Theogonia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A narrative detailing the origins and genealogies of deities within a specific mythology
2. an account that describes the birth and lineage of gods and divine beings
3. a literary work focusing on the creation stories and family trees of gods in ancient religious traditions

Etymology: The title most readers know is Hesiod's "Theogony," a Greek poem of about a thousand hexameter lines composed around 700 BCE. "Theogonia" is the Greek word it comes from, built from "theos," god, and "gignesthai" (in its root "gen-"), to be born or come into being, so the literal sense is "birth of the gods" or "generation of the gods." Hesiod's poem is essentially a genealogy: it begins with Chaos, then Gaia (Earth), Ouranos (Sky), and the Titans, and traces how Zeus eventually wins power over his father and his siblings. The word entered English through Latin, which took the Greek term as "theogonia," and it came into English usage in the 17th century, when scholars and translators first wrote about Hesiod's work and its kind. Its meaning was then widened from one poem to a whole category of texts, so that the word now also describes any account of how divine beings came into existence and organized themselves into families.

Synonyms: theogony, origin of gods