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124-408: Plutus is most commonly the son of Demeter and Iasion , with whom she lay in a thrice-ploughed field. He is alternatively the son of the fortune goddess Tyche . Two ancient depictions of Plutus, one of him as a little boy standing with a cornucopia before Demeter, and another inside the cornucopia being handed to Demeter by a goddess rising out of the earth, perhaps implying that he had been born in

248-586: A Linear B ( Mycenean Greek ) inscription ( PY En 609); the word 𐀅𐀔𐀳 , da-ma-te , probably refers to "households". On the other hand, 𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊 , si-to-po-ti-ni-ja , " Potnia of the Grain", is regarded as referring to her Bronze Age predecessor or to one of her epithets . Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter ( μήτηρ ) derived from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *méh₂tēr (mother). In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for

372-417: A Greek interpretation, but not necessarily an Indo-European one. Demeter was frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was also sometimes pictured with her daughter Persephone. However, Demeter is not generally portrayed with any of her consorts; the exception is Iasion , the youth of Crete who lay with her in a thrice-ploughed field and was killed afterward by

496-492: A cave to mourn and to purify herself. She was consequently depicted with the head of a horse in this region. A sculpture of the Black Demeter was made by Onatas . In the earliest conceptions of Demeter she is the goddess of grain and threshing, however her functions were extended beyond the fields and she was often identified with the earth goddess ( Gaia ). Some of the epithets of Gaia and Demeter are similar showing

620-508: A chorus composed of freed Titans. Possibly even earlier than Pindar and Aeschylus, two papyrus versions of a passage of Hesiods' Works and Days also mention Cronus being released by Zeus, and ruling over the heroes who go to the Isle of the Blessed; but other versions of Hesiod's text do not, and most editors judge these lines of text to be later interpolations. It is generally accepted that

744-473: A field while she was picking flowers, with Zeus' leave. Demeter searched everywhere to find her missing daughter to no avail until she was informed that Hades had taken her to the Underworld. In response, Demeter neglected her duties as goddess of agriculture, plunging the earth into a deadly famine where nothing would grow, causing mortals to die. Zeus ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother to avert

868-588: A form of agrarian magic. Theocritus described one of Demeter's earlier roles as that of a goddess of poppies: For the Greeks, Demeter was still a poppy goddess Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands. Karl Kerényi asserted that poppies were connected with a Cretan cult which was eventually carried to the Eleusinian Mysteries in Classical Greece . In a clay statuette from Gazi,

992-409: A horse's head holding a dove and dolphin, perhaps to symbolize her power over the Underworld, the air, and the water. The cult of Demeter in the region was related to Despoina , a very old chthonic divinity. Demeter shares the double function of death and fertility with her daughter Persephone. Demeter and Persephone were called Despoinai (the mistresses) and Demeters . This duality was also used in

1116-552: A huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's children. Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children. Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon,

1240-633: A jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt. Demeter is assigned the zodiac constellation Virgo, the Virgin, by Marcus Manilius in his 1st-century Roman work Astronomicon. In art, the constellation Virgo holds Spica, a sheaf of wheat in her hand and sits beside constellation Leo the Lion. In Arcadia, she was known as "Black Demeter". She was said to have taken the form of a mare to escape the pursuit of her younger brother, Poseidon, and having been raped by him despite her disguise, she dressed all in black and retreated into

1364-581: A key role in an important part of Greek mythology, the succession myth. It told how the Titan Cronus , the youngest of the Titans, overthrew Uranus , and how in turn Zeus, by waging and winning a great ten-year war pitting the new gods against the old gods, called the Titanomachy ("Titan war"), overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of

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1488-483: A new plant arises from buried seed. This was most likely a belief shared by initiates in Demeter's mysteries, as interpreted by Pindar : "Blessed is he who has seen before he goes under the earth; for he knows the end of life and knows also its divine beginning." In Arcadia Demeter had the epithets Erinys (fury) and Melaina (black) which are associated with the myth of Demeter's rape by Poseidon. The epithets stress

1612-430: A parcel of me and take me round. The dead man lies in some dark corner, shrouded from the knees upward in an old sheet, with the cats fighting for possession of him, while those who have expectations wait for me in the public place, gaping as wide as young swallows that scream for their mother's return. In Canto VII of Dante's Inferno , Plutus is a demon of wealth who guards the fourth circle of Hell, "The Hoarders and

1736-552: A similar fashion, in the Iliad , Hera, upon swearing an oath by the underworld river Styx , "invoked by name all the gods below Tartarus, that are called Titans" as witnesses. They were the older gods, but not, apparently, as was once thought, the old gods of an indigenous group in Greece, historically displaced by the new gods of Greek invaders. Rather, they were a group of gods, whose mythology at least, seems to have been borrowed from

