The Concept of ‘Matter’ in Archaic Greece, 1: Khaos/Aèr in Hesiod’s Theogony

Abstract

The essay considers synthetically the passages of Hesiod’s Theogony concerning Khaos, Gaia, Uranòs, and Tàrtaros as describing the cosmic structure at its very beginning and at its present state. The final result of the cosmogenetic process consists of three solid parallel disks of equal size separated from one another by the space of Khaos/Aèr. The whole structure is conceived of as an ideal cylinder (ideal because it has no real lateral walls), whose superior base is Uranòs (the Sky), the inferior one is Tàrtaros (the Hell) and the median section is Gaia (the Earth), dividing the whole cylinder into two high semicylinders full of Khaos/Aèr. From this Khaos/Aèr, the primal Four Elements (earth, water, misty air and fire) derive, as plants do from their roots, from which all other substances of the universe originate in turn. Thus, Khaos is arkhè (the ‘beginning’) not only in the chronological-historical sense, but also in the sense of an eternal generative substance of all things. We may conclude that the Hesiodic word khaos is a lexical ancestor of the later physical and philosophical term hyle because it conveys the primeval notion of ‘matter’.