What is Theogony?
[[File:Seneca.JPG|thumb|250px|Ancient bronze bust, known as ''[[Pseudo-Seneca]]''. This is now believed to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod.<ref>{{cite book |author= Erika Simon |title= Pergamon und Hesiod |language=German |location= Mainz am Rhein |publisher= Philipp von Zabern |year=1975 |oclc=2326703}}</ref>]]The '''Theogony''' ({{lang-el|Θεογονία}}, ''Theogonía'', the birth of the [[polytheism|gods]]) is a [[poem]] by [[Hesiod]]. It was written in the 8th or 7th century BC, and uses the same dialect of [[Ancient Greek]] as [[Homer]]. This dialect is known as [[Epic dialect]] today. With the exception of the [[Illiad]] and the [[Odyssey]], the Theogony is the oldest known source of Greek [[mythology]]. The poem is a [[wikt:synthesis|synthesis]] of different Greek stories and traditions. It is a story that tells how the gods came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first [[Greece|Greek]] [[myth]]ical [[cosmogony]]. In the beginning, the state of the universe is [[Chaos (mythology)|chaos]] - a dark indefinite void. Everything else appeared from divine chaos. ==References== {{reflist}} == Selected translations == {{Wikisourcelang|el|Θεογονία|''Theogony (Greek)''}} {{wikisource}} * [[Apostolos Athanassakis|Athanassakis, Apostolos N.]], ''Theogony ; Works and days ; Shield / Hesiod ; introduction, translation, and notes'', Baltimore: [[Johns Hopkins University Press]], 1983. {{ISBN|0801829984}} * Frazer, R.M. (Richard McIlwaine), ''The Poems of Hesiod'', Norman : [[University of Oklahoma Press]], 1983. {{ISBN|0806118377}} * Most, Glenn, translator, ''Hesiod'', 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006-07. * Schlegel, Catherine M., and Henry Weinfield, translators, ''Theogony and Works and Days'', [[Ann Arbor, Michigan]], 2006 ==Other websites== *[http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm Hesiod, ''Theogony''] e-text (in English) *[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0129 Hesiod, Theogony] e-text in Anci