Saturn

Jupiter released the Cyclopes from Tartarus and asked them to forge thunderbolts for the coming war. Saturn had ruled the cosmos after overthrowing Uranus with a stone sickle given to him by Gaia. Uranus had then foretold that Saturn would be overthrown by his own children. Fearing this, Saturn swallowed each child whom Rhea bore.

Rhea saved Jupiter by hiding him before Saturn could find him. She gave Saturn a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it as if it were the infant god. In one telling, Rhea brought Jupiter to a cave on Mount Dicte in Crete, where nymphs fed him on the milk of Amaltheia and the armed Curetes struck their spears against their shields to hide his cries. In another, Jupiter grew among shepherds on Mount Ida, while Rhea and his nurses hid him from Saturn.

When Jupiter reached manhood, he sought help from Metis, the Titaness. She prepared a drug and helped him become Saturn’s cup-bearer. Jupiter mixed the drug with Saturn’s drink. Saturn vomited up the stone first, followed by Jupiter’s elder brothers and sisters, who emerged unharmed. They joined Jupiter and asked him to lead them against Saturn and the Titans.

The war lasted ten years. Jupiter released the Cyclopes, who supplied him with thunderbolts, and he led the younger gods against Saturn’s forces. The Titans fought fiercely and tried to recover rule over the cosmos, but Jupiter’s weapons brought terror among them. At the end of the tenth year, the Titans yielded. Poseidon secured some of them in Tartarus, and Jupiter proclaimed victory. He then took control of the cosmos.

Terra and Caelus gave birth to Saturn. His birth brought him into the divine family through both of them. It placed him among the oldest powers of the Roman cosmos. Saturn belonged to the elder generation from the moment Terra and Caelus brought him forth. His parentage connected him directly with Terra and Caelus, and his birth gave him an early place within the divine order. Saturn did not enter that order as a later or lesser power. He came into it as one of the elder divine powers. The Roman cosmos received him through the birth given by Terra and Caelus. His identity followed from that beginning. He was Saturn, child of Terra and Caelus, and he held an elder place among the divine beings of the Roman cosmos. Terra and Caelus therefore stood at the beginning of his story. Their act brought Saturn into the order of the divine powers, and that order counted him among its elders. His birth established his place within the cosmic family. From that moment, Saturn remained one of the elder divine powers of the Roman cosmos. His story began when Terra and Caelus gave birth to him, and his place among the elder powers followed directly from that birth.