In 's (c. 730 – 700 BC), , after castrating his father , becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister , by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: , , , , , and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six. He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received a prophecy from his parents, and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father. This causes Rhea "unceasing grief", and upon becoming pregnant with her sixth child, Zeus, she approaches her parents, Gaia and Uranus, seeking a plan to save her child and bring retribution to Cronus. Following her parents' instructions, she travels to in , where she gives birth to Zeus, handing the newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on . Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it is not his son.
While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so, and other authors give different locations. The poet (8th century BC), according to , considered Zeus to have been born in , while the Alexandrian poet (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus, says that he was born in . (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give as his birthplace, but later states he is born in , and the mythographer (first or second century AD) similarly says he was born in a cave in Dicte.
A variant of Zeus was thought to have been "a divine child" abandoned by his mother and eventually raised by ", , or even animals."
hideChildren of Cronus and RheaZEUSInfancy
While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts. According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs and , daughters of , to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat , while the guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the fell away at the river Triton.
, in his , relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus a stone to swallow. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he is not in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him. Hyginus also says that , Althaea, and , usually considered the children of , are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus.
According to a fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. According to , after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to . Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus.
, in his Metamorphoses, says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in a sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the and ; he instead transforms them into various species of birds.
