This section of Ovid's Metamorphoses starts on the 32nd line of the first book. Before this section, Ovid sets the scene of his epic telling us how there was a time before the ocean, earth or heaven, and how everything was a jumbled heap of everything. Ovid goes on to describe how this place was no light and how this place had everything tossed together without order. Then this section starts and Ovid writes about how Chaos, the first deity, the Abyss where everything lay jumbled together, gave order to the world and created life. The last of Chaos's creations was humans, which he made to rule over all the others. Afterwards, Ovid goes into detail on the first Four Ages of Humanity starting with the Golden Age of Humanity, a time of ignorance, a time when humans had nothing and scavenged. During this time, humans had no wars, laws, tools, nor homes.
It is possible that this section sounds familiar, as a similar story exists in the Book of Genesis, in the Torah and Bible. The Torah, made long before Ovid was born, describes how God created the world from nothing and how he made all the creatures of the planet and then made humans to rule them, just like Ovid. Furthermore, Hesiod, a writer about 700 years before Ovid's time, wrote his Theogony regarding the Greco-Roman Polytheistic Pantheon and Legends, in which he mentions Chaos as the first deity, creating Terra (Earth), and the others. It seems very possible that Ovid, having read both of these (Judaism had just become a legalized religion in Rome by Iulius Caesar) combined the two when writing this section of his epic.
It is possible that this section sounds familiar, as a similar story exists in the Book of Genesis, in the Torah and Bible. The Torah, made long before Ovid was born, describes how God created the world from nothing and how he made all the creatures of the planet and then made humans to rule them, just like Ovid. Furthermore, Hesiod, a writer about 700 years before Ovid's time, wrote his Theogony regarding the Greco-Roman Polytheistic Pantheon and Legends, in which he mentions Chaos as the first deity, creating Terra (Earth), and the others. It seems very possible that Ovid, having read both of these (Judaism had just become a legalized religion in Rome by Iulius Caesar) combined the two when writing this section of his epic.