Key Info

- First Primordial Force in Greek Mythology 

- The nothingness or void that, depending on the source, always existed or was first to exist

Brief Bio

In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was), but next (possibly out of Chaos) came Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros (elsewhere the name Eros is used for a son of Aphrodite). Unambiguously "born" from Chaos were Erebus and Nyx.

For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived the Titans; and, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus's thunderbolts.