Chapter XXI The World
Cronos
If you look into yourselves, you will see … the nearby as far-off and infinite, since the
world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 264.
world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 264.
Cronus /ˈkroʊnəs/ or both Cronos and Kronos /ˈkroʊnɒs/[1] (Greek: Κρόνος [krónos]) was in Greek mythology the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus.
Cronus was usually depicted with a Harpe, Scythe or a Sickle, which was the instrument he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Attic month of Hekatombaion, a festival called Kronia was held in honor of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as a patron of harvest. Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity with the Roman deity Saturn
Cronus & Rhea, Athenian red-figure pelike
C5th B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
KRONOS (or Cronus) was the Titan god of time and the ages, especially time where regarded as destructive and all-devouring. He ruled the cosmos during the so-called Golden Age, after castrating and deposing his father Ouranos (the Sky). In fear of a prophecy that he would be in turn be overthrown by his own son, Kronos swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. Rhea managed to save the youngest, Zeus, by hiding him away on the island of Krete, and fed Kronos a stone wrapped in the swaddling clothes of an infant. The god grew up, forced Kronos to disgorge his swallowed offspring, and led the Olympians in a ten year war against the Titanes, before driving them defeated into the pit of Tartaros.
Many human generations later, Zeus released Kronos and his brothers from this prison, and made the old Titan king of the Elysian Islands, home of the blessed dead. Kronos was essentially the same as Khronos, the primordial god of time in the Orphic Theogonies.
Saturn (Latin: Saturnus) is a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in myth. Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple associations and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of plenty and peace. The Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum housed the state treasury. In December, he was celebrated at what is perhaps the most famous of the Roman festivals, the Saturnalia, a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry. Saturn the planet and Saturday are both named after the god.
Cronus was usually depicted with a Harpe, Scythe or a Sickle, which was the instrument he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Attic month of Hekatombaion, a festival called Kronia was held in honor of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as a patron of harvest. Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity with the Roman deity Saturn
Cronus & Rhea, Athenian red-figure pelike
C5th B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
KRONOS (or Cronus) was the Titan god of time and the ages, especially time where regarded as destructive and all-devouring. He ruled the cosmos during the so-called Golden Age, after castrating and deposing his father Ouranos (the Sky). In fear of a prophecy that he would be in turn be overthrown by his own son, Kronos swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. Rhea managed to save the youngest, Zeus, by hiding him away on the island of Krete, and fed Kronos a stone wrapped in the swaddling clothes of an infant. The god grew up, forced Kronos to disgorge his swallowed offspring, and led the Olympians in a ten year war against the Titanes, before driving them defeated into the pit of Tartaros.
Many human generations later, Zeus released Kronos and his brothers from this prison, and made the old Titan king of the Elysian Islands, home of the blessed dead. Kronos was essentially the same as Khronos, the primordial god of time in the Orphic Theogonies.
Saturn (Latin: Saturnus) is a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in myth. Saturn is a complex figure because of his multiple associations and long history. He was the first god of the Capitol, known since the most ancient times as Saturnius Mons, and was seen as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. In later developments he came to be also a god of time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of plenty and peace. The Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum housed the state treasury. In December, he was celebrated at what is perhaps the most famous of the Roman festivals, the Saturnalia, a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry. Saturn the planet and Saturday are both named after the god.
Giorgio Vasari: The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn (Cronus)
Physical Form
Spacetime:
In Greek mythology, Ananke (/əˈnæŋkiː/), also spelled Anangke, Anance, or Anagke (Greek: Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun ἀνάγκη, "force, constraint, necessity"), was the personification of destiny, necessity and fate, depicted as holding a spindle. She marks the beginning of the cosmos, along with Chronos. She was seen as the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance which meant that mortals, as well as the Gods, respected her and paid homage. Considered as the mother of the Fates according to one version, she is the only one to have control over their decisions, except, according to some sources, also Zeus.
According to the ancient Greek traveler Pausanias, there was a temple in ancient Corinth where the goddesses Ananke and Bia (meaning violence or violent haste) were worshipped together in the same shrine. Her Roman counterpart was Necessitas ("necessity"). Ananke or Anagke comes from the ancient Greek Ανάγκη, a goddess representing destiny, necessity, and fate. She is a primeval goddess (protogenos) who emerged self-formed at the very beginning of existence, and is said to be a formless serpent encompassing all manifested existence. She emerged with her serpent mate Khronos or Cronos, the god of time. They are far beyond all other Gods. The daughters of Ananke are the three Fates.
ANANKE was the Protogenos (primeval goddess) of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. She emerged self-formed at the very beginning of time--an incorporeal, serpentine being whose outstretched arms encompassed the breadth of the universe. From the time she first appeared Ananke was entwined in the serpentine coils of her mate, the time-god Khronos. Together they surrounded the primal egg of solid matter in their constricting coils and split it into its constituent parts (earth, heaven and sea) and so brought about the creation of the ordered universe.
Ananke -- inescapable necessity, purpose, goal -- and Khronos remained entwined as the cosmic-circling forces of fate and time--driving the rotation of the heavens and the neverending passage of time. They were far beyond the reach of the younger gods whose fates they were sometimes said to control.
ANANKE & THE BIRTH OF THE COSMOS I) THE COSMOGONY OF ALCMAN
Alcman, Fragment 5 (from Scholia) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (Greek lyric C7th B.C.) :
"`[First came] Thetis (Creation). After that, ancient Poros (Contriver) [Khronos?] and Tekmor (Ordinance) [Ananke?]' : Tekmor came into being after Poros . . . thereupon . . . called him Poros (Contriver) since the beginning provided all things; for when the matter began to be set in order, a certain Poros came into being as a beginning. So Alkman represents the matter of all things as confused and unformed.
Then he says that one came into being who set all things in order, then that Poros came into being, and that when Poros had passed by Tekmor followed. And Poros is as a beginning, Tekmor like an end. When Thetis (Creation) had come into being, a beginning and end of all things came into being simultaneously, and all things have their nature resembling the matter of bronze, while Thetis has hers resembling that of a craftsman, Poros and Tekmor resembling a beginning and the end.
He uses the word ancient for old. `And the third, Skotos’ ( Darkness) [Erebos]: since neither sun nor moorn had come into being yet, but matter was still undifferentiated. So at the same moment there came into being Poros and Tekmor and Skotos. `Amar (Day) [Hemera] and Melana (Moon) [Selene] and third, Skotos (Darkness) as far as Marmarugas (Flashings)’ : days does not mean simply day, but contains the idea of the sun. Previously there was only darkness, and afterwards, when it had been differentiated, light came into being."
II) THE ORPHIC COSMOGONY
Orphica, Theogonies Fragment 54 (from Damascius) (trans. West) (Greek hymns C3rd - C2nd B.C.) :
"Originally there was Hydros (Water), he [Orpheus] says, and Mud, from which Ge (the Earth) solidified: he posits these two as first principles, water and earth . . . The one before the two [Thesis], however, he leaves unexpressed, his very silence being an intimation of its ineffable nature. The third principle after the two was engendered by these--Ge (Earth) and Hydros (Water), that is--and was a Serpent (Drakon) with extra heads growing upon it of a bull and a lion, and a god’s countenance in the middle; it had wings upon its shoulders, and its name was Khronos (Unaging Time) and also Herakles. United with it was Ananke (Inevitability, Compulsion), being of the same nature, or Adrastea, incorporeal, her arms extended throughout the universe and touching its extremities. I think this stands for the third principle, occuping the place of essence, only he [Orpheus] made it bisexual [as Phanes] to symbolize the universal generative cause. And I assume that the theology of the [Orphic] Rhapsodies discarded the two first principles (together with the one before the two, that was left unspoken) [i.e., the Orphics discarded the concepts of Thesis, Khronos and Ananke], and began from this third principle [Phanes] after the two, because this was the first that was expressible and acceptable to human ears. For this is the great Khronos (Unaging Time) that we found in it [the Rhapsodies], the father of Aither and Khaos. Indeed, in this theology too [the Hieronyman], this Khronos (Time), the serpent has offspring, three in number : moist Aither (Light) (I quote), unbounded Khaos (Air), and as a third, misty Erebos (Darkness) . . . Among these, he says, Khronos (Time) generated an egg--this tradition too making it generated by Khronos, and born ‘among’ these because it is from these that the third Intelligible triad is produced [Protogonos-Phanes]. What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it (male and female), and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls’ heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms . . . And the third god of the third triad this theology too celebrates as Protogonos (First-Born) [Phanes], and it calls him Zeus the order of all and of the whole world, wherefore he is also called Pan (All). So much this second genealogy supplies concerning the Intelligible principles."
Orphica, Epicuras Fragment (from Epiphanius) :
"And he [Epicurus] says that the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [Khronos (Time) and Ananke (Inevitability) entwined?] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature. As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither or Ouranos] and the most rarefied Wind [Khaos the Air?], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge), both the dry land and the fluid waters [Hydros or Pontos?]. And the atoms move by themselves and through themselves within the revolution of the Sky and the Stars, everything still being driven round by the serpentiform wind [Khronos and Ananke?]."
Orphica, Argonautica 12 ff (trans. West) (Greek epic C4th to C6th A.D.) :
"Firstly, ancient Khaos’s stern Ananke (Inevitability), and Khronos (Time), who bred within his boundless coils Aither (Light) and two-sexed, two-faced, glorious Eros [Phanes], ever-born Nyx’s (Night’s) father, whom latter men call Phanes, for he first was manifested."
ANANKE GODDESS OF NECESSITY Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 217 ff (trans. Weir Smyth) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"He [Agamemnon] donned the yoke of Necessity (anankê), with veering of mind [agreed to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia to appease the goddess Artemis so she would allow the Greek fleet to sail for Troy]."
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 103 ff :
"I [Prometheus] must bear my allotted doom [to be chained to a mountain] as lightly as I can, knowing that the might of Necessity (anankê) permits no resistance."
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 510 ff :
"Prometheus : Not in this way is Moira (Fate), who brings all to fulfillment, destined to complete this course. Only when I have been bent by pangs and tortures infinite am I to escape my bondage. Skill is weaker by far than Ananke (Necessity).
Chorus : Who then is the helmsman of Ananke (Necessity)?
Prometheus : The three-shaped (trimorphoi) Moirai (Fates) and mindful (mnêmones) Erinyes (Furies).
Chorus : Can it be that Zeus has less power than they do?
Prometheus : Yes, in that even he cannot escape what is foretold.
Chorus : Why, what is fated for Zeus except to hold eternal sway?
Prometheus : This you must not learn yet; do not be over-eager.
Chorus : It is some solemn secret, surely, that you enshroud in mystery.
[Prometheus knows a secret prophecy that any son born to Zeus and Thetis would depose the god.]"
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1050 ff :
"[Prometheus bound to Mount Kaukasos :] Let him [Zeus] lift me on high and hurl me down to black Tartaros with the swirling floods of stern Necessity (anankê): do what he will, me he shall never bring to death [for Prometheus is immortal]."
