CHAOS. — The notion of chaos is found in the cosmogonic process (v. COSMOGONY) of both civilized and primitive peoples, and it is intended to represent the elementary principle from which things have derived or the pre-existing condition before the creation of the universe.
The idea of chaos appears among certain civilizations of the ancient Near East. For them, the common characteristic of chaos is its watery nature. This is attested by the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic, according to which the primordial chaos is formed by the divine triad Apsû-Tiāmat-Mummu (the abyss, the universal ocean, and the roaring of waters); the Egyptian papyri containing the cosmogonic tradition later systematized by the priests of Heliopolis in the story of the procreation of the divine Ennead emerging from primordial chaos (Nūn); the Phoenician cosmogony transmitted to us in the version by Philo of Byblos (in Eusebius, Praep. evang., I, 18, 1), which makes the universe arise from a watery chaos that, in union with the "spirit" (πνεῦμα), produces the "desire" (πόθος); and finally, Gen. 1:1-2, which knows of chaos but considers it, in a quite different manner, as the condition—along with the darkness "upon the face of the abyss" and the waters "upon which the Spirit of God moved"—of the universe before light existed. It is worth noting that in these, as in other cosmogonies, chaos does not represent the "other" but the beginning of the universe, from which creation then proceeds in different ways (in Babylon, it evolves into polytheism, replaced by the Phoenicians with a development of the materialistic aspect, while in Genesis the sole agent is the One Creator): the idea of chaos likely derives from similar experiences and psychological needs. On the one hand, the observation that at birth the human being is immersed in a fluid matter, as in putrefaction it dissolves after death; on the other, in connection with the idea of the struggle of natural phenomena (spring against winter, sun against darkness, etc.), one sees, quite plausibly, in the cosmogonic narrative—as a counterpoint to the wondrous order of the cosmos—a formless, dark, and monstrous principle (ἀρχή) upon which the luminous order ultimately triumphs. Now the most immediate and spontaneous representation of this primordial state is precisely that of stormy waters.
“Ἦ τοι μὲν πρῶτά γε χάος γένετ’...” Thus Hesiod (Theog., 116) introduces into the Greek world the word chaos as an indication of a cosmic principle. After chaos came earth, Tartarus, and Eros. From chaos were born Erebus and Night.
For Hesiod, chaos is the empty space antecedent to all things. Behind the mythological fiction, however, there was already a philosophical meaning, which the ancients themselves sought first of all in the etymology of the word. Thus Plato and Aristotle connected the word χάος with the root χα- of χάσκω, χάσμα, χάσμα, with the meaning of "to open, to gape," which leads precisely to a spatial concept: chaos is that which contains within itself all of nature. "In it, a principle ever-existing, impersonal and indeterminate, are united the exigencies of indestructibility and of the original unity of universal being." A unity that asserts itself—not otherwise than in the ancient civilizations of the Near East—in the cosmogonic process, which is the passage from the indistinct and chaotic primordial unity to the distinction of beings through the action of the cosmos. "But beyond this function as the source of all things, the chaos of Hesiod, as the container of all things, fulfills that of the limit of the totality of the cosmos (πάντον πέρι γαῖα καὶ πείρατ’ ἔχουσα, Theog., 738), which it continues to envelop even after the formation of the cosmos."
After Hesiod, chaos appears in a theogony attributed to Musaeus, of which only scant testimonies remain, and which places Tartarus and Night as the first products of chaos (in Philodemus, p. 61 [ed. Gomperz]); and in the theogony of Arasilaus (in Damascius, De princip., 124 [ed. Kopp]), which—differing little from Hesiod—makes Erebus and Night proceed from II. In the Orphic theogony, of which we possess several fragments, chaos—the dark and immense abyss—is created after the first being, Chronos.
In later ages, the purely mythical aspect of Hesiod’s theogony is entirely neglected in favor of whatever natural philosophy it may contain. Thus the Stoics, interpreting χάος in connection with χέω and χεῖμα, arrived rather at a material conception, explaining it as primordial water and thus effecting a singular return to the ancient conceptions of the Near East (Schol. Apollonius Rhodius, 1, 498; Virgil, Ecl. 6, 51; Plutarch, Aqua an ign. util., 1). Nor will the Roman interpretation differ much from this, understanding chaos as primordial matter (Ovid, Met., 1, 7 ff.; 2, 299; Seneca, Thyest., 834; Lucan, 5, 634; 6, 696; Statius, Theb., 3, 484; Martianus Capella, 9, 912; Lactantius, Div. inst., 1, 5; 2, 9 ff.).
Outside of myths or pseudo-scientific cosmogonic explanations, the word chaos is used, especially in poetry, in many other senses: to indicate the space filled with darkness of the underworld (Ovid, Fast., 4, 600; Met., 10, 30; 14, 404; Virgil, Aen., 6, 265; Lucan, 6, 617; Valerius Flaccus, 2, 86; 7, 402; Statius, Silv., 3, 3, 210; 5, 1, 206; Plutarch, De primo frig., 17); a personal being—a divinity of the underworld (Virgil, Aen., 4, 510; Seneca, Med., 9, 744); and, in general, the measureless darkness (Apollonius Rhod., 4, 1695; Statius, Silv., 3, 2, 92; Prudentius, Cath., 5, 3).