Gaia

Cronus swallowed each child born to Rhea because he heard that one of his sons was destined to overthrow him. When Zeus was born, Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead. He swallowed the stone, while Zeus stayed safe. Later, Zeus forced Cronus to bring back his brothers and sisters, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon.

Zeus and his siblings rebelled against Cronus and the Titans. The war lasted ten years. The Titans fought from Mount Othrys, while Zeus and the other gods fought from Olympus. The Cyclopes forged Zeus’s thunderbolts, Poseidon’s trident, and Hades’ helmet of darkness. The Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes helped Zeus break the deadlock. Zeus and the Olympians defeated Cronus and the Titans. Many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus. Oceanus, Helios, Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius escaped this punishment.

Gaia was angered because the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes had been released, while her other children, the Titans, remained imprisoned. She blew fierce winds, and the earth shook with her fury. She sent Typhon and Echidna to attack Zeus. Typhon was enormous. One hundred hissing serpents grew from his head, and fiery lava poured from his mouth. The gods fled and hid rather than face him.

Zeus gathered his courage and his lightning bolts, then waited for the right moment to strike. Typhon tore Mount Aetna from the ground and raised it to fling at Zeus.

Cronus waited until Uranus came to lie with Gaia at night. He then ambushed his father and castrated him with a sickle of hard flint. Cronus had taken the weapon after Gaia, suffering from Uranus’s violence, urged her Titan children to rise against him. Only Cronus, the youngest Titan, agreed to act.

Uranus and Gaia had become the parents of the twelve Titans. Uranus had also fathered the Cyclopes and the three Hecatoncheires, who were monsters of great strength. The Cyclopes each had one eye in the forehead. The Hecatoncheires, Cottus, Briareos, and Gyes, each had one hundred arms and fifty heads. Uranus hated these six children and forced them back inside Gaia after their birth. This caused her great pain and led her to seek revenge.

When Cronus cut Uranus, drops of blood fell upon Gaia, the Earth. Gaia conceived from the blood and later brought forth the Erinyes, spirits of vengeance, the Giants, and the Melian nymphs. Hesiod describes the Giants as large beings with gleaming armour and long spears. Apollodorus gives them immense size, great strength, long hair and beards, and serpents’ scales over the lower parts of their bodies. They were later involved in the battle against Zeus and the other gods, where they were defeated.

The severed genitals fell into the sea, and foam rose from them. In the account given here, Aphrodite was born from that foam. Cronus became king of the gods after Uranus was overthrown. He held that position until his own son Zeus later displaced him.

Cronus attacked Uranus with a sickle at Gaia’s urging and castrated him. Blood from Uranus fell upon the earth, and Gaia brought forth the Giants. They were large and powerfully built. Hesiod describes them in gleaming armour with long spears. Apollodorus later presents them as beings of unsurpassed size, with long hair and beards, and serpents’ scales covering the lower parts of their bodies. They were said to be invulnerable.

Gaia sought revenge for the banishment of her children and joined the Giants against Zeus and the Olympian gods. Their war was called the Gigantomachy. It may have taken place on the plain of Phlegra, where the Giants attacked the Olympians with huge rocks and burning torches. An oracle declared that the gods could win only with the aid of a mortal human. Gaia then began searching for an herb that would prevent the Giants from being defeated, but Zeus gathered the plants before she could find them.

The Olympians fought the Giants with their divine weapons. Zeus struck Mimas with a thunderbolt, while Athena fought Enceladus with her gorgon shield. Dionysus killed another Giant with his ivy staff. Pindar calls Porphyrion the king of the Giants and says that Apollo overcame him with his bow. Heracles also fought in the war and killed Giants with his arrows. The Giants were defeated, and later accounts said that they were buried beneath mountains and volcanoes. Their confinement was linked with earthquakes and eruptions, especially in southern Italy, including Etna and Vesuvius.

