In the beginning, before the gods or the earth or the sea, there was only Chaos, the yawning void. Then Gaia arose, the second being to emerge at creation, born without parentage from the void itself. Hesiod, writing his Theogony around 700 BCE, calls her "wide-bosomed Gaia, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus." She was not merely a goddess but the Earth itself, the living soil and stone, the breast upon which all life would one day feed. From her own body, without union, she gave birth to three great children: Ouranos, the starry heavens; the Ourea, the long mountains; and Pontos, the raging sea.

But Gaia's greatest children came from her union with Ouranos, the sky she had made her husband. Together they bore the twelve Titans: Oceanus, the earth-encircling river; Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronus, the youngest and most terrible. They also bore the three Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, each with a single eye blazing in his forehead, and the three Hecatoncheires, Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. Ouranos hated these children and forced them back into Gaia's womb, burying them inside her own body. The pain was unbearable. Gaia groaned beneath the weight of the sky and her imprisoned children, until she could bear it no longer.

Gaia forged a great sickle of grey adamant and called her children to her. Only Cronus, the youngest Titan, had the courage to take it. He lay in wait and when Ouranos descended to lie with Gaia, Cronus stretched forth his hand and struck. He lopped off his father's members and cast them behind him. The blood that fell upon Gaia's earth gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Furies; the Gigantes, the Giants; and the Meliae, the ash-tree nymphs. From the foam where the severed parts fell into the sea, Aphrodite arose, the goddess of love and beauty. Ouranos withdrew forever, and Cronus became king.

But Cronus proved no better than his father. He swallowed each of his own children as they were born, fearing a prophecy that one would overthrow him. Gaia, watching her grandchildren vanish into her son's belly, turned against him. When Rhea gave birth to Zeus, Gaia hid the infant in a cave on Crete and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow instead. She sent the Kouretes, the earth-born spirits, to clash their weapons and drown out the infant's cries. When Zeus grew to manhood, Gaia gave him the potion that forced Cronus to vomit up the swallowed children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and the stone. Zeus led them in war against the Titans, the Titanomachy, and after ten years the old gods fell.

Yet Gaia's wrath did not end with the Titans. When Zeus imprisoned her children in Tartarus, she turned against him too. She bore Typhon, the monstrous son of Tartarus, a creature with a hundred serpent heads springing from his shoulders, each breathing fire and speaking with a human voice. Typhon challenged Zeus for Olympus, and the battle shook the world. Zeus struck him down with thunderbolts and buried him beneath Mount Etna in Sicily, where his breath still burns as volcanic fire. Gaia was worshipped across the Greek world as the first oracle at Delphi before Apollo came, and at Olympia where her ancient ash altar stood. She was the mother of all, the foundation that never moved, the earth that outlasts every empire.