Euripides, Alcestis 962 ff (trans. Vellacott) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"Chorus : I have soared aloft with poetry and with high thought, and though I have laid my hand to many a reflection, I have found nothing stronger than Ananke (Necessity), nor is there any cure for it in the Thracian tablets set down by the voice of Orpheus nor in all the simples [cures] which Phoibos [Apollon] harvested in aid of trouble-ridden mortals and gave to the sons of Asklepios."
Empedocles, Fragments (Greek philosopher C5th B.C.) :
"There is a law of stern Ananke (Necessity), the immemorial ordinance of the gods made fast for ever, bravely sworn and sealed: should any Daimon (Spirit or God), born to enduring life, be fouled with sin of slaughter, or transgress by disputation, perjured and forsworn, three times ten thousand years that soul shall wander an outcast from Felicity, condemned to mortal being, and in diverse shapes with interchange of hardship go his ways. The Heavens force him headlong to the Sea; and vomited from the Sea, dry land receives him, but flings unwanted to the burning Sun; from there, to the heavenly vortex backward thrown, he makes from host to host, by all abhorred."
Plato, Republic 617c (trans. Shorey) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"And there were another three who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Moirai (Fates), daughters of Ananke, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, Lakhesis, and Klotho, and Atropos, who sang in unison with the music of the Seirenes, Lakhesis singing the things that were, Klotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be . . . Lakhesis, the maiden daughter of Ananke (Necessity)."
Plato, Symposium 197b (trans. Lamb) :
"Mousai in music, Hephaistos in metal-work, Athene in weaving and Zeus `in pilotage of gods and men.' Hence also those dealings of the gods were contrived by Eros (Love)--clearly love of beauty--astir in them, for Eros (Love) has no concern with ugliness; though aforetime, as I began by saying, there were many strange doings among the gods, as legend tells, because of the dominion of Ananke (Necessity). But since this god arose, the loving of beautiful things has brought all kinds of benefits both to gods and to men."
Herodotus, Histories 8. 111. 1 (trans. Godley) (Greek historian C5th B.C.) :
"Themistokles [the historical Greek general] gave them [the people of Andros] to understand that the Athenians had come with two great gods to aid them, Peitho (Persuasion) and Ananke (Necessity), and that the Andrians must therefore certainly give money, they said in response, 'It is then but reasonable that Athens is great and prosperous, being blessed with serviceable gods. As for us Andrians, we are but blessed with a plentiful lack of land, and we have two unserviceable gods who never quit our island but want to dwell there forever, namely Penia (Poverty) and Amekhania (Helplessness). Since we are in the hands of these gods, we will give no money; the power of Athens can never be stronger than our inability."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3. 430 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"Men serve no harsher mistress than Ananke (Necessity), who drives me now and forced me to come here at another king’s behest."
Callimachus, Hymn 4 to Delos 122 (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Ananke (Necessity) is a great goddess. It is not I who refuse."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 2. 678 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"All the bitter things which the wreathed spindle of apportioned Necessity (ananke) has spun for your fate,--if the threads of the Moirai (Fates) ever obey!"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 10. 90 :
"[Ino in flight from her murderous husband laments :] Ananke (Necessity) is a great god!--where will you flee?"
Suidas s.v. Anankei (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Anankei : With Anankei (Necessity) not even gods fight." - Suidas s.v. Anankei
Suidas s.v. Ananke :
"Ananke (Necessity) : In the Epigrams : `See how all-wise Ananke (Necessity) taught him to find an escape from Hades.' And a proverb: 'The gods do not fight against Ananke (Necessity).' It recommends that one should be satisfied with what is available."
Sources:
Spacetime:
In Greek mythology, Ananke (/əˈnæŋkiː/), also spelled Anangke, Anance, or Anagke (Greek: Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun ἀνάγκη, "force, constraint, necessity"), was the personification of destiny, necessity and fate, depicted as holding a spindle. She marks the beginning of the cosmos, along with Chronos. She was seen as the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance which meant that mortals, as well as the Gods, respected her and paid homage. Considered as the mother of the Fates according to one version, she is the only one to have control over their decisions, except, according to some sources, also Zeus.
According to the ancient Greek traveler Pausanias, there was a temple in ancient Corinth where the goddesses Ananke and Bia (meaning violence or violent haste) were worshipped together in the same shrine. Her Roman counterpart was Necessitas ("necessity"). Ananke or Anagke comes from the ancient Greek Ανάγκη, a goddess representing destiny, necessity, and fate. She is a primeval goddess (protogenos) who emerged self-formed at the very beginning of existence, and is said to be a formless serpent encompassing all manifested existence. She emerged with her serpent mate Khronos or Cronos, the god of time. They are far beyond all other Gods. The daughters of Ananke are the three Fates.
ANANKE was the Protogenos (primeval goddess) of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. She emerged self-formed at the very beginning of time--an incorporeal, serpentine being whose outstretched arms encompassed the breadth of the universe. From the time she first appeared Ananke was entwined in the serpentine coils of her mate, the time-god Khronos. Together they surrounded the primal egg of solid matter in their constricting coils and split it into its constituent parts (earth, heaven and sea) and so brought about the creation of the ordered universe.
Ananke -- inescapable necessity, purpose, goal -- and Khronos remained entwined as the cosmic-circling forces of fate and time--driving the rotation of the heavens and the neverending passage of time. They were far beyond the reach of the younger gods whose fates they were sometimes said to control.
ANANKE & THE BIRTH OF THE COSMOS I) THE COSMOGONY OF ALCMAN
Alcman, Fragment 5 (from Scholia) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (Greek lyric C7th B.C.) :
"`[First came] Thetis (Creation). After that, ancient Poros (Contriver) [Khronos?] and Tekmor (Ordinance) [Ananke?]' : Tekmor came into being after Poros . . . thereupon . . . called him Poros (Contriver) since the beginning provided all things; for when the matter began to be set in order, a certain Poros came into being as a beginning. So Alkman represents the matter of all things as confused and unformed.
Then he says that one came into being who set all things in order, then that Poros came into being, and that when Poros had passed by Tekmor followed. And Poros is as a beginning, Tekmor like an end. When Thetis (Creation) had come into being, a beginning and end of all things came into being simultaneously, and all things have their nature resembling the matter of bronze, while Thetis has hers resembling that of a craftsman, Poros and Tekmor resembling a beginning and the end.
He uses the word ancient for old. `And the third, Skotos’ ( Darkness) [Erebos]: since neither sun nor moorn had come into being yet, but matter was still undifferentiated. So at the same moment there came into being Poros and Tekmor and Skotos. `Amar (Day) [Hemera] and Melana (Moon) [Selene] and third, Skotos (Darkness) as far as Marmarugas (Flashings)’ : days does not mean simply day, but contains the idea of the sun. Previously there was only darkness, and afterwards, when it had been differentiated, light came into being."
II) THE ORPHIC COSMOGONY
Orphica, Theogonies Fragment 54 (from Damascius) (trans. West) (Greek hymns C3rd - C2nd B.C.) :
"Originally there was Hydros (Water), he [Orpheus] says, and Mud, from which Ge (the Earth) solidified: he posits these two as first principles, water and earth . . . The one before the two [Thesis], however, he leaves unexpressed, his very silence being an intimation of its ineffable nature. The third principle after the two was engendered by these--Ge (Earth) and Hydros (Water), that is--and was a Serpent (Drakon) with extra heads growing upon it of a bull and a lion, and a god’s countenance in the middle; it had wings upon its shoulders, and its name was Khronos (Unaging Time) and also Herakles. United with it was Ananke (Inevitability, Compulsion), being of the same nature, or Adrastea, incorporeal, her arms extended throughout the universe and touching its extremities. I think this stands for the third principle, occuping the place of essence, only he [Orpheus] made it bisexual [as Phanes] to symbolize the universal generative cause. And I assume that the theology of the [Orphic] Rhapsodies discarded the two first principles (together with the one before the two, that was left unspoken) [i.e., the Orphics discarded the concepts of Thesis, Khronos and Ananke], and began from this third principle [Phanes] after the two, because this was the first that was expressible and acceptable to human ears. For this is the great Khronos (Unaging Time) that we found in it [the Rhapsodies], the father of Aither and Khaos. Indeed, in this theology too [the Hieronyman], this Khronos (Time), the serpent has offspring, three in number : moist Aither (Light) (I quote), unbounded Khaos (Air), and as a third, misty Erebos (Darkness) . . . Among these, he says, Khronos (Time) generated an egg--this tradition too making it generated by Khronos, and born ‘among’ these because it is from these that the third Intelligible triad is produced [Protogonos-Phanes]. What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it (male and female), and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls’ heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms . . . And the third god of the third triad this theology too celebrates as Protogonos (First-Born) [Phanes], and it calls him Zeus the order of all and of the whole world, wherefore he is also called Pan (All). So much this second genealogy supplies concerning the Intelligible principles."
Orphica, Epicuras Fragment (from Epiphanius) :
"And he [Epicurus] says that the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [Khronos (Time) and Ananke (Inevitability) entwined?] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature. As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither or Ouranos] and the most rarefied Wind [Khaos the Air?], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge), both the dry land and the fluid waters [Hydros or Pontos?]. And the atoms move by themselves and through themselves within the revolution of the Sky and the Stars, everything still being driven round by the serpentiform wind [Khronos and Ananke?]."
Orphica, Argonautica 12 ff (trans. West) (Greek epic C4th to C6th A.D.) :
"Firstly, ancient Khaos’s stern Ananke (Inevitability), and Khronos (Time), who bred within his boundless coils Aither (Light) and two-sexed, two-faced, glorious Eros [Phanes], ever-born Nyx’s (Night’s) father, whom latter men call Phanes, for he first was manifested."
ANANKE GODDESS OF NECESSITY Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 217 ff (trans. Weir Smyth) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"He [Agamemnon] donned the yoke of Necessity (anankê), with veering of mind [agreed to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia to appease the goddess Artemis so she would allow the Greek fleet to sail for Troy]."
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 103 ff :
"I [Prometheus] must bear my allotted doom [to be chained to a mountain] as lightly as I can, knowing that the might of Necessity (anankê) permits no resistance."
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 510 ff :
"Prometheus : Not in this way is Moira (Fate), who brings all to fulfillment, destined to complete this course. Only when I have been bent by pangs and tortures infinite am I to escape my bondage. Skill is weaker by far than Ananke (Necessity).
Chorus : Who then is the helmsman of Ananke (Necessity)?
Prometheus : The three-shaped (trimorphoi) Moirai (Fates) and mindful (mnêmones) Erinyes (Furies).
Chorus : Can it be that Zeus has less power than they do?
Prometheus : Yes, in that even he cannot escape what is foretold.
Chorus : Why, what is fated for Zeus except to hold eternal sway?
Prometheus : This you must not learn yet; do not be over-eager.
