Mythos and logos in Hesiod's Theogony,circa 700 B.C.

Hesiod's Theogony, a completely preserved poem, is dated from about 700 B.C. It depicts partly a development, partly a situation that has arisen in the course of time in the world. It constitutes an attempt to understand the cosmos as the product of a genealogical evolution, which can be seen as a process of successive separation, differentiation, and hierarchization. In this attempted picture of the world myth and reality are inextricably interwoven. Observations of natural phenomena as far as of congenital malformations are accordingly exaggerated and undergone mythical transformation. Entities enumerated in this genealogical poem, no matter whether they stand for parts and concrete phenomena of the physical world or intellectual properties and abstract concepts, behave, think, and act, and are accordingly thought of, in anthropomorphic terms. Monogamy, polygamy, endogamy, exogamy, asexual and sexual reproduction, multiple conceptions and births, dominantly and recessively inherited traits, normal and abnormal offspring, and perceptions and notions on cosmogony, isogamy, and teratogenesis could be observed in the writing of the Theogony and interpreted by rational modern concepts. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.