Greek mythology offer two significantly different creation myths, the Theogony by Hesiod and an origin story by Homer, mentioned in his Iliad. There were other, less well-known creation myths, but these two are the most well-known. Our focus here will be the Theogony.

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In the beginning, there was only chaos. Then, from the chaos, the first primordial deities emerged: Nyx (the Night), Erebus (the Darkness), Eros (the Love), Gaia (the Earth), and Tartarus (the depths of the Underworld). Nyx then gave birth to Aether (the Upper Air), to Hemera (the Day), and to Thanatos (the Death), Moros (the Doom), Hypnos (the Sleep), the three Moerae (the personification of fate) and Nemesis (the Retribution). Gaia on the other hand gave birth to Ourea (the Mountains), Pontus (the Sea) and Ouranos (the Sky).

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Gaia decided to marry Ouranos, who also became ruler of the universe, and the two had many children: the Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handed Ones), the Cyclopes and the twelve Titans. However, the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes were so ugly that Ouranos decided to imprison inside Gaia. Gaia, unhappy and driven by pain, convinced her son Cronus and the other Titans to overthrow his father. During the battle, Cronus castrated his father and threw the genitals into the ocean, from where the goddess Aphrodite was born.

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After overthrowing Ouranos, Cronus now reigned as new ruler of the universe and took his sister Rhea as his wife. But he did not free his siblings from inside Gaia, instead he even send the monster Campe to guard them. Angry by this decision, his mother Gaia told him that he as well will be overthrown by his kids.

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So when Cronus and Rhea had kids, the ruler of the universe decided to devour them. And so he devoured, in this order, his daughters Hestia, Demeter, Hera, as well as his sons Hades and Poseidon. Only the youngest son, Zeus, could be saved by Rhea, who hid him on the island Crete inside a mountain.

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Years later, Zeus returned and managed to give his father a drug that forced him to spit out his devoured children, and a new war broke out. Zeus managed to convince some of the minor Titans to join his side, but the battle was tied for a long time. So the gods freed the Cyclopes, who in return forged some of the most iconic weapons of Greek mythology: Zeus' Lightning Bolt, Poseidon's Trident and Hades' Cap of Invisibility. But the war was finally turned in favour of the gods was when they additionally released the Hecatoncheires from their imprisonment.

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After a ten-year war, the gods finally emerged victorious, and they threw most of the Titans into Tartarus.

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And that is the story how the gods under Zeus came to power.