The Greeks of the early ages knew little of any people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean. Their imagination, meantime, had peopled the western portion of this sea with giants, monsters and enchantresses; while they placed around the edge of the disk of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no great width, nations enjoying the peculiar favor of the gods, and blessed with happiness and longevity--a notion which continued to prevail even in the historic times. The entrance to the city or palace of the gods on Olympus was closed by a gate of clouds kept by the goddesses named the “Seasons;” but the cloudy valves opened spontaneously to permit the greater gods to pass to and fro on their visits to the earth, thus linking with earth’s phases the approaches or departures of the gods. Tartarus was unvisited by the light of day. It was regarded as the prison of the gods, and not as the place of torment for wicked men, being to the gods what Erebus was to men--the abode of those who were driven from the supernal world. The Titans, when conquered, were shut up in it; and in the Ilias, Zeus menaces the subordinate and refractory gods with banishment to its murky regions. THE GENERATIONS OF THE GODS. Chaos (void space) was first: then came into being “broad-breasted” Earth, the gloomy Tartarus and Love. Chaos produced Erebus and Night, and this last bore to Erebus Day and Ether. Earth now produced Uranos (Heaven), of equal extent with herself, to envelop her, and the mountains and Pontos (Sea). She then bore to Uranus a mighty progeny--the Titans; six males and six females. She also bore the three Cyclops and the three-hundred handed ones, Hottos, Briareus and Gyges. These children were hated by their father, who, as soon as they were born, thrust them out of sight in a cavern of mother Earth, who, grieved at his conduct, produced the substance of hoary steel, and, forming from it a sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to rebellion against him; but fear seized on them all except Kronos, who, lying in wait with the sickle with which his mother had armed him, mutilated his unsuspecting sire. The drops which fell to the earth from the wounds gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants and the Mehan nymphs; and from what fell into the sea sprang Aphrodité, the goddess of love and beauty. Earth finally, after the overthrow of the Titans, bore by Tartaros her last offspring, the hundred-headed Typhœus, the father of storms and whirlwinds, whom Zeus precipitated into Tartarus.