to yawning or gapping and in no way contains ‘the idea of confusion or disorder’.¹¹ Although an etymological connection between Χάος and χάσκειν is plausible, we should remember that etymologies reveal linguistic histories rather than common understandings and these two aspects seem to have diverged widely. The cosmological poet Pherecydes of Syros appears to have equated Chaos with primal water, perhaps based on the verb χεῖσθαι to flow (DK 7 B 1). While this is often dismissed as a later addition by the Stoics, who similarly understood the word through the related verb χείομαι (SVF 1.103), I see no reason why the view cannot have been held by both Pherecydes and the Stoics. Wordplay is very common in early Greek poetry and the imagery of a watery beginning is well established in Mediterranean cosmologies.¹² Even Homer calls Okeanos and Tethys the father and mother of all the gods (Il. 14.200–4). If Pherecydes’ Chaos resided in the water, for others it was found in the underworld. Aristophanes in Birds (698) describes Chaos as the winged partner of Eros. While Chaos’ wings may simply complement the play’s feathered protagonists, when Chaos is said to mingle with Eros in a recess of Tartarus, it is unlikely that the audience envisioned a gap. Nor is the god happy to remain in a single location and elsewhere in Birds, Chaos appears in the sky (192). Aristotle differs again, interpreting Chaos in relation to making space, this time perhaps etymologizing it according to the verb χωρέω (Phys. 209a).¹³ Moving effortlessly between flowing, gapping and making space, Chaos also at times appears to be exactly what so many scholars distance it from: disorder. Pseudo Lucian (Amores 32) describes:

σὺ γὰρ ἐξ ἀφανοῦς καὶ κεχυμένης ἀμορφίας τὸ πᾶν ἐμόρφωσας. ὥσπερ οὖν ὅλου κόσμου τάφον τινὰ κοινὸν ἀφελὼν τὸ περικεί μενον χάος ἐκεῖνο μὲν ἐς ἐσχάτους Ταρτάρου μυχοὺς ἐφυγάδευσας …

For you [Eros] gave shape to everything out of dark confused shapelessness. As though you had removed a tomb burying the whole universe alike, you banished that Chaos which enveloped it to the recesses of farthest Tartarus…¹⁴

This too was the Chaos opted for in Latin by Ovid. In his Metamorphosis, Ovid (1.7–9) describes it as

rudis indigestaque moles

nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem

non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum.

A shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk and nothing more, with the discordant seeds of disconnected elements all heaped together in anarchic disarray.¹⁵

This understanding also appears in some Egyptian translations and when the Gnostics searched for an equivalent for the Egyptian cosmological term Nun (the primal waters of disorder) they settled on Χάος.¹⁶

While we may rightly claim that these authors – some of them quite late – simply misunderstood the word, it is unclear why Hesiod was not equally susceptible to such a misunderstanding. Indeed, at the very least the widespread ancient confusion serves as a word of caution ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Myth, Philosophy and Ontological Pluralism
• 1 Cosmos and Chaos in Hesiod’s Theogony
• 2 Beyond the Golden Age: Sacrifice, Sharing and Affinity in Hesiod’s Mekone
• 3 Orpheus and the Reinvention of the Cosmos
• 4 Dionysus Dismembered
• Conclusion: Protagoras and Greek Naturalism
• Appendix: Some Key Orphic Texts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• General Index
• Copyright