Chorus : It is some solemn secret, surely, that you enshroud in mystery.
[Prometheus knows a secret prophecy that any son born to Zeus and Thetis would depose the god.]"
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1050 ff :
"[Prometheus bound to Mount Kaukasos :] Let him [Zeus] lift me on high and hurl me down to black Tartaros with the swirling floods of stern Necessity (anankê): do what he will, me he shall never bring to death [for Prometheus is immortal]."
Euripides, Alcestis 962 ff (trans. Vellacott) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"Chorus : I have soared aloft with poetry and with high thought, and though I have laid my hand to many a reflection, I have found nothing stronger than Ananke (Necessity), nor is there any cure for it in the Thracian tablets set down by the voice of Orpheus nor in all the simples [cures] which Phoibos [Apollon] harvested in aid of trouble-ridden mortals and gave to the sons of Asklepios."
Empedocles, Fragments (Greek philosopher C5th B.C.) :
"There is a law of stern Ananke (Necessity), the immemorial ordinance of the gods made fast for ever, bravely sworn and sealed: should any Daimon (Spirit or God), born to enduring life, be fouled with sin of slaughter, or transgress by disputation, perjured and forsworn, three times ten thousand years that soul shall wander an outcast from Felicity, condemned to mortal being, and in diverse shapes with interchange of hardship go his ways. The Heavens force him headlong to the Sea; and vomited from the Sea, dry land receives him, but flings unwanted to the burning Sun; from there, to the heavenly vortex backward thrown, he makes from host to host, by all abhorred."
Plato, Republic 617c (trans. Shorey) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"And there were another three who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Moirai (Fates), daughters of Ananke, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, Lakhesis, and Klotho, and Atropos, who sang in unison with the music of the Seirenes, Lakhesis singing the things that were, Klotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be . . . Lakhesis, the maiden daughter of Ananke (Necessity)."
Plato, Symposium 197b (trans. Lamb) :
"Mousai in music, Hephaistos in metal-work, Athene in weaving and Zeus `in pilotage of gods and men.' Hence also those dealings of the gods were contrived by Eros (Love)--clearly love of beauty--astir in them, for Eros (Love) has no concern with ugliness; though aforetime, as I began by saying, there were many strange doings among the gods, as legend tells, because of the dominion of Ananke (Necessity). But since this god arose, the loving of beautiful things has brought all kinds of benefits both to gods and to men."
Herodotus, Histories 8. 111. 1 (trans. Godley) (Greek historian C5th B.C.) :
"Themistokles [the historical Greek general] gave them [the people of Andros] to understand that the Athenians had come with two great gods to aid them, Peitho (Persuasion) and Ananke (Necessity), and that the Andrians must therefore certainly give money, they said in response, 'It is then but reasonable that Athens is great and prosperous, being blessed with serviceable gods. As for us Andrians, we are but blessed with a plentiful lack of land, and we have two unserviceable gods who never quit our island but want to dwell there forever, namely Penia (Poverty) and Amekhania (Helplessness). Since we are in the hands of these gods, we will give no money; the power of Athens can never be stronger than our inability."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3. 430 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"Men serve no harsher mistress than Ananke (Necessity), who drives me now and forced me to come here at another king’s behest."
Callimachus, Hymn 4 to Delos 122 (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Ananke (Necessity) is a great goddess. It is not I who refuse."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 2. 678 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"All the bitter things which the wreathed spindle of apportioned Necessity (ananke) has spun for your fate,--if the threads of the Moirai (Fates) ever obey!"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 10. 90 :
"[Ino in flight from her murderous husband laments :] Ananke (Necessity) is a great god!--where will you flee?"
Suidas s.v. Anankei (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Anankei : With Anankei (Necessity) not even gods fight." - Suidas s.v. Anankei
Suidas s.v. Ananke :
"Ananke (Necessity) : In the Epigrams : `See how all-wise Ananke (Necessity) taught him to find an escape from Hades.' And a proverb: 'The gods do not fight against Ananke (Necessity).' It recommends that one should be satisfied with what is available."
Sources:
- Greek Lyric II Alcman, Fragments - Greek Lyric C7th B.C.
- Aeschylus, Agamemnon - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.
- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.
- Euripides, Alcestis - Greek Tragedy C5th B.C.
- Empedocles, Fragments - Greek Philosophy C5th B.C.
- Plato, Symposium - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.
- Plato, Republic - Greek Philosophy C4th B.C.
- Herodotus, Histories - Greek History C5th B.C.
- Orphic Hymns - Greek Hymns C3rd B.C. - C2nd A.D.
- Orphica, Fragments - Greek Hymns C3rd B.C. - C2nd A.D.
- Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica - Greek Epic C3rd B.C.
- Callimachus, Hymns - Greek Poetry C3rd B.C.
- Pausanias, Description of Greece - Greek Travelogue C2nd A.D.
- Nonnos, Dionysiaca - Greek Epic C5th A.D.
- Suidas - Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.
Ruins of the Temple of Saturn (eight columns to the far right) in February 2010, with three columns from the Temple of Vespasian and Titus (left) and the Arch of Septimius Severus
Ananke or Anagke comes from the ancient Greek Ανάγκη, a goddess representing destiny, necessity, and fate. She is a primeval goddess (protogenos) who emerged self-formed at the very beginning of existence, and is said to be a formless serpent encompassing all manifested existence. She emerged with her serpent mate Khronos or Cronos, the god of time. They are far beyond all other Gods. The daughters of Ananke are the three Fates.
Since the beginning of time, necessity was required. Necessity was needed to make time flow. Compulsion was required to create Earth. Fate was required for history to be made. All of these qualities are controlled by Ananke.
Without balance, one cannot comprehend Chaos. This necessity for balance allowed for Order. Order allowed for comprehension. Comprehension allowed for civilization. Civilization required fate and compulsion to advance. It is in this way that Ananke governs the universe. She controls Fate, she shapes the balance between Order and Chaos, and through compulsion does she shape civilization. The world is her playground. Humankind is her toy. And her fun is grand. If battles are fought, she orchestrated it. If wars are won, she chose the winner. If two people become friends, she made them meet. She has played with humanity since the beginning of time. She shows no signs of stopping.
However, is this godly war beyond her power? Has it caused too much Chaos? Has it stopped compulsion? Can humans not comprehend it? Whatever the reason, she has decided to make a personal appearance. And if this war is beyond her power, she will do what it takes to return it to her playground.
When you hear the name ‘Aphrodite,’ it is highly likely that you immediately understand who it is one is speaking of – after all, Aphrodite (and the Roman goddess that she was identified with, Venus) is a popular figure even outside of Hellenic Polytheistic circles. However, unless you have delved quite deeply into the Greek mythologies, it is unlikely that you will know who ‘Ananke’ is. She is not a mainstream goddess; she is not Olympian nor an attendant of such, but rather she is one of the gods—the Protogenos or primeval gods—who are principally responsible for the creation of the cosmos and everything within it.
Simply put, Ananke is the god of compulsion, necessity and inevitability. She was born the sister-mate of the Protogenos Khronos, king of time—who is deeply identified with Aion, the Protogenos lord of eternity—and from their embrace Phanes first begun. Phanes, the primeval god of creation and generation, equated with Hesiod’s Elder Eros and the more well-known (and oft-called ‘younger’) Eros, god of love and the son of Aphrodite.
In my personal view of How The Kosmos Came To Be—based on a mix of classical sources—in the beginning, and for unknowable eons, all that existed was Khaos; the deep mists of the void. Khaos existed, and nothing else: she did not breathe, she did not think, she did not live. And yet stirring in her misty womb—perhaps over hundreds of thousands of years; perhaps for even longer—were the Protogenos gods Ananke and Khronos-Aion. Nature, of course, abhors a vacuum; and so it was the eternal pull of inevitability that pulsed together in the barely-there body of Khaos until, finally, the moment arose and Ananke and Khronos-Aion were born, tangled together.
From Khronos-Aion and Ananke’s violent, and yet utterly sexless, embrace, Phanes’ egg was produced; it grew in Ananke’s womb until the time came for it to emerge. And yet there was, truly, no way for the egg to emerge: there was yet no Phanes, no Protogenos pull to reproduce – and so they could not, did not, reproduce. It was only when Phanes hatched from his egg, deep in Ananke’s body, that they became truly, sexually formed: and at that moment, Ananke was torn apart by the immense pressure of generation, life, sex – the immense pressure that was Phanes. Thus, now, Ananke’s divinity rested with Khronos’ still, but she was utterly formless—more so, even, than Khaos.
Phanes’ arrival—his necessary arrival—into the kosmos kicked everything into action. The other Protogenos offspring that had been stirring within Khaos were instantly born – Erebos, Nyx, Tartaros and Gaia; darkness, night, the stormy pit beneath the earth and the earth itself, respectively. Phanes pulsed, everywhere: the Protogenos gods crashed together and life exploded in the far-reaching darkness of the kosmos.
Gaia, with only Phanes’ massively sexual influence and no tangible partner, produced children such as Ouranos, the heavens, whom shortly thereafter became the father, with Gaia, of the twelve Titanes. The Titanes were led by Kronos, god of destructive time, and the bi-gendered god Agdistis, who would later be castrated and become the goddess Rhea-Kybele. However, not all was as perfectly peaceful as it may sound: and the first war between the gods was not long in arriving.
After the Titanes’ births, Ouranos and Gaia continued to come together—he descended nightly to lie with her—and they produced more children, the Hekatonkheires (six hundred-handed and fifty-headed gigantes). The Hekatonkheires were so awful and terrifying to look upon that, after the birth of the first, Ouranos took it upon himself to force each back into Gaia’s womb. This caused her immense pain, and she eventually went to her Titane sons to ask them for their help. Only Kronos agreed to help.
Since the beginning of time, necessity was required. Necessity was needed to make time flow. Compulsion was required to create Earth. Fate was required for history to be made. All of these qualities are controlled by Ananke.
Without balance, one cannot comprehend Chaos. This necessity for balance allowed for Order. Order allowed for comprehension. Comprehension allowed for civilization. Civilization required fate and compulsion to advance. It is in this way that Ananke governs the universe. She controls Fate, she shapes the balance between Order and Chaos, and through compulsion does she shape civilization. The world is her playground. Humankind is her toy. And her fun is grand. If battles are fought, she orchestrated it. If wars are won, she chose the winner. If two people become friends, she made them meet. She has played with humanity since the beginning of time. She shows no signs of stopping.
However, is this godly war beyond her power? Has it caused too much Chaos? Has it stopped compulsion? Can humans not comprehend it? Whatever the reason, she has decided to make a personal appearance. And if this war is beyond her power, she will do what it takes to return it to her playground.
