Source Verification: Creation from Chaos

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

How was the world created in Greek mythology?

In Hesiod's Theogony the world is not made but born. Chaos comes first, then Earth, Tartarus and Eros. Chaos alone produces Erebus and Night, and Night bears Aether and Day. Earth bears Heaven, the hills and the sea without a partner, then lies with Heaven and bears the Titans. No single creator shapes the whole. Later accounts, such as Ovid's, do give a maker.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 116-133

Did Zeus create the world in Greek mythology?

No. In Hesiod, Zeus is one of the children Rhea bore to Kronos, so he belongs to the third generation after Earth and Heaven. The gods pressed him to rule only after their struggle with the Titans, and Hesiod says this was by Earth's prompting. Apollodorus likewise makes Sky the first ruler of the whole world. Zeus inherits an ordered cosmos and reigns over it.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 881-885

How was humanity created in Greek mythology?

The Theogony's opening does not make humans. Apollodorus says Prometheus moulded men out of water and earth and gave them fire, hidden from Zeus in a fennel stalk. Hesiod's Works and Days has the Olympians make a golden race of mortals in the time of Kronos. Ovid says the maker of the world or Prometheus formed man from earth and water.

Source: Apollodorus, Library 1.7.1

How did Greek mythology explain the natural world?

Hesiod explains landscape as offspring. Earth bears the long hills, where the Nymphs live in the glens, and she bears Pontus, the sea, without a partner. Heaven is a lid she made to cover her. Ovid gives a different cause: a god or Nature separates land, sea and sky from a warring mass, sets fountains, valleys and mountains in place, and fixes the winds.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 126-132

Where Accounts Differ

where-creation-starts
eros-origin
sickle-flint-or-adamant
motive-for-the-wound
ovid-craftsman-god

Where creation starts differs by author. Hesiod, Theogony 116-120, begins with Chaos, Earth, Tartarus and Eros. Apollodorus, Library 1.1.1, begins with Sky as the first ruler of the whole world and names no Chaos. Aristophanes, Birds 693-700, has a wind-egg laid by Night from which Eros hatches. This page follows Hesiod and marks where the others depart.
Eros's origin is disputed. In Hesiod, Theogony 116-122, Eros is one of the four first powers and has no parent. In Aristophanes, Birds 693-700, Night lays an egg in Erebus and Eros hatches from it, so he is younger than Chaos, Night and Erebus in the play.
The sickle is told two ways. Hesiod, Theogony 154-182, in the Evelyn-White translation, has Earth make it from grey flint. Apollodorus, Library 1.1.4, calls it adamantine. Other pages on this site render the same material as adamant, so this is a matter of translation and not necessarily of two traditions.
The motive for the wound differs. In Hesiod, Theogony 154-182, Sky hides his children in Earth as each is born. In Apollodorus, Library 1.1.2-1.1.4, Sky binds the Cyclopes and casts them into Tartarus, and Earth persuades the Titans to attack him, with all but Ocean joining in.
Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.5-88, gives a Roman cosmogony with a craftsman. God or kindly Nature ends the strife of elements, and Ovid says which god is unknown. The Theogony has no such maker. The question of who formed humans is left open between that unnamed god and Prometheus.

Sources

Primary sources

Hesiod, Theogony 116-133
Hesiod, Theogony 154-182
Hesiod, Theogony 183-187
Hesiod, Theogony 188-206
Hesiod, Theogony 207-210
Hesiod, Theogony 453-458
Hesiod, Theogony 881-885
Hesiod, Works and Days 109-111
Apollodorus, Library 1.1.1
Apollodorus, Library 1.7.1
Aristophanes, Birds 693-700
Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.5-88
Hesiod, Theogony 116-120