Typhon rose against Zeus and attacked Olympus. Gaia had sent him against Zeus, whose rule had angered her because the Titans remained imprisoned while the Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes had been freed from Tartarus. Typhon was an enormous monster, born from Gaia and Tartarus. A hundred serpent heads grew from his neck. Their mouths produced the voices of gods, bulls, lions, dogs, and snakes. His eyes flashed fire, and lava poured from his mouth. His hands were mighty, and his feet did not tire. The gods fled and hid rather than face him.

Zeus gathered his lightning bolts and waited for a chance to strike. Typhon pulled Mount Aetna from the earth and raised it as a weapon. In one account, Typhon first overcame Zeus and removed his tendons. He carried them to the Corycian cave in Cilicia, hid them in a bearskin, and set the she-dragon Delphyne to guard them. Hermes and Aigipan recovered the tendons and secretly fitted them back into Zeus. Zeus regained his strength and returned to the fight.

Zeus pursued Typhon from heaven in a chariot drawn by winged horses. Typhon reached Nysa, where the Fates deceived him into eating ephemeral fruits after persuading him that they would make him stronger. He fled again and fought Zeus near Mount Haimos, throwing whole mountains at him. Zeus drove the mountains back with thunderbolts, and Typhon's blood ran over the mountain. In another account, the four winds joined the fight with frozen volleys of hailstones. Zeus burned Typhon's hands and struck his heads with thunder and lightning.

Typhon fell beneath Zeus's attack. The earth groaned, and many places burned in the fire of the battle. Zeus buried Typhon beneath the hills of Sicily, under Mount Etna. The defeated monster was given a mocking monument, declaring that Typhoeus, son of Earth, had once lashed the sky with stones but had been burned by heaven's fire.

Gaia summoned Cronus and his brothers to oppose Uranus, who had imprisoned the Cyclopes in Tartarus and kept his monstrous children from the world. She told Cronus that his father hated him and might destroy him. Cronus feared the danger, but Gaia urged him to act before Uranus could attack. She promised him the chance to become ruler of heaven and earth.

Gaia fashioned a huge sickle from adamant and prepared an ambush. She summoned the Titans and asked them to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus agreed to perform the deed. Gaia gave him the sickle and concealed him. When Uranus came to Gaia, Cronus attacked him and cut off his genitals. He seized them with his left hand, then threw them, together with the sickle, into the sea by Cape Drepanum.

Blood from Uranus’s wound fell upon Gaia. From it came the Erinyes, or Furies, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, who avenge parricide and perjury. The blood also produced the armed Giants and the Meliae, nymphs of the ash tree. In the sea, foam gathered around Uranus’s severed genitals, and Aphrodite emerged from it.

Cronus then became the supreme pre-Olympian god and king. One account says that he released the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants from Tartarus, then imprisoned them there again. Uranus’s overthrow ended his rule, while Cronus took his place.

Chaos came into being first as a yawning gap rather than as disorder. Gaia then emerged as the Earth. She was also called Ge or Gaea. In Hesiod’s telling, Tartarus and Eros followed her. Tartarus lay far beneath the Earth. In another telling, Erebus and Nyx stood among the first powers, before Ouranos and Gaia began to rule. Erebus was linked with darkness, while Nyx covered the Earth with night.

Gaia brought forth Ouranos, the Sky, from herself. He gazed down at her from the mountains and sent fertile rain into her hidden clefts. From this union, grass, flowers, trees, beasts, and birds appeared. The rain also made the rivers flow and filled the hollow places, so lakes and seas came into being. Gaia and Ouranos then produced the Titans. Their six sons were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus. Their six daughters were Rhea, Theia, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Themis, and Tethys. The Titans grew almost as large as Gaia herself and turned her mountains into thrones. They ruled the Earth kindly, while Ouranos and Gaia loved them and took pride in their strength.

