catalogued,
the poet goes on to detail the offspring of each member of that
generation. Exceptions are only made in special cases, as the Sons of
Iapetus (ll. 507-616) whose place is accounted for by their treatment
by Zeus. The chief landmarks in the poem are as follows: after the
first 103 lines, which contain at least three distinct preludes,
three primeval beings are introduced, Chaos, Earth, and Eros--here an
indefinite reproductive influence. Of these three, Earth produces
Heaven to whom she bears the Titans, the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed
giants. The Titans, oppressed by their father, revolt at the instigation
of Earth, under the leadership of Cronos, and as a result Heaven and
Earth are separated, and Cronos reigns over the universe. Cronos knowing
that he is destined to be overcome by one of his children, swallows each
one of them as they are born, until Zeus, saved by Rhea, grows up and
overcomes Cronos in some struggle which is not described. Cronos is
forced to vomit up the children he had swallowed, and these with Zeus
divide the universe between them, like a human estate. Two events mark
the early reign of Zeus, the war with the Titans and the overthrow of
Typhoeus, and as Zeus is still reigning the poet can only go on to give
a list of gods born to Zeus by various goddesses. After this he formally
bids farewell to the cosmic and Olympian deities and enumerates the sons
born of goddess to mortals. The poem closes with an invocation of the
Muses to sing of the 'tribe of women'.

This conclusion served to link the "Theogony" to what must have been
a distinct poem, the "Catalogues of Women". This work was divided into
four (Suidas says five) books, the last one (or two) of which was known
as the "Eoiae" and may have been again a distinct poem: the curious
title will be explained presently. The "Catalogues" proper were a series
of genealogies which traced the Hellenic race (or its more important
peoples and families) from a common ancestor. The reason why women are
so prominent is obvious: since most families and tribes claimed to be
descended from a god, the only safe clue to their origin was through a
mortal woman beloved by that god; and it has also been pointed out that
'mutterrecht' still left its traces in northern Greece in historical
times.

The following analysis (after Marckscheffel) [1108] will show the
principle of its composition. From Prometheus and Pronoia sprang
Deucalion and Pyrrha, th