Timeline of Myth

The Theogony opens with "first of all, Chaos came to be." Then came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the Abyss), and Eros (Desire).

From Chaos came Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night), and from those two were born the bright sky and the day. Light is the child of darkness.

Gaia bore the sky, Uranus, and the sea, Pontus, all on her own — and took that sky as her husband.

Gaia and Uranus had the twelve Titans, the one-eyed Cyclopes, and the hundred-handed Hecatoncheires. Uranus shoved each child back into the earth the moment it was born.

Gaia, pushed past endurance, forged a sickle, and her youngest, Cronus, castrated his father and seized the throne. From the foam where the severed flesh fell into the sea, Aphrodite was born — so Hesiod tells it.

Cronus, with his sister Rhea, opened the age of the Titans. But haunted by the prophecy that "your own child will overthrow you," he swallowed each child as it was born.

Rhea hid her youngest, Zeus, on Crete and fed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead. The baby grew up on the milk of the goat Amalthea.

Grown to manhood, Zeus used the cunning of Metis to make Cronus disgorge the siblings he had swallowed. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon came back into the world.

The new gods of Olympus and the Titans of Mount Othrys fought for ten years — the first war to split the world into two sides.

Zeus freed the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires imprisoned in Tartarus. The Cyclopes forged him the thunderbolt, and the hundred-handed giants hurled three hundred boulders at once.

The defeated Titans were locked away in Tartarus. Atlas alone was singled out — condemned to carry the sky on his shoulders.

The three brothers drew lots: Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld. The earth and Olympus were left as common ground — so the Iliad tells it.

The Gigantes, born of Gaia, challenged the new throne — and after them, the monster Typhon. With Typhon subdued, the order of Zeus was complete.

Prometheus stole fire for humankind. Zeus chained him to a rock and set an eagle to tear at his liver.

Punishment came for mortals too. When Pandora, the first woman, opened the jar, every kind of suffering poured out — and only Elpis (Hope) remained inside.

Hesiod sang that humankind descended through five ages: gold, silver, bronze, heroes, and iron. Ours is the age of iron.

After witnessing the crimes of Lycaon, Zeus swept humanity away in a flood. Only Deucalion and his wife survived, and from the stones they threw over their shoulders a new humanity was born.

Perseus stands at the head of the line of heroes. He cut off Medusa's head, and on the way home rescued Andromeda.

Bellerophon rode Pegasus and slew the Chimera. But when he tried to ride all the way up to Olympus, he fell — the moment a line was drawn that no hero may cross.

Cadmus, wandering in search of his abducted sister Europa, founded Thebes at an oracle's command. The warriors who sprang from the dragon's teeth became the city's first citizens.

Heracles, great-grandson of Perseus, lost his wife and children to a madness sent by Hera, and took on the twelve labors to pay for the deed. It is the greatest hero's tale in Greece.

Jason and the crew of the Argo set sail for Colchis at the edge of the world. The fleece came into his hands with the help of the princess Medea — a debt he would pay later.

Theseus killed the Minotaur and followed Ariadne's thread out of the labyrinth. That was the day Athens stopped paying tribute to Crete.

Oedipus, without knowing it, killed his father and married his mother. His two sons killed each other, and when his daughter Antigone perished too, the house of Cadmus came to its end.

Eris alone was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. The golden apple she threw — inscribed "for the fairest" — became the seed of the war.

Paris, prince of Troy, chose Aphrodite among the three goddesses, and in return was promised the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen — queen of Sparta.

The Greek forces gathered under Agamemnon. To win the wind that would open the sea route, he laid his daughter Iphigenia on the altar — a price paid before any victory.

In the tenth year of the war, Achilles, enraged by the death of Patroclus, cuts down Hector. The whole of the Iliad is the song of this wrath.

By Odysseus's stratagem, the wooden horse was brought inside the walls. Laocoon's warning went unheeded, and Troy fell in a single night.

Agamemnon came home victorious and was murdered that same day by his wife Clytemnestra. Through his son Orestes's revenge and trial, the curse on this house ran three generations deep.

Odysseus's journey home took as long as the war itself. The Cyclops and Circe, the Sirens and Calypso — this is the sea of the Odyssey.

Odysseus, returned in a beggar's rags, drew his own bow and shot down the suitors. To the place Penelope had held with her loom, the master came home.

Aeneas carried his father Anchises on his back out of Troy. Virgil's Aeneid makes this refugee the founding ancestor of Rome.

In Alba Longa, ruled by the descendants of Aeneas, the twins of Rhea Silvia — cast out in a struggle for the throne — were taken in by a she-wolf. Their father was Mars (Ares), god of war.

Romulus built a city on the Palatine Hill and gave it his own name — Rome. Here Greek myth passes into Roman history.