Throughout history there has been a constant fight for power, fame, and glory. This has been going on since the beginning of time. Just as people would marry, fight, and even kill in order to gain power of the throne of England it also occurs in mythological stories. I am going to focus on three stories to help prove this, The Story of Uranus and Cronus, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and The Iliad. I am also going to focus in on Heracles because he was the complete opposite to the men in the other stories. He is exactly how a hero should be in my opinion, strong, brave, courageous, adventurous, noble, and not self-seeking.
The story of Uranus and Cronus starts out with Gaea giving birth to Uranus without any partners. Gaea and Uranus get married and Uranus begins his rule, which I find weird because that is his own mother, but that seems to happen a lot in mythology. The first children they have are the three Hundred-Handed Giants. Then they have three Cyclopes. However, Uranus feared his six children and their tremendous strength. He hated them so much just because they terrified him and so as each child was born he took the baby from Gaea, bound the child and threw it. Each child fell for nine days and nine nights until they finally landed in Tartarus. Uranus kept his children locked away there out of selfishness and fear. He didn’t want to have to rule in fear and he definitely didn’t want any challenges to his authority. He planned to rule forever since he was immortal. Gaea was outraged by what Uranus had done but she decided to hide her feelings and wait to get her revenge.
She had more children with Uranus afterwards, they were known as the thirteen Titans. Gaea wanted the Titans to help her get revenge against Uranus. She took a large piece of flint and shaped it into a huge sharp stone sickle to have them use as a weapon. When she approached her sons and asked for their help, they all listen and refused except for one, Cronus. Cronus was the youngest and bravest Titan and he agreed to help his mother. The other Titans refused to obey their mother because they all feared there father. Gaea handed Cronus the weapon she had crafted and told him where to hide and what she wanted him to do. At night, when Uranus joined his wife and laid down to go to sleep Cronus got up and raised the huge stone and castrated his father and threw the remaining piece into the sea. Uranus’s cried out with pain because he could feel pain but he was immortal and couldn’t die. Uranus’s severed body parts remained in the ocean and Cronus became god of the sky. However, Cronus didn’t learn from his father’s previous mistakes and he decided to keep his six siblings, the Giants and the Cyclopes, imprisoned in Tartarus. Once again Gaea was disappointed, angry, and wanted revenge but this time it was against Cronus. Since Gaea was the goddess of prophecy, she informed Cronus that one day a son of his would overpower him just as he had overpowered his own father.
Cronus thought that he could out fool the prophecy if he didn’t have children. However, Rhea gave birth to five children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. And each time Cronus would embrace the baby lovingly, and then he would swallow the infant in one giant gulp. Rhea was saddened and filled with grief. What I couldn’t grasp was why she kept handing him the baby after time and time again he swallowed them, that’s just me though. When she found out that she was pregnant with her sixth child she went to Gaea for help because she didn’t want to lose that child as well. Gaea counseled Rhea and told her to take refuge in a cave that was high on the slopes of Mount Dicte. Gaea said she would make sure nymphs nursed the baby and she would have them hang the child’s cradle in a tree so that Cronus wouldn’t be able to find his son. I wonder if the song with the lyrics “Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop” is a reference to Zeus. She would also have the Curetes march beneath the cradle and they would clang their spears against their shields to drown out the cries of the baby. Rhea gave birth to a son, Zeus, in the cave. She quickly returned home, found a rock, and wrapped it into a bundle to make it look like a newborn baby. Cronus came in the room and swallowed the rock thinking it was his son.
