THEOGONY. - From θεός "god" and γονεία "generation," it is, in the mythology of the various peoples, the genealogy of the gods who presided over the organization of the world.
It can be considered as the completion of cosmogony (v.) because, while the latter describes the elements from which the life of the cosmos sprang (sky, earth, water, etc.), the theogony gives them name and figure and presents them in a descending line as the orderers and regulators of the universe that emerged, thanks to them, from the primordial chaos. And this happens not only because the birth of the gods follows the formation of the cosmos, but also because the narrative tends to establish an order in the divine world and to arrange the gods known to the group that venerates them in that hierarchical succession which corresponds to the historical development of the group itself and to its ethico-social progress; in such a way that the more ancient gods, or those not originally pertaining to the group, come first in the genealogical succession, but are dethroned to the advantage of the god of the victorious group.
Already Herodotus (II, 50-53) had recognized in Hesiod (v.) the merit of having genealogically ordered the divine world, which in the pre-Greek ("Pelasgian") era was unnamed, and then was freely described by Homer with the creative efficacy of poetry. According to Homer (Iliad, XIV, 201-203; 246; 302) the father of gods and men is Oceanus, while Tethys is their mother; he knows of Cronus relegated beneath the earth and father of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades (ibid., XV, 187-96) and of the partition among them of the three domains of the cosmos: sky, sea and underworld.
Hesiod, in organizing the world of the Greek gods, intends to coordinate into a system of national scope the various traditions, often confused and incoherent, so as to offer, through this effort of condensation of his, a Hellenic pantheon that expresses the fusion of the various political, commercial and other elements by then in operation in the Greek country. He therefore arranges the various divinities according to a rigid plan of descent through four ages, each of which is a conquest over the preceding one, and where account is taken of the bonds that link the creator gods to their creation.
The Theogony of Hesiod opens with the cosmogony. From the primordial chaos (=void) come Gaia (=Earth) and Eros (=the fertile vital principle). From chaos is born a first pair, Erebus and Night, and from this its opposite, Aether and Day. From Gaia came Uranus (Sky), the mountains and the sea. The arrangement of these elements of the world, that is, the theogony properly so called, is made by the pairs that succeed one another in the ordering of the cosmos.
From Uranus is born Oceanus, the river that encircles the earth, and then the mythical figures of the Titans, Cyclopes and Giants. Uranus shuts the Titans in the bowels of the earth, but Cronus, the last of the Titans, at the instigation of his mother Gaia, punishes Uranus by cutting off his genitals, and from these, fallen into the sea, are born Aphrodite, and then the Nymphs and the Erinyes. Thus the reign of Uranus is ended and in his place succeeds Cronus, who mates with Rhea and begets Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus. But he too, like his father, distrusts his children and swallows them as soon as they come to light, for which reason Rhea, grieving, hides Zeus in Crete, making Cronus swallow a stone in his place. Thus what Cronus feared comes to pass: Zeus dethrones him, makes him vomit up all the children he had swallowed, including the stone (placed at Delphi), and installs himself in his place. In this manner the reign of Zeus begins. But his power is immediately threatened by the Titans, who rise in frenzied struggle against him. He, however, succeeds in subduing them and, having broken them, shuts them in the subterranean Tartarus, which is as far from the earth as the earth is from the sky. And that is not all, because Typhoeus, son of Gaia and Tartarus, roused by his mother in defense of her other defeated children, rises in his turn to contend with Zeus, but he too is vanquished, and Zeus can thus establish his dominion over the definitively ordered world. From Zeus begins, through matings with immortals and mortals, the generation of the heroes, and the theogony thus comes to be linked with the mythical traditions of the heroic age.
