Ovid's Creation of the World
Translation
I wish to speak of bodies having reshaped into new forms, Gods, to begin (for you all transform these things), bless my attempt, and create uninterrupted songs, from the origin of the world to my time!
Before the sea and the land and the sky which covers all, nature was the single entity in the entirety of the world, what they call Chaos: an uncultivated, disordered matter, nothing except inert mass brought together in the same place, crude seeds that were deficient accumulated. Yet up until now, there was not yet a Titan who was shining light upon the world, there was no Phoebe who was renewing her horns by increasing, there was no earth which was hanging in the surrounding space balanced by her own weight, there was no Amphitrite who was stretching out her long arms along the shores of the world, as much as there was land and sea and air there, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, and air without light, nothing had shape, everything obstructed each other, as in one entity, the cold fought with the hot, the wet with the dry, the soft with the hard, the heavy and light.
This god, greater than nature, put an end to the pandemonium. For he separated earth from the sky, and the sea from the earth, the condensed sky from the clear heavens. When he had unraveled them away from the disorderly mass, he bound disjoined matter in a place of agreeing peace: a fiery force of the heavens carried forward weightlessly and made its home in the furthest castle; nearest to it was air in lightness and in place, below the earth, denser than these, which dragged down large elements and was compressed with its own gravity; the flowing liquid took up the remaining space and enclosed the orb.
Thus, whoever of the gods who had placed this mass, he cut it apart and gathered all the pieces, in the beginning, he assembled the earth with all sides at equilibrium.