The first version of the creation is intensely masculine and crude. The primary forces generate their opposites. Thus vacancy creates solidity, darkness creates light, the earth creates the sky and the sea, the first crime creates a goddess of love. Further, these forces are conceived as having sexes, and they copulate the way human beings do, and the 'female elements give birth to newer forces, and those forces have vague personalities.
Apart from childbearing, Gaea and her daughter Rhea have one important function. In anger they help their sons dethrone their own husbands. The relationship between the sexes is troubled, and the decisive factor in losing control of the world is mistreating one's children. The forces of nature are rendered in terms of the human family, which makes the creation both understandable and dramatic.
The most notable feature of this myth, however, is the drive for power and dominance. Uranus confines the mightiest of his offspring to Gaea's belly. Cronus castrates his father and the new generation of Titans takes over. Then Cronus consolidates his power by imprisoning his non-Titan brothers and by swallowing his own children. Zeus, his son, in turn dethrones him, and then must fight the Titans, the dragon, and the Giants to secure his own rule. In one myth even Zeus is warned that a hypothetical son by Thetis may defeat him. Power is the primary drive here. But this view of the world is not really pessimistic, for each generation of deities is an improvement over the last one. The Olympian gods under Zeus are the most enlightened generation, and only the ablest survive.