1860-468: A succession of kings in heaven: Anu (Sky), Kumarbi , and the storm-god Teshub , with many striking parallels to Hesiod's account of the Greek succession myth. Like Cronus, Kumarbi castrates the sky-god Anu, and takes over his kingship. And like Cronus, Kumarbi swallows gods (and a stone?), one of whom is the storm-god Teshub, who like the storm-god Zeus, is apparently victorious against Kumarbi and others in

1984-468: A war of the gods. Other Hittite texts contain allusions to "former gods" ( karuilies siunes ), precisely what Hesiod called the Titans, theoi proteroi . Like the Titans, these Hittite karuilies siunes , were twelve (usually) in number and end up confined in the underworld by the storm-god Teshub, imprisoned by gates they cannot open. In Hurrian, the Hittite's karuilies siunes were known as

2108-602: A welcome volunteer, on the side of Zeus; and it is by reason of my counsel that the cavernous gloom of Tartarus now hides ancient Cronus and his allies within it. The mythographer Apollodorus , gives a similar account of the succession myth to Hesiod's, but with a few significant differences. According to Apollodorus, there were thirteen original Titans, adding the Titaness Dione to Hesiod's list. The Titans (instead of being Uranus' firstborn as in Hesiod) were born after

2232-541: Is also lame, as he takes his time arriving, and winged, so he leaves faster than he came. When the god's sight is restored, in Aristophanes' comedy , he is then able to determine who is deserving of wealth, creating havoc. Phaedrus records a fable where, after Hercules is received in Olympus, he greets all the gods but refuses to greet Plutus. When the king of gods Jupiter asks him why, he replies that he hates

2356-716: Is round about them", and further, that Zeus "thrust Cronos down to dwell beneath earth and the unresting sea." Brief mentions of the Titanomachy and the imprisonment of the Titans in Tartarus also occur in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound . In the Hymn , Hera, angry at Zeus, calls upon the "Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men". In Prometheus Bound , Prometheus (the son of

2480-700: Is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture , presiding over crops , grains , food , and the fertility of the earth. Although Demeter is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Underworld . She is also called Deo ( Δηώ Dēṓ ). In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea and Cronus , and sister to Hestia , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus . Like her other siblings except Zeus, she

2604-437: Is the mother and the giver of food generally. This view is shared by British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison , who suggests that Démeter's name means Grain-Mother , instead of Earth-Mother . An alternative Proto-Indo-European etymology comes through Potnia and Despoina , where Des- represents a derivative of PIE *dem (house, dome), and Demeter is "mother of the house" (from PIE *dems-méh₂tēr ). R. S. P. Beekes rejects

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2728-455: Is uncertain. Hesiod in the Theogony gives a double etymology, deriving it from titaino [to strain] and tisis [vengeance], saying that Uranus gave them the name Titans: "in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards". But modern scholars doubt Hesiod's etymology. Jane Ellen Harrison asserts that

2852-583: The Dead Gods ( Dingiruggû ), the Banished Gods ( ilāni darsūti ), and the Defeated (or Bound) Gods ( ilāni kamûti ). In Orphic literature, the Titans play an important role in what is often considered to be the central myth of Orphism , the sparagmos , that is the dismemberment of Dionysus , who in this context is often given the title Zagreus . As pieced together from various ancient sources,

2976-548: The Edict of Thessalonica and banned paganism throughout the Roman Empire , people throughout Greece continued to pray to Demeter as "Saint Demetra", patron saint of agriculture . Around 1765–1766, the antiquary Richard Chandler , alongside the architect Nicholas Revett and the painter William Pars , visited Eleusis and mentioned a statue of a caryatid as well as the folklore that surrounded it, they stated that it

3100-641: The Great Mother Rhea - Cybele who was worshipped in Crete and Asia Minor with the music of cymbals and violent rites. It seems that poppies were connected with the cult of the Great Mother. In epic poetry and Hesiod 's Theogony , Demeter is the Grain-Mother, the goddess of cereals who provides grain for bread and blesses its harvesters. In Homer 's Iliad , the blonde Demeter with

3224-631: The Minoan poppy goddess wears the seed capsules, sources of nourishment and narcosis, in her diadem. According to Kerényi, "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis and it is almost certain that in the Cretan cult sphere opium was prepared from poppies." In an older tradition in Crete

3348-583: The Near East (see "Near East origins," below). These imported gods gave context and provided a backstory for the Olympian gods, explaining where these Greek Olympian gods had come from, and how they had come to occupy their position of supremacy in the cosmos. The Titans were the previous generation, and family of gods, whom the Olympians had to overthrow, and banish from the upper world, in order to become

