According to Hesiold's Theogony, Chaos preceded the origin not only of the world but also of the gods. Orphic's cosmogony states that Chronos (personification of time) gave birth to Ether and Chaos, which formed an enormous egg from which Paradise, Earth and Eros was born.
Chaos in the old Greek cosmology referred to the empty universe before things came into being or to Tartarus, the underworld. We find those concepts in the Theogony of Hesiod. Later, the concept meant the original state of things. Chaos produced Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (a femal personification of the night, a cosmogonical figure). Next, Nyx begot Aether , the bright upper air and Day.
