Orphic Theogony—whether from Egypt, India, and Persia, or, as some have thought, from the Mosaic writings—it is lost labour to inquire. He certainly systematised and consolidated the mass of traditions, which came to his hand a more or less garbled and distorted collection of primitive and nearly universal legendary lore. An especial interest must therefore attach to the study of his scheme and method, and it must be enhanced by the position which antiquity has almost unanimously accorded to him, in the history of its earliest poetry and religion.
Hesiod's 'Theogony' consists of three divisions: a cosmogony, or creation of the world, its powers, and its fabric; a theogony proper, recording the history of the dynasties of Cronus and Zeus; and a fragmentary generation of heroes, sprung from the intercourse of mortals with immortals. Hesiod and his contemporaries considered that in their day Jupiter or Zeus was the lord of Olympus; but it was necessary to chronicle the antecedents of his dynasty, and hence the account of the stages and revolutions which had led up to the established order under which Hesiod's generation found itself. And so, after a preface containing amongst other matters the episode of the Muses' visit to the shepherd-poet, at which we glanced in Chapter I., Hesiod proceeds to his proper task, and represents Chaos as primeval, and Earth, Tartarus, and Eros (Love), as coming next into existence:—
Most beauteous of immortals; he at once
Of every god and every mortal man