When you hear the name ‘Aphrodite,’ it is highly likely that you immediately understand who it is one is speaking of – after all, Aphrodite (and the Roman goddess that she was identified with, Venus) is a popular figure even outside of Hellenic Polytheistic circles. However, unless you have delved quite deeply into the Greek mythologies, it is unlikely that you will know who ‘Ananke’ is. She is not a mainstream goddess; she is not Olympian nor an attendant of such, but rather she is one of the gods—the Protogenos or primeval gods—who are principally responsible for the creation of the cosmos and everything within it.
Simply put, Ananke is the god of compulsion, necessity and inevitability. She was born the sister-mate of the Protogenos Khronos, king of time—who is deeply identified with Aion, the Protogenos lord of eternity—and from their embrace Phanes first begun. Phanes, the primeval god of creation and generation, equated with Hesiod’s Elder Eros and the more well-known (and oft-called ‘younger’) Eros, god of love and the son of Aphrodite.
In my personal view of How The Kosmos Came To Be—based on a mix of classical sources—in the beginning, and for unknowable eons, all that existed was Khaos; the deep mists of the void. Khaos existed, and nothing else: she did not breathe, she did not think, she did not live. And yet stirring in her misty womb—perhaps over hundreds of thousands of years; perhaps for even longer—were the Protogenos gods Ananke and Khronos-Aion. Nature, of course, abhors a vacuum; and so it was the eternal pull of inevitability that pulsed together in the barely-there body of Khaos until, finally, the moment arose and Ananke and Khronos-Aion were born, tangled together.
From Khronos-Aion and Ananke’s violent, and yet utterly sexless, embrace, Phanes’ egg was produced; it grew in Ananke’s womb until the time came for it to emerge. And yet there was, truly, no way for the egg to emerge: there was yet no Phanes, no Protogenos pull to reproduce – and so they could not, did not, reproduce. It was only when Phanes hatched from his egg, deep in Ananke’s body, that they became truly, sexually formed: and at that moment, Ananke was torn apart by the immense pressure of generation, life, sex – the immense pressure that was Phanes. Thus, now, Ananke’s divinity rested with Khronos’ still, but she was utterly formless—more so, even, than Khaos.
Phanes’ arrival—his necessary arrival—into the kosmos kicked everything into action. The other Protogenos offspring that had been stirring within Khaos were instantly born – Erebos, Nyx, Tartaros and Gaia; darkness, night, the stormy pit beneath the earth and the earth itself, respectively. Phanes pulsed, everywhere: the Protogenos gods crashed together and life exploded in the far-reaching darkness of the kosmos.
Gaia, with only Phanes’ massively sexual influence and no tangible partner, produced children such as Ouranos, the heavens, whom shortly thereafter became the father, with Gaia, of the twelve Titanes. The Titanes were led by Kronos, god of destructive time, and the bi-gendered god Agdistis, who would later be castrated and become the goddess Rhea-Kybele. However, not all was as perfectly peaceful as it may sound: and the first war between the gods was not long in arriving.
After the Titanes’ births, Ouranos and Gaia continued to come together—he descended nightly to lie with her—and they produced more children, the Hekatonkheires (six hundred-handed and fifty-headed gigantes). The Hekatonkheires were so awful and terrifying to look upon that, after the birth of the first, Ouranos took it upon himself to force each back into Gaia’s womb. This caused her immense pain, and she eventually went to her Titane sons to ask them for their help. Only Kronos agreed to help.
The End of Time
The Next Revolution in Physics
JULIAN BARBOUR
A revolutionary new theory that attacks one of the foundation
stones of science--the existence of time
Richard Feynman once quipped that "Time is what happens when
nothing else does." But Julian Barbour disagrees: if nothing
happened, if nothing changed, then time would stop. For time is
nothing but change. It is change that we perceive occurring all
around us, not time. Put simply, time does not exist.
In this highly provocative volume, Barbour presents the basic
evidence for a timeless universe, and shows why we still experience
the world as intensely temporal. It is a book that strikes at the heart
of modern physics. It casts doubt on Einstein's greatest contribution,
the spacetime continuum, but also points to the solution of one of the
great paradoxes of modern science, the chasm between classical
and quantum physics. Indeed, Barbour argues that the holy grail of
physicists--the unification of Einstein's general relativity with
quantum mechanics--may well spell the end of time.
Barbour writes with remarkable clarity as he ranges from the
ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, through the giants
of science Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, to the work of the
contemporary physicists John Wheeler, Roger Penrose, and Steven
Hawking. Along the way he treats us to enticing glimpses of some
of the mysteries of the universe, and presents intriguing ideas about
multiple worlds, time travel, immortality, and, above all, the illusion of
motion.
The End of Time is a vibrantly written and revolutionary book. It
turns our understanding of reality inside-out.
FAMILY OF ORIGIN
PARENTAGE OF CRONUS
Hesiod, Theogony 126 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"She [Gaia] lay with Ouranos and bare deep-swirling Okeanos, Koios and Krios and Hyperion and Iapetos, Theia and Rheia, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoibe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Kronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire."
Simonides, Fragment 511 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (C6th to 5th B.C.) :
"Kronos (Time) child of Ouranos (Sky)."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 1 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"[Ouranos the Sky] fathered other sons on Ge (Earth), namely the Titanes : Okeanos, Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos, and Kronos the youngest; also daughters called Titanides : Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Dione, Theia."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"The Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knossos [in Krete], at the place where even to this day men point out foundations of a house of Rhea and a cypress grove which has been consecrated to her from ancient times. The Titanes numbered six men and five women, being born, as certain writers of myths relate, of Ouranos (Sky) and Ge (Earth), but according to others, of one of the Kouretes and Titaia, from whom as their mother they derive the name they have. The males were Kronos, Hyperion, Koios, Iapetos, Krios and Okeanos . . . Each one of them was the discover of things of benefit to mankind, and because of the benefaction they conferred upon all men they were accorded honours and everlasting fame."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Aether and Terra [were born various abstractions] . . .
[From Caelum (Ouranos) and Terra (Gaia) were born ?] Oceanus, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus; the Titanes : Briareus, Gyes, Steropes, Atlas, Hyperion, and Polus [Koios], Saturnus [Kronos], Ops [Rhea], Moneta [Mnemosyne], Dione." [N.B. Hyginus' Preface survives only in summary. The Titanes should be listed as children of Ouranos (Caelum) and Gaia (Terra) not Aither and Gaia, but the notation to this effect seems to have been lost in the transcription.]
CRONUS & THE CASTRATION OF URANUS Hesiod, Theogony 147 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"She [Gaia the Earth] lay with Ouranos (Sky) and bare deep-swirling Okeanos, Koios and Krios and Hyperion and Iapetos, Theia and Rheia, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoibe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Kronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. And again, she bare the Kyklopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges.
And again, three other sons were born of Gaia and Ouranos, great and doughty beyond telling, Kottos and Briareos and Gyes [the Hekatonkheires]. From their shoulders sprang a hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms. For of all the children that were born of Gaia and Ouranos, these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first. And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Gaia so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Ouranos rejoiced in his evil doing.And he [Ouranos] used to hide them all [the Hekatonkheires] away in a secret place of Gaia (Earth) so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light : and Ouranos (Sky) rejoiced in his evil doing. But vast Gaia (Earth) groaned within, being straitened, and she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons. And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart : `My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So she said; but fear seized them all, and none of them uttered a word. But great Kronos the wily took courage and answered his dear mother : `Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So he said : and vast Gaia (Earth) rejoiced greatly in spirit, and set and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands a jagged sickle, and revealed to him the whole plot.
And Ouranos (Sky) came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia (Earth) spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him. And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Gaia (Earth) received, and as the seasons moved round she bare the strong Erinyes and the great Gigantes [perhaps the Kouretes] with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands and the Nymphai whom they call Meliai all over the boundless earth. And so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden [Aphrodite] . . .
But these sons whom be begot himself great Ouranos (Sky) used to call Titanes (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards."
Hesiod, Theogony 20 ff :
"Kronos the crafty counsellor."
Plato, Euthyphro 5e (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"Men believe that Zeus . . . put his father [Kronos] in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children, and he in turn had mutilated his father [Ouranos] for similar reasons."
Plato, Republic 377e (trans. Shorey) :
“`There is, first of all,' I said, `the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him [Hesiod] who told how Ouranos did what Hesiod says he did to Kronos, and how Kronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Kronos at the hands of his son [Zeus]. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons.'”
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 3 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Ouranos (Sky) was the first to rule over the entire world. He married Ge (Earth) and sired first the Hekatonkheires, who were names Briareos, Gyes and Kottos. They were unsurpassed in both size and power, and each had a hundred hands and fifty heads. After these he sired the Kyklopes, by name Arges, Steropes, and Brontes, each of whom had one eye in his forehead. But Ouranos (Sky) bound these and threw them into Tartaros (a place in Haides’ realm as dark as Erebos, and as far away from the earth as the earth is from the sky), and fathered other sons on Ge, namely the Titanes : Okeanos, Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos, and Kronos the youngest; also daughters called Titanides : Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Dione, Theia.
Now Ge (Earth), distressed by the loss of her children into Tartaros, persuaded the Titanes to attack their father, and she gave Kronos a sickle made of adamant. So all of them except Okeanos set upon Ouranos (Sky), and Kronos cut off his genitals, tossing them into the sea. (From the drops of the flowing blood Erinyes were born, named Alekto, Tisiphone, Megaira.) Thus having overthrown Ouranos’ (Sky's) rule the Titanes retrieved their brothers from Tartaros and gave the power to Kronos."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4. 982 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"In the Keraunian Sea, fronting the Ionian Straits, there is a rich and spacious island, under the soil of which is said to lie (bear with me, Mousai; it gives me little pleasure to recall the old tale) the sickle used by Kronos to castrate his father Ouranos (Sky) . . . From this reaping-hook the island takes its name of Drepane, the sacred Nurse of the Phaiakians, who by the same token trace their ancestry to Ouranos (Sky)."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff :
"He [the poet Orpheus] sang of . . . How, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Kronos, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos." [N.B. Ophion and Eurynome might be Ouranos and Gaia or Okeanos and Tethys.]
Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 43 (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"The builders made strong wooden towers with battlements [building the city of Zankle in Sicily], and placed them around the sickle of Kronos--for there in a cave is hidden under the earth the sickle with which he cut off his father’s genitals [the sickle was reputedly buried near where the city of Zankle (the Sickle) was founded]."
Lycophron, Alexandra 760 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"The island [Drepane island of the Phaiakians] abhorred by Kronos--the isle of the Sickle that severed his [Ouranos’] privy parts."
Strabo, Geography 14. 2. 7 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Since they [the Telkhines] excelled in workmanship . . . they first came from Krete to Kypros, and then to Rhodes; and that they were the first to work iron and brass, and in fact fabricated the scythe for Kronos."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 23. 4 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"[Near Bolina in Akhaia] a cape juts out into the sea, and of it is told a story how Kronos threw into the sea here the sickle with which he mutilated his father Ouranos (Sky). For this reason they call the cape Drepanon. [N.B. drepanon is the Greek word for 'sickle.']"
