The Greek gods were created by man to explain the world around them. The religion of the ancient Greeks did not have a single written source, such as, for example, the Scriptures that make up the Bible, or like the Koran. In addition, the ancient Greeks did not believe in the absolute truth practiced in modern denominations such as Christianity and Judaism.
The ancient Greek gods often took on a human form and lived in a society like a human. They were subject to ordinary emotions and too often interfered in people's lives for their own benefit. The essential difference between gods and humans was only that the former were immortal. Each Greek city-state had its own main god or pantheon of gods, and depending on the location of the city-state, the characteristics of the gods could vary widely.
It is difficult to trace the lineage of the ancient Greek gods, since there are several myths about the creation of the world. But, as a rule, it is customary to give the laurel branch of recognition in this matter to the Greek poet Hesiod, who lived in the eighth century BC and wrote Theogony - the genealogical epic "Birth of the Gods", which explains their origin.
Greek gods as a creation myth
According to Hesiod, the process of the creation of the world and the emergence of the gods was as follows: from the unknown universe, out of nowhere the god Chaos (emptiness) appeared, which became the basis of everything - the basis of creation, birth, creativity. Chaos was so infinitely powerful, magnificent and fruitful that it plucked out of itself several creatures - its children: Gaia - who became the goddess of the earth and the basis of all that exists, Tartarus - the god of the abyss and nothingness, the twins Eros and Anteros - the god of love and carnal desire and the god of denial love, Erebus - the god of darkness and Nyx - the goddess of the night.
Gaia was so attractive and beautiful that the insidious Eros, the only one who did not have his own children in the highest divine pantheon, did everything to awaken the father's desire for his own daughter.
From the union of Chaos and Gaia, the god of heaven Uranus was born, personifying the masculine principle, and then a whole host of titans: three hundred-handed giant monsters with fifty heads and three one-eyed cyclops monsters, all of them Uranus forever exiled to his uncle Tartarus, and only the next six sons and the same number of daughters remained with Gaia: Ocean, Coy, Crius, Hyperion, Iapet, Chronos, Fairy, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Tefei and Phoebe.
The most cunning of them was Chronos (god of time). It was his mother Gaea who persuaded him to avenge the children plunged into oblivion. It was he who overthrew his father from the pedestal and became the ruler of the world, and then he himself, having married his sister Rhea, became the father of many children, whom he devoured one after another.
Only one of the newborn inconsolable Rhea was tricked into saving - it was Zeus. And it was he who subsequently took revenge on his father, freeing the brothers and sisters swallowed by Chronos, but thereby unleashing one of the first and terrible wars in heaven and on earth - the war with the titans at Mount Olympus. In this war, the sky collapsed to the ground and she trembled and groaned with horror and grief, the ocean overflowed its shores and threatened to flood everything in its path, the mountains collapsed, and even Olympus almost opened up and overturned into Tartarus.
The era of the victorious gods
It was the children of Zeus who became his saviors, lovers, enemies and comforters. They helped him defeat the titans and establish power on Olympus, dividing spheres of influence between numerous relatives: so Zeus's brother Poseidon began to rule the seas, and Hades began to rule the underworld (the world of the dead).
Since earlier the children of Chaos bred and multiplied tirelessly, then, in the end, each of them found their own business. His children Nyx (darkness) and Erebus (night) had many children, including: Ether (light) and Hemera (day), Somn (death) and Pestilence (sleep, doom), Eris (strife) and Nemesis (revenge), Geras (old age), Charon (ferryman in the kingdom of the dead), three furies - Alecto, Tisiphon, Megera - and several nymphs of the Hesperides.
They, and the numerous children of Zeus from three wives, seven official mistresses, darkness, dark lovers, and began to rule the world. Since there were many of them - that is, a lot - and they all had, to put it mildly, a difficult disposition, wars and strife between them did not subside, falling from time to time on mortals - people. From whom, by the way, the gods also gave birth to children - demigods, who performed their feats, enjoying life, falling in love and fighting for love, glory, and simply because they could not help but fight.
Creating their myths, marrying, breeding and sending the most passionate hero-gods to Hades, the ancient Greeks thereby created an integral divine family, where everyone was relatives and did not tolerate "strangers" - but only on the ancestral land of the Hellenes. Conquering other territories, to the colonial lands, the Greeks willingly introduced new local gods to the divine pantheon, connecting them with the Olympians.
