Source Verification: Gaia
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
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.
Source: 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.
Source: 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.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 116-138
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.
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 116-138
- Hesiod, Theogony 154-182
- Apollodorus, Library 1.1.1-1.1.4