greek and roman mythololgy

cronus

cronus was the leader and youngest of the first generation of titans, the divine descendants of the primordial (Mother Earth) and (Father Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological golden age, until he was overthrown by his own son zeus and imprisoned in tartarus. According to plato, however, the deities phorcys , Cronus, and rhea were the eldest children of oceanus and tethys.

Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own children, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods hestia,hera ,poseidon ,hades, and demeter by Rhea, he ate them all as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child,zeus, was born, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children.

Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son. According to one Roman author, when Rhea presented the swaddled rock to him, Cronus asked her to nurse the infant one last time before he swallowed him. Rhea pressed her breast against the rock, and the milk that was sprayed across the heavens created the milky way galaxy. Cronus then ate the rock.

Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on mount ida. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named amalthea, while a company of kouretes, armored male dancers, shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still, other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia. One Cretan myth relates how Cronus once went to Crete himself, and Zeus, in order to hide from his father, transformed himself into a snake, and changed his nymph nurses, and into bears, who later became the constellations ursa major and ursa minor respectively.

Once he had grown up, Zeus used an ematic given to him by Gaia to force Cronus to disgorge the contents of his stomach in reverse order: first, the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of to be a sign to mortal men, and then his two brothers and three sisters. In other versions of the tale, metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children.

After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes who forged for him his thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident, and Hades' helm of darkness. In a vast war called the titanomachy, Zeus and his older brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in . However,oceanus,helios,atlas,prometheus,epimetheus, and astraeus were not imprisoned following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monster typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans.