These deities represented the fundamental forces and physical foundations of the world and were generally not actively worshipped, as they, for the most part, were not given human characteristics; they were instead personifications of places or abstract concepts.
The Titans Cronus and Rhea then gave birth to the generation of the Olympians: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera and Demeter.
Hesiod's Theogony, (c. 700 BC) which could be considered the "standard" creation myth of Greek mythology,[1] tells the story of the genesis of the gods.
The story of Uranus' castration at the hands of Cronus due to Gaia's involvement is seen as the explanation for why the Sky and Earth are separated.
In the spots where his blood hit the earth, monsters and creatures grew including the Furies, the Giants, and the Melian nymphs.
Gaia is the mother to the twelve Titans; Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus.
Tartarus is seen as a prison, but is also where Day, Night, Sleep, and Death dwell, and also imagined as a great gorge that is a distinct part of the underworld.
"[6] In some variations of Hesiod's Theogony, Nyx (Night) is told as having black wings; and in one tale she laid an egg in Erebus from which Eros sprang out.
[12] One version of Hesiod's tale tells that Night shares her house with Day in Tartarus, but that the two are never home at the same time.
[20] Nyx's daughter Eris went on to have many children of her own who were also personifications of abstract concepts:[21] The ancient Greeks entertained different versions of the origin of primordial deities.
[22] The Iliad, an epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War (an oral tradition of c. 700–600 BC), states that Oceanus (and possibly Tethys, too) is the parent of all the deities.
[22] Likewise, Vernant argues that the Olympic pantheon is a "system of classification, a particular way of ordering and conceptualizing the universe by distinguishing within it various types of powers and forces.
Earth (light, day, waking, life) is the natural opposite of Tartarus (darkness, night, sleep, death).