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Mythographia

    Gaia

    Gaia is the earth in Greek myth, and in Hesiod she is the first thing to take shape after Chaos. She produces Ouranos the sky without a partner, then bears the Titans to him. When he imprisons her children she makes the sickle that ends his rule, which sets the whole succession of divine kings in motion.

    Bronze medallion portrait of Gaia crowned in leaves, hair merging into roots, holding a curved sickle.
    Illustration, not a source

    Gaia, primordial earth goddess of Greek myth

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    By Reviewed by Mythographia Editorial Team

    Core Myth

    Hesiod's Theogony gives Gaia no parent. She comes into being after Chaos, alongside Tartaros and Eros, and she is described as the sure footing of everything that exists. She then produces Ouranos, the starry sky, by herself and equal to herself, so that he might cover her completely; she does the same for the hills and for Pontos, the sea. Only afterwards does she lie with Ouranos and bear the twelve Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. Ouranos hides each child inside her as it is born and takes pleasure in doing so, and Gaia, crowded and groaning, devises a counter-stroke. She makes a sickle of grey adamant and asks her children which of them will punish their father. Only Kronos, the youngest, agrees. Gaia hides him in ambush and puts the sickle in his hand, and when Ouranos comes down over the earth Kronos castrates him. From the blood that falls on Gaia come the Erinyes, the Giants and the ash-tree nymphs; from the severed parts thrown into the sea comes Aphrodite. Gaia does not stop advising after that. She and Ouranos warn Kronos that his own child will overcome him, which is why he swallows his children; she then helps Rhea hide the infant Zeus and gives Kronos a stone to swallow in his place. Later she tells Zeus to release the Hundred-Handers to win the war against the Titans. Her last act in the Theogony is to bear Typhon to Tartaros, the final challenge to Zeus's rule.

    Who were Gaia's children?

    Hesiod separates them. Gaia produces Ouranos, the mountains and Pontos on her own, without a partner. With Ouranos she bears the twelve Titans, among them Kronos and Rhea, then the three Cyclopes and the three Hundred-Handers. Later, from the blood of the castrated Ouranos falling on her, come the Erinyes, the Giants and the Meliae; and last, with Tartaros, she bears Typhon. Apollodorus follows the same order but adds and renames figures throughout.

    Hesiod, Theogony 116-138

    Why did Gaia turn against Ouranos?

    Because he would not let their children be born. In the Theogony, Ouranos hides each child inside Gaia as it comes, and takes pleasure in doing so, while she is stretched and groaning inside. She makes a sickle of grey adamant and asks her children which of them will act; only Kronos agrees. The motive Hesiod gives is not ambition but the physical fact of holding unborn children she cannot release.

    Hesiod, Theogony 154-182

    Is Gaia a goddess or the earth itself?

    Both, and Hesiod does not separate them. She is described as the broad-breasted seat of all things, which is a place, and she also speaks, plots and hands a weapon to her son, which is a person. Greek has no word that forces the choice. Later Athenian cult narrows her towards the second and Roman Tellus towards the first, but the Theogony holds the two together without any sense of a problem.

    Hesiod, Theogony 116-138

    Later Traditions

    Later writers treat Gaia less as an actor and more as a place. In tragedy and in Athenian cult she appears as an oath-witness and a giver of oracles, and the Delphic oracle was said to have been hers before Apollo took it. The Homeric Hymn to Earth calls her the mother of all and asks her for a good harvest rather than telling any story about her. Roman writers identify her with Tellus or Terra, who is a goddess of the cultivated land rather than a cosmic first principle, which is a narrower figure than Hesiod's.

    Lineage

    See the full family tree

    15 recorded relations, each with the ancient line behind it.

    Children

    Also Connected

    3 recorded connections, each with the ancient line behind it.

    Connected

    • Chaos Hesiod, Theogony 116-117

      Hesiod's Theogony opens its genealogy of the gods by naming Chaos as the first being to exist, with Gaia coming into being immediately after.

    • Erebus Hesiod, Theogony 116-125

      Erebus and Gaia both number among the first beings named in Hesiod's opening account of the cosmos, though Hesiod never links them beyond that shared moment.

    • Eros Hesiod, Theogony 116-122

      Eros and Gaia are both named among the first beings to exist, in the same opening passage of Hesiod's Theogony.

    Where Accounts Differ

    • origin of Gaia
    • ownership of Delphi
    • Hesiod gives Gaia no parent at all; Apollodorus and later mythographers vary in whether anything precedes her.
    • Whether Delphi belonged to Gaia before Apollo is asserted by Aeschylus and by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo in different terms, and is not in Hesiod.

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    Mythology

    Related Terms

    Referenced By

    Sources

    Primary sources
    • Hesiod, Theogony 116-138
    • Hesiod, Theogony 154-182
    • Apollodorus, Library 1.1.1-1.1.4