Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Were there any offspring from the marriage of the Greek titans Cronus and Rhea?

I know that Cronus and Rhea, two of the thirteen titans born from Uranus and Gaea, became married. Did they have any offspring like the marriages of the other titans?Were there any offspring from the marriage of the Greek titans Cronus and Rhea?
poseidon


hades


zeus


hestia


hera


demeterWere there any offspring from the marriage of the Greek titans Cronus and Rhea?
yes, and that's where all of the olympians came from
Yes: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia and Demeter.





It was fated that Cronus would be overthrown by one of his children, so to prevent it from happening he decided to swallow them. Rhea didn't want to lose all of her children, so with the help of her mother (Gaia/Gaea) they came up with a plan to fool Cronus. They wrapped a stone in Zeus' clothes and handed the ';baby'; over to Cronus. Cronus swallowed it, thinking it was the child. The real baby Zeus was taken to Crete and grew into a healthy young man. He eventually returned home, faced-off with his father, and Cronus regurgitated his children in some way (there are many variations on the myth).
Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter, Hera, Hades, Hestia, and Poseidon by Rhea, he swallowed them all as soon as they were born to preempt the prophecy. When the sixth child was born, Zeus, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children. Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it is his son.





Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, armored male dancers, shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by a rope from a tree so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia.





Once he had grown up, Zeus used a poison given to him by Gaia to force Cronus to vomit up the contents of his stomach in reverse order: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, then the goat, and then his two brothers and three sisters. In other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children, or Zeus cut Cronus' stomach open. After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Gigantes, the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclopes, who forged for him his thunderbolts. In a vast war called the Titanomachy, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with the help of the Gigantes, Hecatonchires, and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus. Some Titans were not banished to Tartarus. Cronus, Epimetheus, Menoetius, Oceanus and Prometheus are examples of Titans who were not imprisoned in Tartarus following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monster Typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans, though Zeus was victorious. Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ. In Homeric and other texts he is imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus. In Orphic poems, he is imprisoned for eternity in the cave of Nyx. Pindar describes his release from Tartarus, where he is made King of Elysium by Zeus.





Other children Cronus is reputed to have fathered include Chiron, by Philyra, and Eris, by Nyx (according to one of the ancient Scholia).
Cronus and Rhea had six offspring together:


- Demeter (goddess of grain and fertility)


- Hera (goddess of marriage)


- Hades (god of the underworld and the dead)


- Hestia (goddess of the hearth)


- Poseidon (god of the sea)


- Zeus (king of the gods)
Nah. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and so forth don't count because Cronus swallowed everybody 'cept Zeus who Rhea hid in a cave till he could grow up, defeat him, and make him regurgitate all his brothers and sisters.





Those Greeks could be pretty gross.
cronus and rhea did have children. the story goes that Gaea told her son that one of his own sons would overthrow him as he did to his father to try and prevent this, her swallowed each of their first five children whole so they were just living in his stomach. Rhea gave her husband a stone in baby clothes and gave her sixth child to nymphs to hide in a cave. Gaea made loud noises to hide the baby's cries. The nymphs fed him food that came from the goat Amalthea's horn, that made him grow quickly. Thus years later, zeus overthrew his father with the help of Gaea's abandoned children and his five siblings which Cronus threw up.

No comments:

Post a Comment