At first, there was nothing.  Then came to four Primordial deities.  First came Chaos, the void.  Next came Gaia, the earth, as well as Tartarus, the underworld, and Eros, love.  Chaos gave birth to Erebus and Nix, who personified darkness and night, respectively.  The two offspring soon mated and gave birth to Aether and Hemera, brightness and day.

Gaia, on her own, gave birth to Uranus, the sky.  The two soon mated, producing the twelve Titans.  The males were Hyperion, Oceanus, Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, and Cronus.  The females were Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, Theia, Themis, and Rhea.  The six male Titans each married one of the six female Titans.  Gaia and Uranus later had two different sets of children.  The three Cyclopes came next, consisting of Brontes, Steropes, and Arges.  They were one-eyed giants with great skill in forging and masonry.  The final set was the three fifty-headed and hundred-handed Hecatonchieres, Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges.  Uranus was disgusted with the Cyclopes and Hecatonchieres, so he imprisoned them beneath the earth in Tartarus.  This infuriated Gaia, who forged a sickle out of the hardest adamant and gave it to the Titans to use against their father.  The Titans were too afraid to challenge Uranus, except for the youngest, Cronus.

Cronus attacked Uranus with the sickle, castrating him.  Cronus thus became the new ruler.  But he did not rule easily.  Knowing that because he overthrew his father one of his children might do the same to him, he ate his children every time his wife, Rhea gave birth.  This continued until the sixth child, Zeus, was born.  Rhea hid the newborn god and replaced him with a stone, which Cronus ate in his place.

Zeus was raised in secret by Amalthea (Greek for “tender goddess”), who is sometimes depicted as a goat, and other times as a goat-tending nymph.  In traditions where she is a goat, the baby Zeus broke off one of her horns, which became the cornucopia.  Additionally, her skin, or the skin of her goat, is sometimes depicted as the source of the aegis, Zeus’ shield.

When Zeus reached adulthood, he posed as Cronus’ cupbearer and gave his father a poison which forced him to vomit up his five older siblings.  Out came Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, and Hestia.  They quickly joined with Zeus, who also freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchieres from Tartarus.  The Cyclopes were expert craftsmen, and forged Zeus’ thunderbolts for the war, as well as Poseidon’s trident and Hades’ helmet, which turned the wearer invisible.  Two Titans also joined the gods, Prometheus and his mother, either Themis or Clymene, depending on the version.  With these powerful allies, Zeus was able to fight against the Titans in a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy. 

After much intense fighting, Zeus and his allies were victorious.  Zeus imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus, except for the two that allied with him, as well as Atlas, who was one of their best commanders.  Zeus gave Atlas the special punishment of holding up the heavens.

The peace would not last, however.  There was another challenger to Zeus’ rule, the enormous monster Typhon, birthed from Gaia and Tartarus.  This terrifying winged creature possessed a hundred serpentine heads which reached the stars.  Each of his heads breathed fire and emitted horribly frightening noises.  His many hands were stronger than those of any other creature that walked the earth.  He was likely the most powerful monster in all of Greek mythology.

Typhon launched an assault on the heavens, and most of the gods ran away in terror.  He and Zeus fought a destructive battle which ended with Zeus victorious thanks to his lightning bolts.  Typhon was imprisoned underneath a mountain, either Mt. Etna in Sicily or the island of Ischia, depending on the source.  His raging causes the volcanic activity of his lair to this day.  Others have claimed that he was instead thrown into Tartarus.  Typhon’s mate, Echidna, was spared.  They had many children, including Cerberus the three-headed dog, the Lernaean Hydra, the Scylla, the Chimera, and others.  Zeus allowed them to live as a challenge to future heroes.

The gods were free to consolidate their rule over the cosmos.  Zeus and his brothers Hades and Poseidon drew lots to determine their domains.  Zeus took the sky, Poseidon took the sea, and Hades took the underworld.  None could take the earth, as that still was the domain of Gaia.  Hera married Zeus and became the queen of the gods, and took marriage and family into her domain.  Demeter became the goddess of agriculture and farming.  Hestia became the goddess of the hearth.  They were soon joined by Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  She was born from the foam around Uranus’ genitals after Cronus threw them into the sea.  Despite her separate origin, she readily took her place with the others on Mt. Olympus.

These seven gods soon had their own offspring.  Zeus and Hera gave birth to Hephaestus, god of the forge, and Ares, god of war.  Hephaestus had a deformed foot and walked with a limp.  Depending on the myth, he either had this condition from birth or was thrown from Mt. Olympus by Zeus in a fit of rage when he attempted to interfere in an argument between his parents.  He soon returned and set himself up as the blacksmith of the gods.  He crafted many powerful artifacts, including the Aegis, a shield used by both Zeus and Athena, the armor of Achilles, the chariot used by the sun god Helios, and many others.  The three Cyclopes worked in his forge as his assistants.  He was eventually arranged to marry Aphrodite, but she was frequently unfaithful to him, especially with his brother Ares.