Virgil, Georgics 2. 406 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman bucolic C1st B.C.) :
"Lopping it [the vine] with Saturnus' [Kronos'] crooked knife and pruning it into shape."
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2. 24 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.) :
"Another theory also, and that a scientific one, has been the source of a number of deities, who clad in human form have furnished the poets with legends and have filled man’s life with superstitions of all sorts. This subject was handled by Zeno and was later explained more fully by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For example, an ancient belief prevailed throughout Greece that Caelus [Ouranos the Sky] was mutilated by his son Saturnus [Kronos] . . . Their meaning was that the highest element of celestial ether or fire [Ouranos the Sky], which by itself generates all things, is devoid of that bodily part which required union with another for the work of procreation."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7. 222 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"[A complliment givent to a beautiful woman :] `Can it be that Kronos, after the first Kypris [Aphrodite born from Ouranos’ castrated genitals], again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a selfperfected birth, delivered of a younger Aphrodite from the sea?'"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 12. 43 ff :
"[The history of the world inscribed on tablets by the primordial god Phanes :] The first tablet, old as the infinite past, containing all things in one: upon it was all that Ophion lord paramount had done, all that ancient Kronos accomplished: when he cut off his father’s [Ouranos'] male plowshare, and sowed the teeming deep with seed on the unsown back of the daughterbegetting sea (Thalassa)."
Nonnus, Dionsyiaca 18. 223 ff :
"Kronos still dripping held the emasculating sickleblade, after he had cut off the manly crop of his father’s [Ouranos’] plow and robbed him of the Mother’s [Gaia’s] bed to which he was hastening."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 21. 252 ff :
"[The Indian King Deriades speaks :] `I know nothing of Kronos, or of Kronides [Zeus] who destroyed his father, nor Kronos the master-deceiver, who swallowed his own children, and shore away from Aither [Ouranos] the hive of begetting love.'"
CANNIBAL CRONUS & THE BIRTH OF HIS CHILDREN Homer, Iliad 15. 187 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"[Poseidon addresses Iris :] We are three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos, Zeus, and I, and the third is Haides, lord of the dead men."
Hesiod, Theogony 453 (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"But Rhea was subject in love to Kronos and bare splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Haides . . . and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker [Poseidon], and wise Zeus . . . These great Kronos swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother's knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Ouranos (Heaven) should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. For he learned from Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Sky) that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeus.Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children : and unceasing grief seized Rhea. But when she was about to bear Zeus, the father of gods and men, then she besought her own dear parents, Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Sky), to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Kronos for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down. And they readily heard and obeyed their dear daughter, and told her all that was destined to happen touching Kronos the king and his stout-hearted son. So they sent her to Lyetos, to the rich land of Krete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Him did vast Gaia (Earth) receive from Rhea in wide Krete to nourish and to bring up. Thither came Gaia carrying him swiftly through the black night to Lyktos first, and took him in her arms and hid him in a remote cave beneath the secret places of the holy earth on thick-wooded Mount Aigeion; but to [Kronos] the mightily ruling son of Ouranos (Sky), the earlier king of the gods, she gave a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then he took it in his hands and thrust it down into his belly: wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled, and that he was soon to overcome him by force and might and drive him from his honours, himself to reign over the deathless gods.
After that, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly, and as the years rolled on, great Kronos the wily was beguiled by the deep suggestions of Gaia (Earth), and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son, and he vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last. And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassos, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men. And he set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father, sons of Ouranos [the Hekatonkheires and Kyklopes] whom his father in his foolishness had bound. And they remembered to be grateful to him for his kindness, and gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt and lightening: for before that, huge Gaia (Earth) had hidden these. In them he trusts and rules over mortals and immortals."
Hesiod, Theogony 617 ff :
"The son of Kronos [Zeus] and the other deathless gods whom rich-haired Rhea bare from union with Kronos."
Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 20 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :
"She [Hestia] was the first-born child of wily Kronos and youngest too." [N.B. Hestia was the first-born child of Kronos and so the first to be devoured and last disgorged (i.e. her rebirth). Hence the poet describes her as both the oldest and youngest child.]
Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 42 ff :
"[Hera] whom wily (agkylometes) Kronos with her mother Rheia did beget."
Corinna, Fragment 654 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"The Koureites hid the holy babe of the goddess [Rhea] in a cave without the knowledge of crooked-witted [koulomeitas] Kronos, when blessed [makera] Rhea stole him and won great honour from the immortals."
Plato, Euthyphro 5e (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"Men believe that Zeus . . . put his father [Kronos] in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4 - 5 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"But Kronos once again [after deposing Ouranos] bound the Kyklopes and confined them in Tartaros. He then married his sister Rhea. Because both Ge (Earth) and Ouranos (Heaven) had given him prophetic warning that his rule would be overthrown by a son of his own, he took to swallowing his children at birth. He swallowed his first-born daughter Hestia, then Demeter and Hera, and after them Plouton and Poseidon. Angered by this, Rhea, when she was heavy with Zeus, went off to Krete and gave birth to him there in a cave on Mount Dikte . . . the armed Kouretes stood guard over him in the cave, banging their spears against their shields to prevent Kronos from hearing the infant’s voice. Rhea meanwhile gave Kronos a stone wrapped in the swaddling-cloths to swallow in place of his newborn son. When Zeus was grown, he engaged Okeanos’ daughter Metis (Counsel) as a colleague. She gave Kronos a drug, by which he was forced to vomit forth first the stone and then the children he had swallowed."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"He [Orpheus] sang of . . . How, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Kronos, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos; and how their successors ruled the happy Titan gods when Zeus in his Diktaian cave was still a child, with childish thoughts, before the earthborn Kyklopes had given him the bolt, the thunder and lightning that form his glorious armament today."
Callimachus, Hymn 1 to Zeus 50 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"And lustily round thee [the baby Zeus] danced the Kouretes a war-dance, beating their armour, that Kronos might hear with his ears the din of the shield, but not thine infant noise."
Lycophron, Alexandra 1191 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Him [Zeus] who is lord of Ophion’s throne. But he [Zeus] shall bring thee to the plain of his nativity [Thebes], that land celebrated above others by the Greeks, where his mother [Rhea], skilled in wrestling, having cast into Tartaros the former queen [Eurynome, wife of Ophion], delivered her of him [Zeus] in travail of secret birth, escaping the child-devouring unholy feast of her spouse [Kronos]; and he fattened not his belly with food, but swallowed instead the stone, wrapped in limb-fitting swaddling clothes: savage Kentauros [Kronos as father of the centaur Kheiron], tomb of his own offspring."
Aratus, Phaenomena 27 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek astronomical poem C3rd B.C.) :
"When in olden days he [Zeus] played as a child in fragrant Dikton, near the hill of Ida, they [the Nymphai Helike & Kynosoura] set him in a cave and nurtured him for the space of a year, what time the Diktaioi Kouretes were deceiving Kronos. Now the one men call by name Kynosoura and the other Helike."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"Regarding the birth of Zeus and the manner in which he came to be king, there is no agreement. Some say that he succeeded to the kingship after Kronos passed from among men into the company of the gods, not by overcoming his father with violence, but in the manner prescribed by custom and justly, having been judged worthy of that honour. But others recount a myth, which runs as follows: There was delivered to Kronos an oracle regarding the birth of Zeus which stated that the son who would be born to him would wrest the kingship from him by force. Consequently Kronos time and again did away with the children whom he begot; but Rhea, grieved as she was, and yet lacking the power to change her husband’s purpose, when she had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Ide, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Kronos, entrusted the rearing of him to the Kouretes of Mt Ide."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 68. 1 :
"To Kronos and Rhea, we are told, were born Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and Zeus, Poseidon, and Haides."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 79. 7 :
"They [the Nymphai Ida & Adrasteia] nurtured Zeus of old without the knowledge of his father Kronos . . . And Aratos [poet C3rd B.C.] agrees with this account when he states in his poem on the stars : ‘. . . When he [Zeus] was babe in fragrant Dikton near thee Idaian Mount, they set him in a cave and nurtured him a year, the while Kouretes Diktaioi practised deceit on Kronos.'"
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 :
"The Kouretes also invented swords and helmets and the war-dance, by means of which they raised a great alarum and deceived Kronos. And we are told that, when Rhea, the mother of Zeus, entrusted him to them unbeknown to Kronos his father, they took him under their care and saw to his nurture."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 11 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The mythical story of the birth of Zeus; in this they introduced Kronos as accustomed to swallow his children immediately after their birth, and Rhea as trying to keep her travail secret and, when the child was born, to get it out of the way and save its life by every means in her power; and to accomplish this it is said that she took as helpers the Kouretes, who, by surrounding the goddess with tambourines and similar noisy instruments and with war-dance and uproar, were supposed to strike terror into Kronos and without his knowledge to steal his child away."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 :
"Some call the Korybantes sons of Kronos."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 4. 33. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"It is a hopeless task to enumerate all the peoples who claim that Zeus was born and brought up among them. The Messenians have their share in the story : for they too say that the god was brought up among them and that his nurses were Ithome and Neda, the river having received its name from the latter, while the former, Ithome, gave her name to the mountain. These Nymphai are said to have bathed Zeus here, after he was stolen by the Kouretes owing to the danger that threatened from his father [Kronos], and it is said that it [the fountain Klepsydra on Mt Ithome in Messenia] has its name from the Kouretes’ theft."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 7. 6 :
"As for the Olympiakos Games, the most learned antiquarians of Elis say that Kronos was the first king of heaven, and that in his honour a temple was built in Olympia by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Daktyloi of Ida, who are the same as those called Kouretes."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 8. 2 :
"[Near the town of Nestane in Arkadia there is] a well called Aren (Lamb). The following story is told by the Arkadians. When Rhea had given birth to Poseidon, she laid him in a flock for him to live there with the lambs, and the spring too received its name just because the lambs pastured around it. Rhea, it is said, declared to Kronos that she had given birth to a horse, and gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child, just as later she gave him in place of Zeus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 36. 2 :
"Mount Thamasios (Wonderful) lies beyond the river Maloitas [in Arkadia], and the Methydrians hold that when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, she came to this mountain and enlisted as her allies, in case Kronos should attack her, Hopladamos and his few Gigantes [the Kouretes]. They allow that she gave birth to her son on some part of Mount Lykaios, but they claim that here Kronos was deceived, and here took place the substitution of a stone for the child that is spoken of in the Greek legend. On the summit of the mountain is Rhea’s Cave, into which no human beings may enter save only the women who are sacred to the goddess."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 2. 7 :
"On entering [the temple of Hera at Plataia, Boiotia] you see Rhea carrying to Kronos the stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, as though it were the babe to which she had given birth."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 41. 6 :
"There is beyond the city [of Khaironeia, Boiotia] a crag called Petrakhos. Here they hold that Kronos was deceived, and received from Rhea a stone instead of Zeus, and there is a small image of Zeus on the summit of the mountain."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 10. 24. 6 :
"Ascending [through the oracular shrine of Delphoi, Phokis] you come to a stone of no large size [the omphalos]. Over it every day they pour olive oil, and at each feast they place on it unworked wool. There is also an opinion about this stone, that it was given to Kronos instead of his child, and that Kronos vomited it up again."
Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 36 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"When Rhea, fearing Kronos, hid Zeus in the Kretan cavern, a goat [Amaltheia] offered her udder and gave him nourishment. By the will of Rhea a Golden Dog guarded the goat. After Zeus drove out the Titanes and deprived Kronos of power, he changed the goat into an immortal, there is a representation of her among the stars to this day."
Oppian, Cynegetica 3. 7 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd A.D.) :
"The Kouretes were the nurses of the infant Zeus, the mighty son of Kronos, what time Rhea concealed his birth and carried away the newly-born child from Kronos, his sire implacable, and placed him in the vales of Krete. And when [Kronos] the son of Ouranos (Sky) beheld the lusty young child he transformed the first glorious guardians of Zeus and in vengeance made the Kouretes wild beasts. And since by the devising of the god Kronos exchanged their human shape and put upon them the form of Lions, thenceforth by the boon of Zeus they greatly lord it over the wild beasts which dwell upon the hills, and under the yoke they draw the terrible swift car of Rhea who lightens the pangs of birth."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Saturnus [Kronos] and Ops [Rhea] [were born] : Vesta [Hestia], Ceres [Demeter], Iuno [Hera], Iuppiter [Zeus], Pluto [Hades], Neptunus [Poseidon]."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 139 :
"After Opis [Rhea] had borne Jove [Zeus] by Saturnus [Kronos], Juno [Hera] asked her to give him to her, since Saturnus and cast Orcus [Hades] under Tartarus, and Neptunus [Poseidon] under the sea, because he knew that his son would rob him of the kingdom. When he had asked Opis for what she had borne, in order to devour it, Opis showed him a stone wrapped up like a baby; Saturnus devoured it. When he realized what he had done, he started to hunt for Jove throughout the earth. Juno, however, took Jove to the island of Crete, and Amalthea, the child’s nurse, hung him in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea. And lest the cries of the baby be heard, she summoned youths and gave them small brazen shields and spears, and bade them go around the tree making a noise. In Greek they are called Curetes; others call them Corybantes; these in Italy, however are called Lares."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 43 :
"Milky Way . . . Others say that at the time Ops [Rhea] brought to Saturnus [Kronos] the stone, pretending it was a child, he bade her offer milk to it; when she pressed her breast, the milk that was caused to flow formed the circle which we mentioned above."
Ovid, Metamorphoses 9. 497 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Gods have loved their sisters; yes, indeed! Why Saturnus [Kronos] married Ops [Rhea], his kin by blood . . . But the gods above are laws unto themselves."
Ovid, Fasti 4. 197 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Saturnus [Kronos] received this oracle: ‘Best of kings, you shall be knocked from power by a son.’ Jabbed by fear, he devours his offspring as each was born, and entombs them in his bowels. Rhea often complained of much pregnancy and no motherhood, and mourned her fertility. Jove [Zeus] was born (trust antiquity’s testimony, do not disturb inherited belief) : a stone, concealed in cloth, settled in the god’s gullet; so the father was fated to be tricked. For a long time steep Ida booms its clanging noise so the wordless infant may wail safely. Shields or empty helmets are pounded with sticks, the Curetes’ or Corybantes’ task. The truth hid."
Ovid, Fasti 6. 285 ff :
"Juno [Hera] and Ceres [Demeter], they recount, were born from Ops [Rhea] by Saturnus’ [Kronos’] seed. Vesta [Hestia] was the third."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8. 110 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"[Hera addresses Apate, the spirit of deceit :] `Lend me also that girdle or many colours, which Rheia once bound about her flanks when she deceived her husband! I bring no pretrified shape for my Kronion [Zeus], I do not trick my husband with a wily stone.'"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 12. 43 ff :
"[The history of the world inscribed on tablets by the primordial god Phanes :] The first tablet, old as the infinite past, containing all things in one: upon it was all that Ophion lord paramount had done, all that ancient Kronos accomplished: when he cut off his father’s [Ouranos'] male plowshare, and sowed the teeming deep with seed on the unsown back of the daughterbegetting sea (Thalassa); how he opened a gaping throat to receive a stony son, when he made a meal of the counterfeit body of a pretended Zeus; how the stone played midwife to the brood of imprisoned children, and shot out the burden of the parturient gullet [the stone was last swallowed and the first disgorged by Kronos]. But when the stormfoot Hora (Season), Phaethon’s [Helios’] handmaid, had seen the fiery shining victory of Zeus at war and the hailstorm snowstorm conflict of Kronos, she looked at the next tablet in its turn."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 30 ff :
"[The Kouretes] had surrounded Zeus a newborn babe in the cavern which fostered his breeding, and danced about him shield in hand, the deceivers, raising wild songs which echoed among the rocks and maddened the air - the noise of the clanging brass resounded in the ears of Kronos high among the clouds, and concealed the infancy of Kronion with drummings."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 25. 553 ff :
"Kybele [Rhea] also was depicted [on the shield of Dionysos], newly delivered; she seemed to hold in her arms pressed to her bosom a mock-child she had not borne, all worked by the artist’s hands; aye, cunning Rheia offered to her callous consort [Kronos] a babe of stone, a spiky heavy dinner. There was the father swallowing the stony son, the thing shaped like humanity, in his voracious maw, and making his meal of another pretended Zeus. There he was again in heavy labour, with the stone inside him, bringing up all those children squeezed together and disgorging the burden from his pregnant throat."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 27. 50 ff :
"Kronos who banqueted on his own young children in cannibal wise."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 28. 252 ff :
"The pyrrhic dance [of the Kouretes] raised a noise in the ears of Kronos, and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus . . . [The Kourete Akmon] holding Korybantic shield, which had often held in its hollow baby Zeus asleep among the mountains: yes, a little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos for a meal in place of Kronides [Zeus]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 41. 65 ff :
"Now first appeared the golden crop of men [the Golden Race of Man] brought forth in the image of the gods, with the roots of their stock in the earth. And these dwelt in the city of Beroe, that primordial seat which Kronos himself builded, at the time when invited by clever Rheia he set that jagged supper before his voracious throat, and having the heavy weight of that stone within him to play the deliverer’s part, he shot out the whole generation of his tormented children. Gaping wide, he sucked up the storming flood of a whole river, and swallowed it in his bubbling chest to ease his pangs, then threw of the burden of his belly; so one after another his pregnant throat pushed up and disgorged his twiceborn sons through the delivering channel of his gullet. Zeus was then a child, still a baby methinks; not yet the lightning flashed and cleft the hot clouds with many a dancing leap, not yet bolts of Zeus were shot to help in the Titanes’ war, not yet the rainy sound of thunderclaps roared heavily with bang and boom through colliding clouds."
T6.1 CRONUS,
RHEA Z50.1G CRONUS
AS SATURDAY
Hesiod, Theogony 126 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"She [Gaia] lay with Ouranos and bare deep-swirling Okeanos, Koios and Krios and Hyperion and Iapetos, Theia and Rheia, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoibe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Kronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire."
Simonides, Fragment 511 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (C6th to 5th B.C.) :
"Kronos (Time) child of Ouranos (Sky)."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 1 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"[Ouranos the Sky] fathered other sons on Ge (Earth), namely the Titanes : Okeanos, Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos, and Kronos the youngest; also daughters called Titanides : Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Dione, Theia."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"The Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knossos [in Krete], at the place where even to this day men point out foundations of a house of Rhea and a cypress grove which has been consecrated to her from ancient times. The Titanes numbered six men and five women, being born, as certain writers of myths relate, of Ouranos (Sky) and Ge (Earth), but according to others, of one of the Kouretes and Titaia, from whom as their mother they derive the name they have. The males were Kronos, Hyperion, Koios, Iapetos, Krios and Okeanos . . . Each one of them was the discover of things of benefit to mankind, and because of the benefaction they conferred upon all men they were accorded honours and everlasting fame."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Aether and Terra [were born various abstractions] . . .
[From Caelum (Ouranos) and Terra (Gaia) were born ?] Oceanus, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus; the Titanes : Briareus, Gyes, Steropes, Atlas, Hyperion, and Polus [Koios], Saturnus [Kronos], Ops [Rhea], Moneta [Mnemosyne], Dione." [N.B. Hyginus' Preface survives only in summary. The Titanes should be listed as children of Ouranos (Caelum) and Gaia (Terra) not Aither and Gaia, but the notation to this effect seems to have been lost in the transcription.]
CRONUS & THE CASTRATION OF URANUS Hesiod, Theogony 147 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"She [Gaia the Earth] lay with Ouranos (Sky) and bare deep-swirling Okeanos, Koios and Krios and Hyperion and Iapetos, Theia and Rheia, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoibe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Kronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. And again, she bare the Kyklopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges.
And again, three other sons were born of Gaia and Ouranos, great and doughty beyond telling, Kottos and Briareos and Gyes [the Hekatonkheires]. From their shoulders sprang a hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms. For of all the children that were born of Gaia and Ouranos, these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first. And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Gaia so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Ouranos rejoiced in his evil doing.And he [Ouranos] used to hide them all [the Hekatonkheires] away in a secret place of Gaia (Earth) so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light : and Ouranos (Sky) rejoiced in his evil doing. But vast Gaia (Earth) groaned within, being straitened, and she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons. And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart : `My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So she said; but fear seized them all, and none of them uttered a word. But great Kronos the wily took courage and answered his dear mother : `Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So he said : and vast Gaia (Earth) rejoiced greatly in spirit, and set and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands a jagged sickle, and revealed to him the whole plot.
And Ouranos (Sky) came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia (Earth) spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him. And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Gaia (Earth) received, and as the seasons moved round she bare the strong Erinyes and the great Gigantes [perhaps the Kouretes] with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands and the Nymphai whom they call Meliai all over the boundless earth. And so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden [Aphrodite] . . .
But these sons whom be begot himself great Ouranos (Sky) used to call Titanes (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards."
Hesiod, Theogony 20 ff :
"Kronos the crafty counsellor."
Plato, Euthyphro 5e (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"Men believe that Zeus . . . put his father [Kronos] in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children, and he in turn had mutilated his father [Ouranos] for similar reasons."
Plato, Republic 377e (trans. Shorey) :
“`There is, first of all,' I said, `the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him [Hesiod] who told how Ouranos did what Hesiod says he did to Kronos, and how Kronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Kronos at the hands of his son [Zeus]. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons.'”
