Hydros

Hydros is where the Orphic world begins: water, with Thesis and Mud, before anything had shape. The Mud settles into Gaia, and Gaia with Hydros brings forth Chronos and Ananke, Time and Necessity, who wind their serpent coils round the cosmic egg and crack it to let Phanes out. The later Rhapsodies tidy this up, dropping Chronos and Ananke from the sequence so that Phanes comes straight from Hydros and Gaia. He has no cult, no temple and no myth of his own — he is a first principle, and the theogonies want him only for where he stands.

Variant accounts

• The Rhapsodies rearrange the generation that follows him.The Orphic Rhapsodies, developed out of the older theogonies, drop Chronos and Ananke from this position and have Phanes born directly of Hydros and Gaia. The record keeps the older sequence as the primary one and notes the variant rather than harmonising them.Reference treatment of the Rhapsodic revision in which Phanes is born directly of Hydros and Gaia. (secondary)

Domains

• primordial waters
• creation

Relations

• ally: ThesisEmerged together with Thesis at the dawn of creation, the two of them with Mud being the first things that were.Reference treatment: Hydros, Thesis and Mud were the first entities to emerge at the dawn of creation. (secondary)
• father of: ChronosFather of Chronos by Gaia, into whom the primordial Mud had solidified.Reference treatment: Gaia together with Hydros produced Khronos and Ananke. (secondary)
• father of: AnankeFather of Ananke by Gaia.Reference treatment: Gaia together with Hydros produced Khronos and Ananke. (secondary)

Sources

• Hydros, the primordial water, is one of the first entities of the Orphic theogonies, emerging with Thesis and Mud, and father by Gaia of Chronos and Ananke.: Reference treatment of Hydros and of the Orphic cosmogony in which he, Thesis and Mud come first. (secondary); Damascius's outline of the Hieronyman theogony, as reported in the reference literature. (secondary)