Gaia and Ouranos next produced the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. The Cyclopes were Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. Each was one-eyed, and they became builders of great walls and master-smiths. The Hundred-Handers were Briareus, Gyges, and Cottus. Each had one hundred hands and fifty heads. The children formed the next generation of divine beings. Among the Titans, Cronus and Rhea later became the parents of the Olympian gods. In one telling, Ouranos feared the power of his children and cast the Titans into Tartarus, where he chained them in the darkness beneath the Earth.

Gaia united with Pontus, the deep sea, and bore five children: Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia. Pontus was the personification of the Sea. Through him, Gaia’s family became connected with marine beings and with monstrous beings outside Zeus’s immediate family.

Nereus was the eldest named child of Gaia and Pontus. He was known as the Old Man of the Sea. He was trusty, gentle, just in his thoughts, and truthful. Thaumas followed Nereus among the children of Gaia and Pontus. Phorcys and Ceto followed him as brother and sister, and they remained among the sea-born children of the Earth and the Sea.

Eurybia completed the five children. She later joined Creios, one of the Titans. Their children were Astraios, Pallas, and Perses. Astraios later fathered the winds and stars with Dawn. Perses fathered Hecate with Asteria, while Pallas and Styx became the parents of Nike, Cratos, Zelos, and Bia. Eurybia therefore became an ancestor of further divine generations.

Gaia had appeared after Chaos, alongside Tartarus and Eros. She produced Uranus, the mountains, and Pontus before the later generations of gods were established. Her union with Pontus joined the Earth with the Sea, and their children entered the ancestry of sea gods and other beings.

Gaia raged against Zeus after the Olympians defeated the Giants, because her other children, the Titans, remained imprisoned. She joined with Tartarus and gave birth to Typhon in Cilicia. One account placed his birth in the Corycian Cave. Another tradition attributed his creation to Hera, who wished to produce a being capable of challenging Zeus. Gaia sent Typhon against Zeus, and one account sent Echidna with him as his mate.

Typhon was part man and part beast. He surpassed all the other children of Gaia in size and strength. His human form reached to his thighs, while immense coils of vipers formed the rest of his body. His head rose higher than the mountains and could scrape the stars. When he stretched out his arms, they reached towards the east and west. A hundred dragon heads grew from his arms. Other descriptions gave him countless serpent heads in place of hands, or a hundred hissing serpents rising from his head. Wings covered his body. Filthy hair streamed from his head and cheeks, fire flashed from his eyes, and flames or flaming rocks issued from his mouth. He was also described as a gigantic storm monster and a fire-breathing dragon.

Typhon attacked heaven and hurled flaming rocks at Olympus. The gods fled in terror and hid, or escaped to Egypt disguised as animals. Athena alone remained in place and taunted Zeus for his fear. Zeus gathered his lightning bolts and waited for the right moment to strike. Typhon pulled Mount Aetna from the ground to throw at him. The outcome remained unknown.

Gaia brought Pelasgus forth from the soil of Arcadia. He sprang directly from the Earth as the first man of that land. His birth followed no marriage between gods, no union between a god and a mortal, and no descent of a divine child from the sky. No father, foster parent, or mortal ancestor accompanied his birth in this Arcadian telling. Gaia alone gave him life, and his emergence made him an Earth-born figure from the beginning.

Pelasgus became the ancestral king of the Pelasgians. His authority began with his rising from Arcadian soil, so the first king of the Pelasgian people belonged to the land that produced him. He taught those who followed him to make huts, feed upon acorns, and sew tunics from pigskin. The people descended from or associated with him were called Pelasgians, and their name preserved his place as the first figure in their ancestral line.

Other tellings placed Pelasgus in different family lines. One made him a son of Niobe and Zeus. Another made him a son of Phoroneus, who divided the Peloponnese among his sons after his death. The Arcadian telling instead made Pelasgus spring from the soil and treated him as the first man and ancestral ruler of the Pelasgians. It gave him no contest for the throne, no exile, and no death. Pelasgus remained established as the Earth-born ancestral king of the Pelasgians.