Ares was renowned for his good looks, but was widely reviled by the Greeks and most other deities.  While he was the god of war, the Greeks did not associate him with martial skill, honorable combat, or courage over adversity.  Instead, he was seen as the embodiment of savage bloodlust and slaughter.   When it came to war deities the Greeks preferred his half-sister, Athena.

One of the few deities that did get along with Ares was Aphrodite.  Despite being married to Hephaestus, she often cheated on him with the war god.  Aphrodite and Ares had a son named Eros, who resembled a winged baby.  He carried a bow with a set of magical arrows.  Anyone who was struck by one of his arrows was not physically harmed, but instead would fall madly in love with the first person he or she saw.  This power would cause much trouble for the gods of Olympus in the years to come.

Athena was the daughter of Zeus with the Titaness Metis.  Before her birth, Zeus had learned about a prophecy which said that if the child were male, it would become more powerful than Zeus and overthrow him, much in the same way he did to Cronus and Cronus did to Uranus.  To prevent this from happening, Zeus tricked Metis into a game of shapeshifting.  When Metis was in the form of a fly, Zeus swallowed her.  As a result, Zeus soon suffered from crippling headaches.  To determine what was the problem, Hephaestus cracked open Zeus’ skull with his tools.  Athena then sprang out of her father’s skull and took her place as the goddess of wisdom and war.

The twin gods Apollo and Artemis were the children of Zeus and the Leto, the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe.  Hera was outraged at Zeus’ infidelity and cursed the land to shun Leto, forcing her to travel far and wide to find a place to give birth.  She eventually found such a place in the form of a floating island by the name of Delos.  As it was not connected to the sea floor, Leto was free to give birth there. 

Artemis was born first, without any difficulty.  Apollo’s birth, however, was far more difficult.  Leto was in labor for nine days and nine nights with Artemis’ assistance before she finally gave birth to Apollo.

Artemis became the goddess of the hunt and was associated with the moon.  She carried a bow with arrows that would grant a painless death.  Apollo also carried a bow, but with arrows that caused a painful death.  Apollo became the god of the sun and was the master of music and Greek culture.

The god Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, the oldest daughter of the Titan Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione.  The night Hermes was born, Maia soon fell back to sleep.  Hermes snuck away to Thessaly and stole cattle from his half-brother Apollo’s herd, inventing the lyre along the way.  Hermes got back to Maia, but Apollo soon followed.  Upon hearing the accusation of theft, Maia defended her son.  Zeus soon got involved in the argument, and eventually Hermes confessed to the theft.  He gave Apollo the lyre he had made as a symbol of reconciliation, and the instrument became one of the older god’s best-known attributes.

Hermes soon became known as the messenger of the gods, renowned for his quick feet.  He attracted many worshippers among people who lived at the margins of civilization, including herdsman, travelers, and thieves.  He was seen as the protector of roads and inns.  Hephaestus forged Hermes the Talaria, a pair of winged sandals.  They would allow the wearer to fly as quickly as any bird.  They were a great aid to Hermes in his roles as messenger and protector of roads. 

The youngest of the major deities was Dionysus, god of wine.  He was the son of Zeus with the mortal Semele, making him the only Olympian deity with human parentage.  When Hera found out that Semele was pregnant with Zeus’ child, she disguised herself as an old woman and spoke with Semele.  When Semele revealed that her lover was Zeus, Hera pretended not to believe her.  Semele began to doubt Zeus’ identity, so Hera persuaded her to ask Zeus to show himself in all his divine glory.  Later, when Zeus visited her again, Semele asked him to grant her one request.  Zeus swore on the River Stix that he would do whatever she asked, this being the most sacred oath a god can make.  Semele made the request as Hera suggested, and Zeus begged her to change it.  He knew that showing himself in his true glory would be too much for a mortal to take, and it would inevitably kill her.  Semele refused to change her request, and Zeus, bound by his oath, reluctantly fulfilled it.  Semele was immediately struck dead by the spectacle, but Zeus saved their child’s life by sewing the unborn god into his thigh and carrying him to term.

When Dionysus was born, Zeus left him in the care of the rain nymphs, also called the Hyades, of Mount Nysa.  This was a mythological location, always placed in the distant east or south.   Dionysus was the first to discover how to turn grapes into wine, an invention which spread quickly and ensured him a place of honor among the Greeks.  When he first came to live on Mt. Olympus, all twelve thrones were already taken up.  Hestia then voluntarily took a seat by the hearth, as it was her domain.  Dionysus took her place, and solidified the fourteen major deities of Greek mythology.  Twelve gods sat in their thrones at Mt. Olympus, while Hestia tended the fire and Hades resided in the land of the dead.