3472-726: The "gods of down under" ( enna durenna ) and the Hittites identified these gods with the Anunnaki , the Babylonian gods of the underworld, whose defeat and imprisonment by the storm-god Marduk , in the Babylonian poem Enûma Eliš (late second millennium BC or earlier), parallels the defeat and imprisonment of the Titans. Other collectivities of gods, perhaps associated with the Mesopotamian Anunnaki, include

3596-402: The "queens" (wa-na-ssoi). Both Homer and Hesiod, writing c. 700 BC, described Demeter making love with the agricultural hero Iasion in a ploughed field during the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia . According to Hesiod, this union resulted in the birth of Plutus . According to Diodorus Siculus , in his Bibliotheca historica written in the 1st century BC, Demeter and Zeus were also

3720-577: The Athenian rhetorician Isocrates , Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture which gave to men a civilized way of life, and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife. These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter's myths and mystery cults. Demeter is the giver of mystic rites and the giver of the civilized way of life (teaching the laws of agriculture). Her epithet Eleusinia relates her with

3844-476: The Eating of Flesh , Plutarch writes of "stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood". While, according to the early 4th century AD Christian apologist Arnobius , and the 5th century AD Greek epic poet Nonnus , it is as punishment for their murder of Dionysus that

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3968-551: The Eleusinian mysteries, however at Sparta Eleusinia had an early use, and it was probably a name rather than an epithet. Demeter Thesmophoros (law-giving) is closely associated to the laws of cereal agriculture. The festival Thesmophoria was celebrated throughout Greece and was connected to a form of agrarian magic. Near Pheneus in Arcadia she was known as Demeter- Thesmia (lawfull), and she received rites according to

4092-760: The Greek succession myth was imported from the Near East , and that along with this imported myth came stories of a group of former ruling gods, who had been defeated and displaced, and who became identified, by the Greeks, as the Titans. Features of Hesiod's account of the Titans can be seen in the stories of the Hurrians , the Hittites , the Babylonians , and other Near Eastern cultures. The Hurro - Hittite text Song of Kumarbi (also called Kingship in Heaven ), written five hundred years before Hesiod, tells of

4216-610: The Homeric "Mother Earth arοura " who gave the gift of cereals ( zeai or deai ). Most of the epithets of Demeter describe her as a goddess of grain. Her name Deo in literature probably relates her with deai a Cretan word for cereals. In Attica she was called Haloas (of the threshing floor) according to the earliest conception of Demeter as the Corn-Mother. She was sometimes called Chloe (ripe-grain or fresh-green) and sometimes Ioulo (ioulos : grain sheaf). Chloe

4340-419: The Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes in Tartarus. Although Hesiod does not say how Zeus was eventually able to free his siblings, according to Apollodorus, Zeus was aided by Oceanus' daughter Metis , who gave Cronus an emetic which forced him to disgorge his children that he had swallowed. According to Apollodorus, in the tenth year of the ensuing war, Zeus learned from Gaia, that he would be victorious if he had

4464-565: The Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopes as allies. So Zeus slew their warder Campe (a detail not found in Hesiod) and released them, and in addition to giving Zeus his thunderbolt (as in Hesiod), the Cyclopes also gave Poseidon his trident , and Hades a helmet, and "with these weapons the gods overcame the Titans, shut them up in Tartarus, and appointed the Hundred-handers their guards". The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his Fabulae , gives an unusual (and perhaps confused) account of

4588-575: The Illyrian god Dei-paturos ( dei- , "sky", attached to - paturos, "father"). The Lesbian form Dō- may simply reflect a different colloquial pronunciation of the non-Greek name. Another theory suggests that the element De - might be connected with Deo , an epithet of Demeter and it could derive from the Cretan word dea ( δηά ), Ionic zeia ( ζειά )—variously identified with emmer , spelt , rye , or other grains by modern scholars—so that she

4712-532: The King": wa-na-ssoi , wa-na-ka-te ). The "Two Queens" may be related to Demeter and Persephone or their precursors, goddesses who were no longer associated with Poseidon in later periods. In Pylos potnia (mistress) is the major goddess of the city and "wanax " in the tablets has a similar nature with her male consort in the Minoan cult. Potnia retained some chthonic cults, and in popular religion these were related to

4836-539: The Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne , "earth-shaker". John Chadwick also argues that the dā element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with "earth". M. L. West has proposed that the word Demeter, initially Damater , could be a borrowing from an Illyrian deity attested in the Messapic goddess Damatura , with a form dā- ("earth", from PIE *dʰǵʰ(e)m- ) attached to - matura ("mother"), akin to

4960-679: The Olympians in a ten-year war called "the Titanomachy " ( Ancient Greek : ἡ Τῑτᾱνομαχίᾱ , romanized :  hē Tītānomakhíā , lit.   'a battle of Titans'). As a result of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus . Some Titans were apparently allowed to remain free. According to Hesiod , the Titan offspring of Uranus and Gaia were Oceanus , Coeus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , Theia , Rhea , Themis , Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Tethys , and Cronus . Eight of

