Hecate

Zeus and the younger gods were fighting Cronos and the Titans. The war continued for ten years. The Titans held Mount Othrys, while Zeus and his allies held Mount Olympus. Hecate joined Zeus and the younger gods in their struggle against the older gods.

Before the war, Zeus had been hidden in a cave on Mount Dicte in Crete. Rhea had given him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, who raised him. The nymphs fed him with the milk of Amaltheia. The armed Curetes guarded him by striking their spears against their shields, so that Cronos would not hear the child. Rhea had given Cronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it in place of Zeus.

When Zeus had grown, Metis helped him. She gave Cronos a drug, which forced him to disgorge the stone and the children he had swallowed. Zeus then went to war with his brothers and sisters against Cronos and the Titans. The Cyclopes made his thunderbolts, Poseidon received his trident, and Hades received a helmet of darkness. The Hundred-Handers also aided Zeus. During the battle, they hurled rocks at the Titans’ stronghold, while Zeus used his thunderbolts. Their attacks broke the deadlock and defeated the Titans.

After Zeus and the younger gods won, many of the defeated Titans were confined in Tartarus. Hecate was honoured for supporting Zeus’s victory. Hesiod gives her honours under both Cronos and Zeus. These honours extend across earth, sky, and sea.

Hecate married Aeetes, king of Colchis, and became the mother of Circe, Medea, and Aegialeus. This family line is recorded in the Colchian genealogy attributed to Diodorus. Hecate is identified elsewhere as the daughter of Asteria and Perses, and as a goddess with authority in the heavens, on earth, and at sea.

Medea inherited her connection with Hecate. She served as the goddess’s priestess and received instruction in witchcraft and in the handling of magic herbs. Through these arts, Medea could extinguish fire and alter the course of rivers, the stars, and the moon. Her knowledge later enabled her to prepare an ointment for Jason, which protected him from swords and fire during his attempt to obtain the Golden Fleece.

The ointment came from the root of a saffron-coloured plant. The plant had grown from blood shed by the eagle that fed on the continually renewing heart of Prometheus. Medea had to cleanse herself ritually before cutting the root, and could do so only at night. These details belong to Medea’s later role as a priestess and practitioner of magic, while the Colchian genealogy presents Hecate as her mother and Aeetes as her father. The same genealogy also makes Circe Medea’s sister and Aegialeus her brother.