In the beginning, nothing exists but Khaos (Chaos). A female primordial entity, she personifies the time before creation, and exists beyond and within creation. Khaos is a vital force in ancient Greek cosmology.
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The word khaos means "gap" or "chasm" referring to space between heaven and earth. Khaos (Chaos) is first of the primordial gods (protogenoi) emerging at the dawn of creation. She gives birth to Gaia (Gaea, Earth), Tartaros (the Pit Below) and Eros (Procreation).
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She appears with some variations over time and regional mythologies. Khaos is part of the lower atmosphere surrounding the earth. This area holds the invisible air and the dark gloom of fog and mist.
Khaos is mother and grandmother of the other misty essences. Erebus (mists of netherworld darkness) and Nyx (night) are her children. Her grandchildren include Aither (the ethereal air of the Heavens) and Hemera (personification of the day).
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Like her daughter Nyx and granddaughters the Moirae (Moirai) she's also a goddess of fate. Associated with air, Khaos is mother of birds. Gaia, Earth, is mother of all land creatures; Thalassa, Sea, is mother of fish and water creatures. Thalassa's male counterpart is Pontus.
Late classical authors redefine Khaos as the chaotic mix of elements existing in the primordial universe, equating it with the primal "Mud" of the Orphic cosmogony. Orphism is a set of beliefs centered on the mythical Thracian bard Orpheus.
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Orpheus descends to the Greek Underworld and returns, in a type of journey venerated as a katabasis. Orphics also revere God Dionysus, who descends to the Underworld and returns; and Goddess Persephone who goes to the Underworld every year for a season, and returns.
According to ancient Greek poet Hesiod (c. 700 BCE), Khaos is personified in mother aspect to bear children (Erebos and Nyx). Khaos is also a place, far away in the gloomy underground.
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Beyond this dwell the Titans. The region of Khaos is not isolated and can be affected by the thunderbolts or lightning of Zeus, for better or worse.
What's the difference between thunderbolts and lighting? Thunderbolts are flashes or bolts of lightning with thunder at the same time. Lighting is the brilliant flash or streak which can precede thunder or occur in the absence of thunder.
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In the definition of Chaos, Ovid equates it with a confused mass, containing the elements of all things formed out of it. Some later poets use the word Chaos in the general sense of the airy realms of darkness or the lower world.
"Verily at the first Khaos [Air] came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos ... From Khaos (Chaos) came forth Erebos (Darkness) and black Nyx (Night)."
Hesiod, Theogony - Greek epic 8th or 7th century BCE
"At the beginning there was only Khaos [Air]; Nyx (Night), dark Erebos (Darkness), and deep Tartaros (the Pit). Firstly, black-winged Nyx lays a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebos, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros (Desire) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mates in deep Tartaros with dark Khaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race [the birds], which was the first to see the light."
Aristophanes, Birds - Greek comedy 5th to 4th century BCE
"And he [Epicurus] says the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [the entwined forms of Khronos (Chronos, Time) and Ananke (Inevitability)] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature.
As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither (Aether)] and the most rarefied Wind [probably Khaos (Chaos, Air)], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge) [Gaia], both the dry land and the fluid waters [Pontos the Sea]."
Orphica, Epicuras Fragment (from Epiphanius, 4th century AD)
Finally, from Ovid:
"Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together.
No Titan [Helios the Sun] as yet poured light upon the world, no waxing Phoebe [Selene the Moon] her crescent filled anew, nor in the ambient air yet hung the earth, self-balanced, equipoised, nor Amphitrite's [the Sea's] arms embraced the long far margin of the land.
Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight.
This strife a God (Deus) [perhaps Khronos (Chronos) or the primordial Eros], with nature's blessing, solved; who severed land from sky and sea from land, and from the denser vapors set apart the ethereal sky; and, each from the blind heap resolved and freed, he fastened in its place appropriate in peace and harmony.
The fiery weightless force of heaven's vault flashed up and claimed the topmost citadel; next came the air in lightness and in place; the thicker earth with grosser elements sank burdened by its weight; lowest and last the girdling waters pent the solid globe.
So into shape whatever god it was reduced the primal matter and prescribed its several parts. Then first, to make the earth even on every side, he rounded it into a mighty disc, then bade the sea extend and rise under the rushing winds, and gird the shores of the encircled earth."
Ovid, Metamorphoses (Roman epic c. 1st century BCE to 1st century AD)
Flat Earth is a common archaic view of Earth as a plane or disk shape. Many ancient cultures hold this concept. The spherical Earth appears in the philosophy of Pythagoras (6th century BCE). People scoff. By 3rd century BCE, only illiterati think the world is flat.