5084-783: The Olympians: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus. By Zeus, Themis bore the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne bore the nine Muses . While the descendants of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Cronus and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (i.e. the river gods, the Oceanids, the Olympians, the Horae, the Moirai, and the Muses) are not normally considered to be Titans, descendants of

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5208-546: The Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; ... the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; ... and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen Isis. Alongside the rest of her siblings, with the exception of her youngest brother Zeus, she was swallowed as a newborn by her father due to his fear of being overthrown by one of his children; she

5332-540: The Sun), would seem to be the result of cosmological necessity, for how could a world encircling river, or the Sun, be confined in Tartarus? As for other male offspring of the Titans, some seem to have participated in the Titanomachy, and were punished as a result, and others did not, or at least (like Helios) remained free. Three of Iapetus' sons, Atlas , Menoetius , and Prometheus are specifically connected by ancient sources with

5456-470: The Titan Iapetus ) refers to the Titanomachy, and his part in it: When first the heavenly powers were moved to wrath, and mutual dissension was stirred up among them—some bent on casting Cronus from his seat so Zeus, in truth, might reign; others, eager for the contrary end, that Zeus might never win mastery over the gods—it was then that I, although advising them for the best, was unable to persuade

5580-476: The Titan brothers and sisters married each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe, Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two Titan brothers married outside their immediate family. Iapetus married his niece Clymene , the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, while Crius married his half-sister Eurybia , the daughter of Gaia and Pontus . The two remaining Titan sisters, Themis and Mnemosyne, became wives of their nephew Zeus . From Oceanus and Tethys came

5704-492: The Titaness Tethys . Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound , has Oceanus free to visit his nephew Prometheus sometime after the war. Like Oceanus, Helios, the Titan son of Hyperion, certainly remained free to drive his sun-chariot daily across the sky, taking an active part in events subsequent to the Titanomachy. The freedom of Oceanus, along with Helios (Sun), and perhaps Hyperion (to the extent that he also represented

5828-427: The Titanomachy, but Prometheus does remain free, in the Theogony , for his deception of Zeus at Mecone and his subsequent theft of fire , for which transgressions Prometheus was famously punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock where an eagle came to eat his "immortal liver" every day, which then grew back every night. However Aeschylus 's Prometheus Bound (as mentioned above) does have Prometheus say that he

5952-438: The Titanomachy, their war with the Olympians. As a group, they have no further role in conventional Greek myth, nor do they play any part in Greek cult. As individuals, few of the Titans have any separate identity. Aside from Cronus, the only other figure Homer mentions by name as being a Titan is Iapetus. Some Titans seem only to serve a genealogical function, providing parents for more important offspring: Coeus and Phoebe as

6076-461: The Titanomachy. According to Hyginus the Titanomachy came about because of a dispute between Jupiter and Juno (the Roman equivalents of Zeus and Hera). Juno, Jupiter's jealous wife, was angry at her husband, on account of Jupiter's son Epaphus by Io (one of her husband's many lovers). Because of this Juno incited the Titans to rebel against Jupiter and restore Saturn (Cronus) to the kingship of

6200-406: The Titans end up imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus. The only ancient source to explicitly connect the sparagmos and the anthropogony is the 6th century AD Neoplatonist Olympiodorus , who writes that, according to Orpheus, after the Titans had dismembered and eaten Dionysus, "Zeus, angered by the deed, blasts them with his thunderbolts, and from the sublimate of the vapors that rise from them comes

6324-514: The Titans in a revolt against Zeus (Jupiter). The Theogony has Menoetius struck down by Zeus' thunderbolt and cast into Erebus "because of his mad presumption and exceeding pride". Whether Hesiod was using Erebus as another name for Tartarus (as was sometimes done), or meant that Menoetius's punishment was because of his participation in the Titanomachy is unclear, and no other early source mentions this event, however Apollodorus says that it was. Hesiod does not mention Prometheus in connection with

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6448-489: The Titans, children of Heaven and Earth; but they, disdaining counsels of craft, in the pride of their strength thought to gain the mastery without a struggle and by force. ... That it was not by brute strength nor through violence, but by guile that those who should gain the upper hand were destined to prevail. And though I argued all this to them, they did not pay any attention to my words. With all that before me, it seemed best that, joining with my mother, I should place myself,

6572-588: The Titans, defeating them and throwing them into Tartarus , with the Hundred-Handers as their guards. Only brief references to the Titans and the succession myth are found in Homer . In the Iliad , Homer tells us that "the gods ... that are called Titans" reside in Tartarus. Specifically, Homer says that "Iapetus and Cronos ... have joy neither in the rays of Helios Hyperion [the Sun] nor in any breeze, but deep Tartarus

