Concept in Definition ABC

Theogony is the title of a poetic work by Hesiod, a Author Greek that according to most historical sources lived around the Vlll century BC. C.

The plot of the Theogony is the origin of the Universe, which according to Hesiod's account appeared from Chaos, from which the cosmos still emerged, that is, the Universe. From the primeval Chaos appeared Nyx (the goddess of night) and Erebus (the god of darkness) and from the offspring of both gradually emerged the gods that were forming the forces that move everything: love was encouraged by the intervention From Eros, Uranus is presented as the god of the sky and, ultimately, all the forces of nature are explained by the intervention of a divinity. In this way, the Theogony is an explanation of all reality based on the relationships between the gods and other divine forces such as the Titans, the Olympian gods or the Cyclopes.

Why is Hesiod's Theogony relevant?

The vast majority of ancient civilizations share elements in common. All of them explain the origin of the world according to a mythological story or cosmogony and, at the same time, each

civilization articulates its own culture based on the stories and experiences of the gods of its own mythology. In this sense, the Theogony is something more than a poetic work with a literary value, since it represents a testimony with two very significant dimensions:

- Hesiod's work allows us to understand what the mythical story means for the Greeks. Before Greek civilization incorporated the rational mentality and philosophy, the only explanation of the whole of reality had to be done from a magical and pseudorational mentality. Thus, time was explained by the intervention of the god Cronos, the love for the impulse of Eros and the discord for the participation of Eris (the gods of the Theogony are described with passions and impulses typical of humans, since the Greeks did not conceive the idea of ​​God as a unique and omnipotent being).

It must be borne in mind that according to the majority of scholars of Theogony, Hesiod presents the different relationships of the gods and their participation in the lives of men, not as a literary history but as something totally true (according to various historical sources Hesiod acquired this knowledge from a revelation of the Muses of Mount Helicon).

- The stories in Hesiod's story allow us to know a time, a mentality and the remote origin of the Western culture, since we must not forget that many concepts and ideas of the Theogony are present in the art, philosophy or history itself. At the same time, it is not difficult to put examples of the trace cultural that the Theogony has left in our language (words like hypnosis, mortuary, eroticism, typhoon, ocean, chronology, bread, harmony and many others).

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