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50 Whatever the Muses sang of, Hesiod wrote down; and "these things did sing the Muses, nine daughters begotten of Zeus": Verily, at first Chaos came to be, and next the wide-bosomed Gaea. . . And dim Tartarus, in the depths of wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods . From Chaos came forth Erebus and black N Nyx; Aa lear, a Ala a. This first group of celestial gods was completed when Gaea ("Earth") brought forth Uranus ("Starry Heaven") and then es- poused her own firstborn son so that he might be included in the First Dynasty of the gods. Besides Uranus, and soon after he was born, Gaea also gave birth to his graceful sister, Uraea, and to "Pontus, the fruitless Deep with his raging swell." Then the next generation of gods were bom—offspring of Gaea's mating with Uranus: Afterwards she lay with Uranus, and bare deep-swirling Oceanus; Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus; Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne: And gold-crowned Phoebe, and lovely Thetys. After them was born Cronos, the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children. In spite of the fact that these twelve were offspring of the mating of a son with his own mother, the children—six males, six fe- males—were worthy of their divine origins. But as Uranus got lustier and lustier, the offspring that followed—though formidable in might—displayed various deformities. First of the "monsters" to be born were the three Cyclopes, Brontes ("The Thunderer"), Steropes ("The Maker of Lightning"), and Arges ("Who Makes Radiation"); "in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their foreheads: and they were named ‘Orb- ala es ne a a a "And again three more sons were born of Gaea and Uranus, great and valiant beyond telling: Cottus and Briareos and Gyes, au- dacious children." Of giant size, the three were called Hekaton- cheires ("The Hundred-Armed"): "From their shoulders sprang THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN And of Nyx were born Aether and Hemera. .