Myth & LegendGreek → English
Theogony
/θiˈɒɡəni/noun
An account of the origin and genealogy of the gods.
The Greek roots
θεός
theós
god
γονή
gonḗ
birth, begetting
Literally: “birth of the gods”
The story of the word
Hesiod's Θεογονία, composed around 700 BC, is the reason the word exists in English at all, and it remains the main source for the Greek succession myth running from Chaos through Ouranos and Kronos to Zeus. The genre is older and wider than Greece: Babylonian and Hittite texts tell strikingly similar stories of one sky god castrated or overthrown by his son. γονή belongs with γίγνεσθαι, to be born, and turns up again in cosmogony and in gonad.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
cosmogonytheologygonadgenesis
In a sentence
The lecture compared the Hesiodic theogony with the Hurrian version, gap by gap.