Orphism too had its own cosmogony and theogony, of a character not merely naturalistic like that of Hesiod, but philosophical-moral, in conformity with Orphic thought. Its elements have been handed down to us by the Neoplatonist Damascius of the 6th century A.D. (De princ., 124 b), who drew them from the lost Pentenuschos of Pherecydes of Syros. Three are the primordial essences: Zas (from Ζῆν=to live), which is the principle of life, Chronos the principle of time, Chthionis the principle of matter. After the victorious struggle of Chronos against Ophioneus, the serpent that is the principle of chaos, the ordering of the world takes place. Also to Damascius (De princ., 123) we owe another version, called that of the (Orphic) rhapsodies, which posits as primordial principles Chronos, Aether, Chaos. Chronos fashions from the womb of Aether an egg, from which emerges Phanes, the "Brilliant One." Phanes, mating with Night, produces the pair earth-sky, from which is born Cronus, who begets Zeus, who in his turn begets, from Persephone, Dionysus. With Dionysus, who in Orphism receives the name Zagreus, the divine world is reconnected to the human.
Egypt developed in its principal political centers, thanks to the development of the priestly schools, various cosmogonies: the theogony of Memphis in Lower Egypt, whose principal producing god is Ptah, whose creative power is exercised thanks to his mighty word; that of Hermopolis in Upper Egypt, whose producing god Thoth, identified with Hermes, through an ogdoad of local gods, by means of an egg created by this ogdoad, produces the sun god; and finally that of Heliopolis. According to this cosmogony there exists in the beginning the primordial chaos constituted by water and Atum (that is, Ra), who begets a first pair: Shu (air) and Tefnut (rain); and a second: Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). From Geb and Nut — the former depicted lying on the earth, the latter raised on high by Shu and resting on the ground with only the tips of her hands and feet — are born two pairs of children: Seth and Nephthys, Osiris and Isis, the latter two being the ancestors of the human race. This is the Heliopolitan ennead, on which other local cosmogonies were modeled with elements taken from popular imagination.
The Babylonian cosmology as well, contained in the Poem of Creation (Enuma Elish), describes the ordering action of the cosmos performed by Marduk, the solar god, at the beginning of things, when there was neither sky nor earth, but only the two primordial principles Apsû, the ocean, and Tiâmat, the sea, which mingled their fresh and salt waters in a chaos fertile with manifold life. From the first pair are born Lahmu and Lahamu, from the second Anšar and Kišar, and from the third the supreme triad Anu, Bel, Ea. A struggle immediately arises between this triad, which represents order, and Tiâmat at the head of the other elements, which represent disorder. Marduk accepts the challenge, vanquishes the monster Tiâmat and divides her body into two parts, with one of which he forms the vault of the sky, regulates the movements, thereby establishing the zodiac and the calendar.
The Phoenicians also left a cosmogony attributed to the name of Sanchuniathon, whose most important version is due to Philo of Byblos; it reveals an Egyptian origin and a Hesiodic influence, as can be seen from the myth of the Uranids, but it appears to have been elaborated in a Semitic milieu. In the beginning there was an aeriform chaos, from which was born Mot, the mud (analogous to Mût and to the fertilizing silt of the Nile), and from the mud, through spontaneous generation, all beings and animals: first those devoid of sensation, then those endowed with intelligence called Zophesamin "contemplators of the heavens," undoubtedly human beings, who, having been asleep at first, were then awakened by the thunder caused by the separation of the elements. Once divided, these elements tend to seek one another, to couple and to generate life on earth and in the sea. The principal pair consists of Eliun and the "Lady" of Byblos. From these come Ouranos (= Anu) and Ge.
The Scandinavian mythology contained in the Edda possesses a theogony. From the original motion there is formed in the north the land of ice (Niflheim) and in the south that of fire (Muspell-sheim). From the liquefied ice are born Ymir and the cow Adumbla and Buri, progenitor of Odin, Vili and Ve. These, having killed Ymir, create the earth and the sea from his body. The first humans are born from two trees that grew on the shore of the sea.
The universe is divided into three parts: Asgard, where the gods dwell and where the castle Walhall is located; Midgard, where humans dwell, and Hel, abode of the dead; a world that will perish (twilight of the gods) to make way for a new and happy generation.