Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. IN thinking of the origin of the world in which they lived, the Greeks for the most part, it would appear, were satisfied with the explanation given by the poet Hesiod, --that in the beginning the world was a great shapeless mass or chaos out of which was fashioned first the spirit of love, Eros (Cupid), and the broad-chested earth, Gaea; then Erebos, darkness, and Nyx, night. From a union of the two latter sprang .ffither, the clear sky, and Hemera, day. The earth, by virtue of the power by which it was fashioned, produced in turn, Uranos, the firmament which covered her with its vault of brass, as the poets called it, to describe its appearance of eternal duration, the mountains, and Pontos, the unfruitful sea. Thereupon Eros, the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the gods, began to agitate the earth and all things on it, bringing them together, and making pairs of them. First in importance of these pairs were Uranos and Gaea, heaven and earth, who peopled the earth with a host of beings, Titans, Giants, and Kyklopes, of far greater physical frame and energy than the races who succeeded them. It is a beautiful idea, that of love making order out of chaos, bringing opposite elements together, and preparing a world to receive mankind. Another apparently older and certainly obscure notion, is that expressed by Homer, which ascribes the origin of the world to Okeanos, the ocean. How the earth and heavens sprang from him, or whether they were conceived as co-existing with him from the beginning, we are not told. The numerous ancient stories, however, concerning floods, after which new generations of men sprang up, and the fact that the innumerable fertilizing rivers and streams of the earth were believed..