6696-487: The Titans, such as Prometheus , Atlas , Helios , and Leto , are sometimes also called Titans. The Titans were the former gods: the generation of gods preceding the Olympians . They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and

6820-567: The Underworld by Hades . At the Aventine, the new cult took its place alongside the old. It did not refer to Liber, whose open and gender-mixed cult played a central role in plebeian culture as a patron and protector of plebeian rights, freedoms and values. The exclusively female initiates and priestesses of the new " greek style " mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician -dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality . Unmarried girls should emulate

6944-421: The Underworld, were interpreted by Karl Kerenyi to mean that Plutus was supposed to be the son of Hades and Persephone , the king and the queen of the Underworld , though no such version is attested in any primary source. In the philosophized mythology of the later Classical period, Plutus is envisaged by Aristophanes as blinded by Zeus , so that he would be able to dispense his gifts without prejudice; he

7068-694: The Wasters". Dante likely included Plutus to symbolize the evil of hoarding wealth. He is known for saying the famous phrase, " Pape Satàn, pape Satàn aleppe ." In addition, Erasmus writes in The Praise of Folly that Folly is the offspring of Plutus. Like many other figures in Greek and Roman mythology, Plutus' name is related to several English words. These include: Demeter In ancient Greek religion and mythology , Demeter ( / d ɪ ˈ m iː t ər / ; Attic : Δημήτηρ Dēmḗtēr [dɛːmɛ́ːtɛːr] ; Doric : Δαμάτηρ Dāmā́tēr )

7192-413: The ages, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven, the health-giving sea winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me

7316-507: The altar were called "ompniai" and in Attica the goddess was known as Ompnia (related to corns). These cakes were oferred to all gods. In some fests big loafs ( artoi ) were offered to the goddess and in Boeotia she was known as Megalartos (of the big loaf) and Megalomazos (of the big mass, or big porridge). Her function was extended to vegetation generally and to all fruits and she had

7440-497: The arms of Tyche , the Fortune of Cities. In Lucian of Samosata 's satirical dialogue Timon , Plutus, the very embodiment of worldly goods written up in a parchment will, says to Hermes: it is not Zeus who sends me, but Hades, who has his own ways of conferring wealth and making presents; Hades and Plutus are not unconnected, you see. When I am to flit from one house to another, they lay me on parchment, seal me up carefully, make

7564-404: The basis for an Orphic doctrine of the divinity of man." However, when and to what extent there existed any Orphic tradition which included these elements is the subject of open debate. The 2nd century AD biographer and essayist Plutarch makes a connection between the sparagmos and the punishment of the Titans, but makes no mention of the anthropogony, or Orpheus, or Orphism. In his essay On

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7688-440: The blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys , whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Prometheus Lyomenos , an undated lost play by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 455 BC), had

7812-548: The chastity of Proserpina, the maiden; married women should seek to emulate Ceres, the devoted and fruitful mother. Their rites were intended to secure a good harvest and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries. Beginning in the 5th century BCE in Asia Minor , Demeter was also considered equivalent to the Phrygian goddess Cybele . Demeter's festival of Thesmophoria was popular throughout Asia Minor, and

7936-406: The child. The Titans whiten their faces with gypsum, and distracting the infant Dionysus with various toys, including a mirror, they seized Dionysus and tore (or cut) him to pieces. The pieces were then boiled, roasted and partially eaten, by the Titans. But Athena managed to save Dionysus' heart, by which Zeus was able to contrive his rebirth from Semele. Commonly presented as a part of the myth of

8060-428: The children she birthed. This he did with the first five: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon (in that order), to Rhea's great sorrow. However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus, and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion. Meanwhile, Rhea gave Cronus

8184-441: The classical period ( Thesmophoroi , Double named goddesses ) and particularly in an oath: "By the two goddesses". In the cult of Phlya she was worshipped as Anesidora who sends up gifts from the Underworld. In Sparta, she was known as Demeter- Chthonia (chthonic Demeter). After each death the mourning should end with a sacrifice to the goddess. Pausanias believes that her cult was introduced from Hermione , where Demeter

8308-495: The cosmos. According to the standard version of the succession myth, given in Hesiod's Theogony , Uranus initially produced eighteen children with Gaia: the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes , and the three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers), but hating them, he hid them away somewhere inside Gaia. Angry and in distress, Gaia fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus

8432-408: The darker side of her character and her relation to the dark underworld, in an old chthonic cult associated with wooden structures (xoana). Erinys had a similar function with the avenging Dike (Justice). In the mysteries of Pheneus the goddess was known as Cidaria . Her priest would put on the mask of Demeter, which was kept secret. The cult may have been connected with both the Underworld and

