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The origins of the gods

1. The beginning of things, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, starts with Chaos. Out of the void emerged Ge or Gaea, the Earth, and other primeval figures-including Eros or Love.

2. Without male assistance Gaea gave birth to Uranus, the Sky, and Pontus, the Sea. Father Sky lay with Mother Earth and fertilised her. From that union were born, first, the next generation of gods, the Titans, six male and six female (Cronus and Rhea, Oceanus and Tethys, Hyperion and Thea, Coeus and Phoebe, Iapetus, Crius, Themis, and Mnemosyne); then more monstrous offspring, the one-eyed Cyclopes and the many-limbed Hundred-Handers.

3. Uranus, understandably alarmed at his terrible children and fearing that they would try to overthrow him, refused to let them see the light of day and buried them back within the body of their mother, Earth. Gaea, in pain and grief, encouraged them to break out and rebel. The youngest and boldest of the Titans, ‘crooked-minded’ Cronus, took up the challenge. He lay in wait and, when Uranus came to make love to Gaea, castrated him with a jagged sickle. Uranus in his agony retreated up into the sky where he remains; his blood falling on the earth gave birth to the Giants and the Furies, and where his genitals were flung into the sea, seafoam gathered and Aphrodite, goddess of love and desire, rose from the waters.

4. Cronus now took his father’s place as ruler of the gods, with his sister-wife Rhea as his consort and the other Titans as his court. But the story of father/son conflict was repeated in the next generation: Cronus feared that his children would treat him as he had treated Uranus, and so disposed of each of them by swallowing them as soon as they were born.

5. At last Rhea, like Gaea, took her children’s side against her husband. When the sixth and youngest child, Zeus, was born, she tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, while she sprited the child away to the pastoral island of Crete. There Zeus was brought up in a cave by nymphs, fed on honey and suckled by a she-goat.

6. When he was grown he returned to confront Cronus, force him to vomit up his other children (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon), and challenge him to war for the kingship ofthe gods. There followed ten years of literally titanic battles. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes, Zeus and his siblings were victorious, and Cronus and the other Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus, the bottommost part of the underworld.

7. At last, however, Zeus was established as ruler on Mount Olympus, with Hera as his sister-wife. He cast lots with his brothers for their areas of power, Zeus taking the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld; and he proceeded to father on Hera and other goddesses, a fourth generation of gods.

8. Zeus remains the undisputed ruler of gods and men although he feared the same destiny of dethronement by his own child. When warned that Metis, one of his wives, would bear a child wiser than its father， he swallowed Metis and her unborn child, thus ensuring that Athena was born (from his forehead) as his sole child, with no mother to encourage her to rebel.