Hestia

Cronus married his sister Rhea. Mother Earth and Uranus had foretold that one of his sons would dethrone him. To prevent this, Cronus swallowed each child Rhea bore. Hestia came first, followed by Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Hestia was therefore the eldest-born of the siblings, though Cronus kept her inside him.

When Zeus was born, Rhea hid him from Cronus. She gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it in place of the infant. Zeus was carried to Crete and concealed in a cave. The accounts differ on the place of his birth and concealment. One places his birth on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia and his hiding place in the cave of Dicte. Another gives Mount Ida, or Dicte, on Crete as his refuge.

Nymphs cared for Zeus. Amaltheia nursed him with her milk. Adrasteia and Ida are named as his nurses in one account, while another names Adrasteia and her sister Io. The Curetes concealed his cries by clashing their weapons. Zeus grew to maturity and planned to overthrow Cronus. He conspired with Metis, the Oceanid daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, who gave him a potion that would make Cronus vomit up the children he had swallowed.

The potion worked. Cronus disgorged the stone first, followed by the children. The order reversed the order of their births. Poseidon emerged, then Hades, Hera, Demeter, and finally Hestia. She had been the first child swallowed, yet she was the last of the siblings to be released. Zeus and his brothers and sisters later fought the older Titan gods in a war that lasted ten years. With the aid of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, Zeus prevailed, and the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus.