ABSTRACT
According to the best-known version of his story, his mother Gaia complained to him that Uranus was distressing her by pushing the Hundred-Armed giants (Hecatoncheires) and the Cyclopes back into her body when she was ready to bring them forth (or else he imprisoned them). She therefore gave Cronos a flint sickle with which he attacked Uranus, when next the came to lie with Gaia, and castrated him. Cronos flung the severed genitals behind him and the drops of blood became Furies, giants, and nymphs. So Cronos ruled in Uranus’ place; but he quickly became as brutal as his father. He imprisoned the giants and Cyclopes once more in the earth and, being warned that one of his own children would depose him in the same way as he himself had deposed his father, swallowed them one by one as they were born. His wife Rhea, who was a Titaness and his sister, brought forth successively Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Cronos succeeded in eating all except Zeus, whom Rhea confided to her mother Gaia, substituting for him a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which his father duly swallowed instead.