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 3 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Ouranos (Sky) was the first to rule over the entire world. He married Ge (Earth) and sired first the Hekatonkheires, who were names Briareos, Gyes and Kottos. They were unsurpassed in both size and power, and each had a hundred hands and fifty heads. After these he sired the Kyklopes, by name Arges, Steropes, and Brontes, each of whom had one eye in his forehead. But Ouranos (Sky) bound these and threw them into Tartaros (a place in Haides’ realm as dark as Erebos, and as far away from the earth as the earth is from the sky), and fathered other sons on Ge, namely the Titanes : Okeanos, Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos, and Kronos the youngest; also daughters called Titanides : Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Dione, Theia.
Now Ge (Earth), distressed by the loss of her children into Tartaros, persuaded the Titanes to attack their father, and she gave Kronos a sickle made of adamant. So all of them except Okeanos set upon Ouranos (Sky), and Kronos cut off his genitals, tossing them into the sea. (From the drops of the flowing blood Erinyes were born, named Alekto, Tisiphone, Megaira.) Thus having overthrown Ouranos’ (Sky's) rule the Titanes retrieved their brothers from Tartaros and gave the power to Kronos."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4. 982 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"In the Keraunian Sea, fronting the Ionian Straits, there is a rich and spacious island, under the soil of which is said to lie (bear with me, Mousai; it gives me little pleasure to recall the old tale) the sickle used by Kronos to castrate his father Ouranos (Sky) . . . From this reaping-hook the island takes its name of Drepane, the sacred Nurse of the Phaiakians, who by the same token trace their ancestry to Ouranos (Sky)."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff :
"He [the poet Orpheus] sang of . . . How, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Kronos, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos." [N.B. Ophion and Eurynome might be Ouranos and Gaia or Okeanos and Tethys.]
Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 43 (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"The builders made strong wooden towers with battlements [building the city of Zankle in Sicily], and placed them around the sickle of Kronos--for there in a cave is hidden under the earth the sickle with which he cut off his father’s genitals [the sickle was reputedly buried near where the city of Zankle (the Sickle) was founded]."
Lycophron, Alexandra 760 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"The island [Drepane island of the Phaiakians] abhorred by Kronos--the isle of the Sickle that severed his [Ouranos’] privy parts."
Strabo, Geography 14. 2. 7 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Since they [the Telkhines] excelled in workmanship . . . they first came from Krete to Kypros, and then to Rhodes; and that they were the first to work iron and brass, and in fact fabricated the scythe for Kronos."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 23. 4 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"[Near Bolina in Akhaia] a cape juts out into the sea, and of it is told a story how Kronos threw into the sea here the sickle with which he mutilated his father Ouranos (Sky). For this reason they call the cape Drepanon. [N.B. drepanon is the Greek word for 'sickle.']"
Virgil, Georgics 2. 406 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman bucolic C1st B.C.) :
"Lopping it [the vine] with Saturnus' [Kronos'] crooked knife and pruning it into shape."
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2. 24 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.) :
"Another theory also, and that a scientific one, has been the source of a number of deities, who clad in human form have furnished the poets with legends and have filled man’s life with superstitions of all sorts. This subject was handled by Zeno and was later explained more fully by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For example, an ancient belief prevailed throughout Greece that Caelus [Ouranos the Sky] was mutilated by his son Saturnus [Kronos] . . . Their meaning was that the highest element of celestial ether or fire [Ouranos the Sky], which by itself generates all things, is devoid of that bodily part which required union with another for the work of procreation."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7. 222 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"[A complliment givent to a beautiful woman :] `Can it be that Kronos, after the first Kypris [Aphrodite born from Ouranos’ castrated genitals], again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a selfperfected birth, delivered of a younger Aphrodite from the sea?'"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 12. 43 ff :
"[The history of the world inscribed on tablets by the primordial god Phanes :] The first tablet, old as the infinite past, containing all things in one: upon it was all that Ophion lord paramount had done, all that ancient Kronos accomplished: when he cut off his father’s [Ouranos'] male plowshare, and sowed the teeming deep with seed on the unsown back of the daughterbegetting sea (Thalassa)."
Nonnus, Dionsyiaca 18. 223 ff :
"Kronos still dripping held the emasculating sickleblade, after he had cut off the manly crop of his father’s [Ouranos’] plow and robbed him of the Mother’s [Gaia’s] bed to which he was hastening."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 21. 252 ff :
"[The Indian King Deriades speaks :] `I know nothing of Kronos, or of Kronides [Zeus] who destroyed his father, nor Kronos the master-deceiver, who swallowed his own children, and shore away from Aither [Ouranos] the hive of begetting love.'"
CANNIBAL CRONUS & THE BIRTH OF HIS CHILDREN Homer, Iliad 15. 187 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"[Poseidon addresses Iris :] We are three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos, Zeus, and I, and the third is Haides, lord of the dead men."
Hesiod, Theogony 453 (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"But Rhea was subject in love to Kronos and bare splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Haides . . . and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker [Poseidon], and wise Zeus . . . These great Kronos swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother's knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Ouranos (Heaven) should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. For he learned from Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Sky) that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeus.Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children : and unceasing grief seized Rhea. But when she was about to bear Zeus, the father of gods and men, then she besought her own dear parents, Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Sky), to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Kronos for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down. And they readily heard and obeyed their dear daughter, and told her all that was destined to happen touching Kronos the king and his stout-hearted son. So they sent her to Lyetos, to the rich land of Krete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Him did vast Gaia (Earth) receive from Rhea in wide Krete to nourish and to bring up. Thither came Gaia carrying him swiftly through the black night to Lyktos first, and took him in her arms and hid him in a remote cave beneath the secret places of the holy earth on thick-wooded Mount Aigeion; but to [Kronos] the mightily ruling son of Ouranos (Sky), the earlier king of the gods, she gave a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then he took it in his hands and thrust it down into his belly: wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled, and that he was soon to overcome him by force and might and drive him from his honours, himself to reign over the deathless gods.
After that, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly, and as the years rolled on, great Kronos the wily was beguiled by the deep suggestions of Gaia (Earth), and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son, and he vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last. And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassos, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men. And he set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father, sons of Ouranos [the Hekatonkheires and Kyklopes] whom his father in his foolishness had bound. And they remembered to be grateful to him for his kindness, and gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt and lightening: for before that, huge Gaia (Earth) had hidden these. In them he trusts and rules over mortals and immortals."
Hesiod, Theogony 617 ff :
"The son of Kronos [Zeus] and the other deathless gods whom rich-haired Rhea bare from union with Kronos."
Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 20 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :
"She [Hestia] was the first-born child of wily Kronos and youngest too." [N.B. Hestia was the first-born child of Kronos and so the first to be devoured and last disgorged (i.e. her rebirth). Hence the poet describes her as both the oldest and youngest child.]
Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 42 ff :
"[Hera] whom wily (agkylometes) Kronos with her mother Rheia did beget."
Corinna, Fragment 654 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"The Koureites hid the holy babe of the goddess [Rhea] in a cave without the knowledge of crooked-witted [koulomeitas] Kronos, when blessed [makera] Rhea stole him and won great honour from the immortals."
Plato, Euthyphro 5e (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"Men believe that Zeus . . . put his father [Kronos] in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4 - 5 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"But Kronos once again [after deposing Ouranos] bound the Kyklopes and confined them in Tartaros. He then married his sister Rhea. Because both Ge (Earth) and Ouranos (Heaven) had given him prophetic warning that his rule would be overthrown by a son of his own, he took to swallowing his children at birth. He swallowed his first-born daughter Hestia, then Demeter and Hera, and after them Plouton and Poseidon. Angered by this, Rhea, when she was heavy with Zeus, went off to Krete and gave birth to him there in a cave on Mount Dikte . . . the armed Kouretes stood guard over him in the cave, banging their spears against their shields to prevent Kronos from hearing the infant’s voice. Rhea meanwhile gave Kronos a stone wrapped in the swaddling-cloths to swallow in place of his newborn son. When Zeus was grown, he engaged Okeanos’ daughter Metis (Counsel) as a colleague. She gave Kronos a drug, by which he was forced to vomit forth first the stone and then the children he had swallowed."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"He [Orpheus] sang of . . . How, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Kronos, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos; and how their successors ruled the happy Titan gods when Zeus in his Diktaian cave was still a child, with childish thoughts, before the earthborn Kyklopes had given him the bolt, the thunder and lightning that form his glorious armament today."
Callimachus, Hymn 1 to Zeus 50 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"And lustily round thee [the baby Zeus] danced the Kouretes a war-dance, beating their armour, that Kronos might hear with his ears the din of the shield, but not thine infant noise."
Lycophron, Alexandra 1191 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Him [Zeus] who is lord of Ophion’s throne. But he [Zeus] shall bring thee to the plain of his nativity [Thebes], that land celebrated above others by the Greeks, where his mother [Rhea], skilled in wrestling, having cast into Tartaros the former queen [Eurynome, wife of Ophion], delivered her of him [Zeus] in travail of secret birth, escaping the child-devouring unholy feast of her spouse [Kronos]; and he fattened not his belly with food, but swallowed instead the stone, wrapped in limb-fitting swaddling clothes: savage Kentauros [Kronos as father of the centaur Kheiron], tomb of his own offspring."
Aratus, Phaenomena 27 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek astronomical poem C3rd B.C.) :
"When in olden days he [Zeus] played as a child in fragrant Dikton, near the hill of Ida, they [the Nymphai Helike & Kynosoura] set him in a cave and nurtured him for the space of a year, what time the Diktaioi Kouretes were deceiving Kronos. Now the one men call by name Kynosoura and the other Helike."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"Regarding the birth of Zeus and the manner in which he came to be king, there is no agreement. Some say that he succeeded to the kingship after Kronos passed from among men into the company of the gods, not by overcoming his father with violence, but in the manner prescribed by custom and justly, having been judged worthy of that honour. But others recount a myth, which runs as follows: There was delivered to Kronos an oracle regarding the birth of Zeus which stated that the son who would be born to him would wrest the kingship from him by force. Consequently Kronos time and again did away with the children whom he begot; but Rhea, grieved as she was, and yet lacking the power to change her husband’s purpose, when she had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Ide, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Kronos, entrusted the rearing of him to the Kouretes of Mt Ide."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 68. 1 :
"To Kronos and Rhea, we are told, were born Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and Zeus, Poseidon, and Haides."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 79. 7 :
"They [the Nymphai Ida & Adrasteia] nurtured Zeus of old without the knowledge of his father Kronos . . . And Aratos [poet C3rd B.C.] agrees with this account when he states in his poem on the stars : ‘. . . When he [Zeus] was babe in fragrant Dikton near thee Idaian Mount, they set him in a cave and nurtured him a year, the while Kouretes Diktaioi practised deceit on Kronos.'"