8556-533: The disaster. However, because Persephone had eaten food from the Underworld, she could not stay with Demeter forever, but had to divide the year between her mother and her husband, explaining the seasonal cycle as Demeter does not let plants grow while Persephone is gone. Her cult titles include Sito ( Σιτώ ), "she of the Grain", as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros ( θεσμός , thesmos : divine order, unwritten law; φόρος , phoros : bringer, bearer), "giver of customs" or "legislator", in association with

8680-420: The dismembered Dionysus Zagreus, is an Orphic anthropogony, that is an Orphic account of the origin of human beings. According to this widely held view, as punishment for their crime, Zeus struck the Titans with his thunderbolt , and from the remains of the destroyed Titans humankind was born, which resulted in a human inheritance of ancestral guilt, for this original sin of the Titans, and by some accounts "formed

8804-469: The earliest Amphictyony centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele (Ἀνθήλη), lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly, near Thermopylae. Mysian Demeter had a seven-day festival at Pellené in Arcadia. The geographer Pausanias passed the shrine to Mysian Demeter on the road from Mycenae to Argos and reports that according to Argive tradition, the shrine was founded by an Argive named Mysius who venerated Demeter. Even after Theodosius I issued

8928-558: The end of the Second Punic War . The cult originated in southern Italy (part of Magna Graecia ) and was probably based on the Thesmophoria, a mystery cult dedicated to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention". The new cult

9052-414: The epithets eukarpos (of good crop), karpophoros (bringer of fruits), malophoros (apple bearer) and sometimes Oria (all the fruits of the season). These epithets show an identity in nature with the earth goddess. The central theme in the Eleusinian Mysteries was the reunion of Persephone with her mother, Demeter when new crops were reunited with the old seed, a form of eternity. According to

9176-430: The farthest part of huge earth. They cannot get out, for Poseidon has set bronze gates upon it, and a wall is extended on both sides. However, besides Cronus, exactly which of the other Titans were supposed to have been imprisoned in Tartarus is unclear. The only original Titan, mentioned by name, as being confined with Cronus in Tartarus, is Iapetus . But, not all the Titans were imprisoned there. Certainly Oceanus ,

9300-527: The first element of her name. It is possible that Da ( Δᾶ ), a word which corresponds to Gē ( Γῆ ) in Attic, is the Doric form of De ( Δῆ ), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth". Liddell & Scott find this "improbable" and Beekes writes, "there is no indication that [ da ] means "earth", although it has also been assumed in the name of Poseidon found in

9424-585: The form of a snake, explaining the origin of the symbol on Hermes ' staff. Their daughter is said to be Persephone, whom Zeus, in turn, mates with to conceive Dionysus . According to the Orphic fragments, "After becoming the mother of Zeus, she who was formerly Rhea became Demeter." There is some evidence that the figures of the Queen of the Underworld and the daughter of Demeter were initially considered separate goddesses. However, they must have become conflated by

9548-411: The god of riches due to Plutus favouring the wicked and the corrupt. Among the Eleusinian figures painted on Greek ceramics , regardless of whether he is depicted as child or youthful ephebe , Plutus can be identified as the one bearing the cornucopia —horn of plenty. In later allegorical bas-reliefs , Plutus is depicted as a boy in the arms of Eirene , as Prosperity is the gift of "Peace", or in

9672-702: The goddess Demeter. In Greek religion potniai (mistresses) appear in plural (like the Erinyes) and are closely related to the Eleusinian Demeter. Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara , Celeae, Lerna , Aegila , Munychia , Corinth , Delos , Priene , Akragas , Iasos , Pergamon , Selinus , Tegea , Thoricus , Dion (in Macedonia) Lykosoura , Mesembria , Enna , and Samothrace . Probably

9796-463: The goddess of childbirth, who was involved with the annual birth of the divine child. Elements of this early form of worship survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered: "the mighty Potnia had born a strong son." Tablets from Pylos of c.  1400  – c.  1200 BC record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" ("to the Two Queens and

9920-672: The gods are sprung, and mother Tethys", while in the same passage Hypnos describes Oceanus as "from whom they all are sprung". Plato , in his Timaeus , provides a genealogy (probably Orphic) which perhaps reflected an attempt to reconcile this apparent divergence between Homer and Hesiod, with Uranus and Gaia as the parents of Oceanus and Tethys, and Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of Cronus and Rhea "and all that go with them", plus Phorcys . In his Cratylus , Plato quotes Orpheus as saying that Oceanus and Tethys were "the first to marry", possibly also reflecting an Orphic theogony in which Oceanus and Tethys, rather than Uranus and Gaia, were

