Source 2 – The Creation – Ovid

Before the sea and the lands existed, and the sky which covers everything, the face of Nature lacked any definite feature throughout its entirety. People have called this ‘Chaos’, a raw and unorganised mass, nothing except unworked bulk, the conflicting seeds of the elements not properly joined, heaped together in the same place.

A god, in other words, a better Nature, settled this dispute. He separated the lands from the sky, and the water from the land, and also parted the clear heavens from the thick lower atmosphere . . .

When the god – whichever one of them it was – had divided the mass in this way and organised into its separate parts, he firstly moulded the land into the shape of a huge ball, so as to be perfectly balanced. Then he ordered the seas to spread themselves out, and to swell up under the rushing winds, and to surround the shores of the encircled earth.

He ordered the rolling countryside to stretch out, valleys to sink down, woods to be covered in foliage and the stony mountains to rise.

He had hardly fenced off everything within strict limits when the stars, which had for long lain hidden under the mass, began to blaze out throughout the heavens. To prevent any region being deprived of its own lifeforms, the heavenly ground was occupied by stars and divine forms, the waters became home to shining fish, the earth held the wild beasts and the restless air received the birds.

Up to this point there was still no nobler living thing, nothing capable of deep thought, which could rule over the rest. Then Man was born. Either that great Craftsman, the source of the improved universe, made him from divine seed, or the newly formed earth, recently separated from the heavenly aether, retained the seeds of its heavenly relation, and Prometheus mixed this with rainwater and moulded it into the likeness of the all-controlling gods.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1, 5-9, 20-23, 32-37, 43-44, 69-83