According to legend, Uranus had imprisoned several of his children in the body of his wife, the earth goddess Gaia. To punish him, Gaia asked her son Cronus to cut off Uranus’s sex organs during the night. After carrying out his mother’s wishes, Cronus replaced his father as ruler. He imprisoned races of giants and Cyclopes (pronounced sigh-KLOH-peez), who he considered dangerous. He married his sister, Rhea, another Titan, and they began to have children. Learning that one of his offspring was fated to overcome him just as he had overcome his father, Cronus swallowed each baby as it was born. Rhea, however, managed to save their youngest child, Zeus (pronounced ZOOS), by feeding Cronus a stone wrapped in infant clothing. She then arranged for the baby to be raised in secret in a cave on the highest mountain of the island of Crete.
When Zeus was grown, he forced Cronus to vomit up the swallowed children: the deities Hestia (pronounced HESS-tee-uh), Demeter (pronounced di-MEE-ter), Hera (pronounced HAIR-uh), Hades (pronounced HAY-deez), and Poseidon (pronounced poh-SYE-dun). Zeus also freed the giants and the Cyclopes who had been imprisoned by his father. Together they went to war against Cronus and the Titans and, after a violent struggle, emerged victorious. Zeus then banished the Titans to Tartarus (pronounced TAR-tur-uhs), a place deep in the underworld. In another version of the myth, Cronus’s rise to power ushered in a peaceful golden age, which ended when the Titans were defeated. Following the battle, Cronus was sent to rule a distant paradise known as the Islands of the Blessed.
World History