10044-410: The gods. Jupiter, with the help of Minerva ( Athena ), Apollo , and Diana ( Artemis ), put down the rebellion, and hurled the Titans (as in other accounts) down to Tartarus. After being overthrown in the Titanomachy, Cronus and his fellow vanquished Titans were cast into Tartarus: That is where the Titan gods are hidden under murky gloom by the plans of the cloud-gatherer Zeus, in a dank place, at

10168-413: The great world encircling river, seems to have remained free, and in fact, seems not to have fought on the Titans' side at all. In Hesiod, Oceanus sends his daughter Styx , with her children Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Power), and Bia (Force), to fight on Zeus' side against the Titans, while in the Iliad , Hera says that, during the Titanomachy, she was cared for by Oceanus and his wife

10292-473: The heart of both festivals were myths concerning Demeter as the mother and Persephone as her daughter. In the Roman period, Demeter became conflated with the Roman agricultural goddess Ceres through interpretatio romana . The worship of Demeter has formally merged with that of Ceres around 205 BC, along with the ritus graecia cereris , a Greek-inspired form of cult, as part of Rome's general religious recruitment of deities as allies against Carthage, towards

10416-467: The help of the wind separates the grain from the chaff. Homer mentions the Thalysia a Greek harvest-festival of first fruits in honour of Demeter . In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus ) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong. This was her main function at Eleusis , and she became panhellenic. In Cyprus , "grain-harvesting" was damatrizein . Demeter was the zeidoros arοura ,

10540-428: The identity of their nature. In most of her myths and cults, Demeter is the "Grain-Mother" or the "Earth-Mother". In the older chthonic cults the earth goddess was related to the Underworld and in the secret rites (mysteries) Demeter and Persephone share the double function of death and fertility. Demeter is the giver of the secret rites and the giver of the laws of cereal agriculture. She was occasionally identified with

10664-424: The local version. Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley. In addition to her role as an agricultural goddess, Demeter was often worshipped more generally as a goddess of the earth, from which crops spring up. Her individuality was rooted to the less developed personality of Gaia (earth). In Arcadia Demeter Melaina (the black Demeter) was represented as snake-haired with

10788-606: The matter from which men are created." Olympiodorus goes on to conclude that, because the Titans had eaten his flesh, we their descendants, are a part of Dionysus. Some 19th- and 20th-century scholars, including Jane Ellen Harrison , have argued that an initiatory or shamanic ritual underlies the myth of the dismemberment and cannibalism of Dionysus by the Titans. Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. The etymology of Τiτᾶνες ( Titanes )

10912-455: The myth of Persephone and Adonis in many ways mirrors the myth of Cybele and Attis . Some late antique sources syncretized several "great goddess" figures into a single deity. For example, the Platonist philosopher Apuleius , writing in the late 2nd century, identified Ceres (Demeter) with Isis, having her declare: I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of

11036-600: The nine Muses . Leto, who gives birth to the Olympians Apollo and Artemis , takes an active part on the side of the Trojans in the Iliad , and is also involved in the story of the giant Tityos . Tethys, presumably along with her husband Oceanus, took no part in the war, and, as mentioned above, provided safe refuge for Hera during the war. Rhea remains free and active after the war: appearing at Leto's delivery of Apollo, as Zeus' messenger to Demeter announcing

11160-516: The other Titans, notably: Leto, Helios, Atlas, and Prometheus, are themselves sometimes referred to as Titans. Passages in a section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus suggest the possibility that Homer knew of a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the parents of the Titans. Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom

11284-488: The parents of Leto , the mother, by Zeus, of the Olympians Apollo and Artemis ; Hyperion and Theia as the parents of Helios , Selene and Eos ; Iapetus as the father of Atlas and Prometheus ; and Crius as the father of three sons Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses , who themselves seem only to exist to provide fathers for more important figures such as the Anemoi (Winds), Nike (Victory), and Hecate . The Titans play

11408-491: The parents of Dionysus. Diodorus described the myth of Dionysus' double birth (once from the earth, i.e. Demeter, when the plant sprouts) and once from the vine (when the fruit sprouts from the plant). Diodorus also related a version of the myth of Dionysus' destruction by the Titans ("sons of Gaia "), who boiled him, and how Demeter gathered up his remains so that he could be born a third time (Diod. iii.62). Diodorus states that Dionysus' birth from Zeus and his older sister Demeter

11532-420: The potnia of the labyrinth da-pu-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja . Poseidon was often given the title wa-na-ka ( wanax ) in Linear B inscriptions in his role as King of the Underworld, and his title E-ne-si-da-o-ne indicates his chthonic nature. He was the male companion (paredros) of the goddess in the Minoan and probably Mycenean cult. In the cave of Amnisos , Enesidaon is associated with the cult of Eileithyia ,

