Key Info

- The first Primordial Force in Greek Mythology 

- Chaos is the nothingness or void that, depending on the source, always existed or was the 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.