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 :
"The Kouretes also invented swords and helmets and the war-dance, by means of which they raised a great alarum and deceived Kronos. And we are told that, when Rhea, the mother of Zeus, entrusted him to them unbeknown to Kronos his father, they took him under their care and saw to his nurture."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 11 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The mythical story of the birth of Zeus; in this they introduced Kronos as accustomed to swallow his children immediately after their birth, and Rhea as trying to keep her travail secret and, when the child was born, to get it out of the way and save its life by every means in her power; and to accomplish this it is said that she took as helpers the Kouretes, who, by surrounding the goddess with tambourines and similar noisy instruments and with war-dance and uproar, were supposed to strike terror into Kronos and without his knowledge to steal his child away."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 :
"Some call the Korybantes sons of Kronos."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 4. 33. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"It is a hopeless task to enumerate all the peoples who claim that Zeus was born and brought up among them. The Messenians have their share in the story : for they too say that the god was brought up among them and that his nurses were Ithome and Neda, the river having received its name from the latter, while the former, Ithome, gave her name to the mountain. These Nymphai are said to have bathed Zeus here, after he was stolen by the Kouretes owing to the danger that threatened from his father [Kronos], and it is said that it [the fountain Klepsydra on Mt Ithome in Messenia] has its name from the Kouretes’ theft."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 7. 6 :
"As for the Olympiakos Games, the most learned antiquarians of Elis say that Kronos was the first king of heaven, and that in his honour a temple was built in Olympia by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Daktyloi of Ida, who are the same as those called Kouretes."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 8. 2 :
"[Near the town of Nestane in Arkadia there is] a well called Aren (Lamb). The following story is told by the Arkadians. When Rhea had given birth to Poseidon, she laid him in a flock for him to live there with the lambs, and the spring too received its name just because the lambs pastured around it. Rhea, it is said, declared to Kronos that she had given birth to a horse, and gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child, just as later she gave him in place of Zeus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 36. 2 :
"Mount Thamasios (Wonderful) lies beyond the river Maloitas [in Arkadia], and the Methydrians hold that when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, she came to this mountain and enlisted as her allies, in case Kronos should attack her, Hopladamos and his few Gigantes [the Kouretes]. They allow that she gave birth to her son on some part of Mount Lykaios, but they claim that here Kronos was deceived, and here took place the substitution of a stone for the child that is spoken of in the Greek legend. On the summit of the mountain is Rhea’s Cave, into which no human beings may enter save only the women who are sacred to the goddess."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 2. 7 :
"On entering [the temple of Hera at Plataia, Boiotia] you see Rhea carrying to Kronos the stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, as though it were the babe to which she had given birth."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 41. 6 :
"There is beyond the city [of Khaironeia, Boiotia] a crag called Petrakhos. Here they hold that Kronos was deceived, and received from Rhea a stone instead of Zeus, and there is a small image of Zeus on the summit of the mountain."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 10. 24. 6 :
"Ascending [through the oracular shrine of Delphoi, Phokis] you come to a stone of no large size [the omphalos]. Over it every day they pour olive oil, and at each feast they place on it unworked wool. There is also an opinion about this stone, that it was given to Kronos instead of his child, and that Kronos vomited it up again."
Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 36 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"When Rhea, fearing Kronos, hid Zeus in the Kretan cavern, a goat [Amaltheia] offered her udder and gave him nourishment. By the will of Rhea a Golden Dog guarded the goat. After Zeus drove out the Titanes and deprived Kronos of power, he changed the goat into an immortal, there is a representation of her among the stars to this day."
Oppian, Cynegetica 3. 7 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd A.D.) :
"The Kouretes were the nurses of the infant Zeus, the mighty son of Kronos, what time Rhea concealed his birth and carried away the newly-born child from Kronos, his sire implacable, and placed him in the vales of Krete. And when [Kronos] the son of Ouranos (Sky) beheld the lusty young child he transformed the first glorious guardians of Zeus and in vengeance made the Kouretes wild beasts. And since by the devising of the god Kronos exchanged their human shape and put upon them the form of Lions, thenceforth by the boon of Zeus they greatly lord it over the wild beasts which dwell upon the hills, and under the yoke they draw the terrible swift car of Rhea who lightens the pangs of birth."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Saturnus [Kronos] and Ops [Rhea] [were born] : Vesta [Hestia], Ceres [Demeter], Iuno [Hera], Iuppiter [Zeus], Pluto [Hades], Neptunus [Poseidon]."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 139 :
"After Opis [Rhea] had borne Jove [Zeus] by Saturnus [Kronos], Juno [Hera] asked her to give him to her, since Saturnus and cast Orcus [Hades] under Tartarus, and Neptunus [Poseidon] under the sea, because he knew that his son would rob him of the kingdom. When he had asked Opis for what she had borne, in order to devour it, Opis showed him a stone wrapped up like a baby; Saturnus devoured it. When he realized what he had done, he started to hunt for Jove throughout the earth. Juno, however, took Jove to the island of Crete, and Amalthea, the child’s nurse, hung him in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea. And lest the cries of the baby be heard, she summoned youths and gave them small brazen shields and spears, and bade them go around the tree making a noise. In Greek they are called Curetes; others call them Corybantes; these in Italy, however are called Lares."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 43 :
"Milky Way . . . Others say that at the time Ops [Rhea] brought to Saturnus [Kronos] the stone, pretending it was a child, he bade her offer milk to it; when she pressed her breast, the milk that was caused to flow formed the circle which we mentioned above."
Ovid, Metamorphoses 9. 497 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Gods have loved their sisters; yes, indeed! Why Saturnus [Kronos] married Ops [Rhea], his kin by blood . . . But the gods above are laws unto themselves."
Ovid, Fasti 4. 197 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Saturnus [Kronos] received this oracle: ‘Best of kings, you shall be knocked from power by a son.’ Jabbed by fear, he devours his offspring as each was born, and entombs them in his bowels. Rhea often complained of much pregnancy and no motherhood, and mourned her fertility. Jove [Zeus] was born (trust antiquity’s testimony, do not disturb inherited belief) : a stone, concealed in cloth, settled in the god’s gullet; so the father was fated to be tricked. For a long time steep Ida booms its clanging noise so the wordless infant may wail safely. Shields or empty helmets are pounded with sticks, the Curetes’ or Corybantes’ task. The truth hid."
Ovid, Fasti 6. 285 ff :
"Juno [Hera] and Ceres [Demeter], they recount, were born from Ops [Rhea] by Saturnus’ [Kronos’] seed. Vesta [Hestia] was the third."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8. 110 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"[Hera addresses Apate, the spirit of deceit :] `Lend me also that girdle or many colours, which Rheia once bound about her flanks when she deceived her husband! I bring no pretrified shape for my Kronion [Zeus], I do not trick my husband with a wily stone.'"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 12. 43 ff :
"[The history of the world inscribed on tablets by the primordial god Phanes :] The first tablet, old as the infinite past, containing all things in one: upon it was all that Ophion lord paramount had done, all that ancient Kronos accomplished: when he cut off his father’s [Ouranos'] male plowshare, and sowed the teeming deep with seed on the unsown back of the daughterbegetting sea (Thalassa); how he opened a gaping throat to receive a stony son, when he made a meal of the counterfeit body of a pretended Zeus; how the stone played midwife to the brood of imprisoned children, and shot out the burden of the parturient gullet [the stone was last swallowed and the first disgorged by Kronos]. But when the stormfoot Hora (Season), Phaethon’s [Helios’] handmaid, had seen the fiery shining victory of Zeus at war and the hailstorm snowstorm conflict of Kronos, she looked at the next tablet in its turn."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 30 ff :
"[The Kouretes] had surrounded Zeus a newborn babe in the cavern which fostered his breeding, and danced about him shield in hand, the deceivers, raising wild songs which echoed among the rocks and maddened the air - the noise of the clanging brass resounded in the ears of Kronos high among the clouds, and concealed the infancy of Kronion with drummings."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 25. 553 ff :
"Kybele [Rhea] also was depicted [on the shield of Dionysos], newly delivered; she seemed to hold in her arms pressed to her bosom a mock-child she had not borne, all worked by the artist’s hands; aye, cunning Rheia offered to her callous consort [Kronos] a babe of stone, a spiky heavy dinner. There was the father swallowing the stony son, the thing shaped like humanity, in his voracious maw, and making his meal of another pretended Zeus. There he was again in heavy labour, with the stone inside him, bringing up all those children squeezed together and disgorging the burden from his pregnant throat."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 27. 50 ff :
"Kronos who banqueted on his own young children in cannibal wise."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 28. 252 ff :
"The pyrrhic dance [of the Kouretes] raised a noise in the ears of Kronos, and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus . . . [The Kourete Akmon] holding Korybantic shield, which had often held in its hollow baby Zeus asleep among the mountains: yes, a little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos for a meal in place of Kronides [Zeus]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 41. 65 ff :
"Now first appeared the golden crop of men [the Golden Race of Man] brought forth in the image of the gods, with the roots of their stock in the earth. And these dwelt in the city of Beroe, that primordial seat which Kronos himself builded, at the time when invited by clever Rheia he set that jagged supper before his voracious throat, and having the heavy weight of that stone within him to play the deliverer’s part, he shot out the whole generation of his tormented children. Gaping wide, he sucked up the storming flood of a whole river, and swallowed it in his bubbling chest to ease his pangs, then threw of the burden of his belly; so one after another his pregnant throat pushed up and disgorged his twiceborn sons through the delivering channel of his gullet. Zeus was then a child, still a baby methinks; not yet the lightning flashed and cleft the hot clouds with many a dancing leap, not yet bolts of Zeus were shot to help in the Titanes’ war, not yet the rainy sound of thunderclaps roared heavily with bang and boom through colliding clouds."
T6.1 CRONUS,
RHEA Z50.1G CRONUS
AS SATURDAY
Saturn Cutting off Cupid’s Wings with a Scythe (1802) by Ivan Akimov (Tretyakov Gallery)
KRONOS
KRONOS
- Kronos waylays Uranus and castrates him.
- The drops of blood that hit the earth become the Erinyes/the Furies.
- The genitals that fell into the sea give birth to Aphrodite, goddess of love.
- The Cyclopes’-- with their one round eye and burial beneath the earth-- represent a psychic aspect that has not yet split into doubleness. The roundness suggests a certain primordial wholeness (repressed by Uranus).
- Consequences of Uranus’s castration: birth of desire (Aphrodite) and punishment (Furies).
- Freud and the castration complex: The son wants to supplant/overthrow the father and claim his power/authority.
- This overthrow is necessary because power seeks to perpetuate itself and to eliminate all threats to its authority. Parallel to the psyche, an age-old principle must be overthrown before growth and change can occur. (Remember culture-epoch theory?)
- The newly emerging power must overcome the outmoded or oppressive power and, ironically, becomes the new oppressor with his own power issues, which will eventually cause him to abuse his authority and lead to his own overthrow. This is the dialectic process at play once again: The thesis is opposed by its antithesis, bringing about a synthesis of the two, which then becomes the new thesis, and on and on it goes (Socrates' dialectic method, Hegel’s historical dialectic, and the Communist Manifesto come to mind).
- Kronos, when told by an oracle that one of his offspring would depose him, tried to circumvent the event and began to swallow all his children as a means of forestalling this doom.
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FAIR USE NOTICE
This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.