The Orphic Hymns

seat of the immortal world, many-colored maiden, you who bear fruit of every form in the pangs of birth; eternal, most revered, deep-bosomed, blessed one, delighting in sweet-scented green shoots, power rich in flowers,

Hesiod describes Earth at the beginning of the world as "broad-breasted Earth, the ever-secure seat of all the immortals." The hymn echoes him twice: Earth is the hedranon, the "seat," of the immortal world, and she is bathysternos, "deep-breasted." It also calls her kourē, "maiden," a strange title beside "mother," and it pictures the harvest as a birth. The verb kyeis is the one used of a woman carrying a child, and every kind of fruit is born from Earth in labor.