Page:Maori Religion and Mythology.djvu/20

6 Maori did,—namely, that the mysterious power of Generation was the operative cause of all things.

Hesiod in his Theogony relates that the first parent of all was Chaos.

From Chaos sprung Gaia (= Earth), Tartarus, Eros (= Love), Erebus, a dark son. Night, a dark daughter, and lastly, Day.

From Gaia alone sprung Ouranos (= Heaven), Hills, Groves, and Thalassa (= Sea).

From Heaven and Earth sprung Okeanos (= Ocean), Japetus, Kronos (= Saturn), Titans.

Hesiod also relates how Heaven confined his children in the dark caverns of Earth, and how Kronos avenged himself.

In the "Works and Days" Hesiod gives an account of the formation of the first human female out of Earth, from the union of whom, with Epimetheus, son of the Titan Japetus, sprung the human race.

So far Hesiod's account may be derived from Aryan myths. The latter and greater part, however, of Hesiod's Theogony cannot be accepted as a purely Aryan tradition; for colonists from Egypt and Phœnicia had settled in Greece, at an early period, and had brought with them alien mythical fables which were adopted in a modified form, in addition to the antient family religion of worship of ancestors.

Herodotus asserts that Homer and Hesiod made the Theogony of the Greeks; and to a certain extent this may be true, for the bard was then invested with a kind of sacredness, and what he sung was held to be the