11656-859: The primeval parents. To Hesiod's twelve Titans, the mythographer Apollodorus , adds a thirteenth Titan, Dione , the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. Plato's inclusion of Phorkys, apparently, as a Titan, and the mythographer Apollodorus 's inclusion of Dione , suggests an Orphic tradition in which the canonical twelve Titans consisted of Hesiod's twelve with Phorkys and Dione taking the place of Oceanus and Tethys. The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his somewhat confused genealogy, after listing as offspring of Aether (Upper Sky) and Earth (Gaia), Ocean [Oceanus], Themis, Tartarus, and Pontus, next lists "the Titans", followed by two of Hesiod's Hundred-Handers : Briareus and Gyges, one of Hesiod's three Cyclopes : Steropes, then continues his list with Atlas, Hyperion and Polus, Saturn [Cronus], Ops [Rhea], Moneta , Dione, and

11780-556: The primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), with six male Titans— Oceanus , Coeus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , and Cronus —and six female Titans, called the Titanides ( αἱ Τῑτᾱνῐ́δες , hai Tītānídes ) or Titanesses — Theia , Rhea , Themis , Mnemosyne , Phoebe , and Tethys . After Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea, she bore the first generation of Olympians: the six siblings Zeus , Hades , Poseidon , Hestia , Demeter , and Hera . Certain descendants of

11904-580: The reconstructed story, usually given by modern scholars, goes as follows. Zeus had intercourse with Persephone in the form of a serpent, producing Dionysus. He is taken to Mount Ida where (like the infant Zeus) he is guarded by the dancing Curetes . Zeus intended Dionysus to be his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but a jealous Hera incited the Titans—;who apparently unlike in Hesiod and Homer, were not imprisoned in Tartarus—;to kill

12028-407: The ruling pantheon of Greek gods. For Hesiod, possibly in order to match the twelve Olympian gods, there were twelve Titans: six males and six females, with some of Hesiod's names perhaps being mere poetic inventions, so as to arrive at the right number. In Hesiod's Theogony , apart from Cronus, the Titans play no part at all in the overthrow of Uranus, and we only hear of their collective action in

12152-503: The secret female-only festival called the Thesmophoria. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries , a religious tradition that predated the Olympian pantheon and which may have its roots in the Mycenaean period c.  1400 –1200 BC. Demeter

12276-428: The settlement concerning Persephone , bringing Pelops back to life. While in Hesiod's Theogony , and Homer's Iliad , Cronus and the other Titans are confined to Tartarus—apparently forever —another tradition, as indicated by later sources, seems to have had Cronus, or other of the Titans, being eventually set free. Pindar , in one of his poems (462 BC), says that, although Atlas still "strains against

12400-569: The three Furies : Alecto , Megaera , and Tisiphone . The geographer Pausanias , mentions seeing the image of a man in armor, who was supposed to be the Titan Anytos , who was said to have raised the Arcadian Despoina . The Titans, as a group, represent a pre-Olympian order. Hesiod uses the expression "the former gods" ( theoi proteroi ) in reference to the Titans. They were the banished gods, who were no longer part of

12524-422: The three Hundred-Handers and the three Cyclopes , and while Uranus imprisoned these first six of his offspring, he apparently left the Titans free. Not just Cronus, but all the Titans, except Oceanus, attacked Uranus. After Cronus castrated Uranus, the Titans freed the Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes (unlike in Hesiod, where they apparently remained imprisoned), and made Cronus their sovereign, who then reimprisoned

12648-432: The three thousand river gods , and three thousand Oceanid nymphs. From Coeus and Phoebe came Leto , another wife of Zeus, and Asteria . From Crius and Eurybia came Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses . From Hyperion and Theia came the celestial personifications Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn). From Iapetus and Clymene came Atlas , Menoetius , Prometheus , and Epimetheus . From Cronus and Rhea came

12772-421: The thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia. A great war was begun, the Titanomachy , for control of the cosmos. The Titans fought from Mount Othrys , while the Olympians fought from Mount Olympus . In the tenth year of that great war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans, helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury of his thunderbolt at

12896-739: The time of Hesiod in the 7th century BC. Demeter and Persephone were often worshipped together and were often referred to by joint cultic titles. In their cult at Eleusis, they were referred to simply as "the goddesses", usually distinguished as "the older" and "the younger"; in Rhodes and Sparta , they were worshipped as "the Demeters"; in the Thesmophoria, they were known as "the thesmophoroi" ("the legislators"). In Arcadia they were known as "the Great Goddesses" and "the mistresses". In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called

13020-640: The uninitiated". Elsewhere, he says that the Phigalians assert that the offspring of Poseidon and Demeter was not a horse, but Despoina, "as the Arcadians call her". Titans In Greek mythology , the Titans ( Ancient Greek : οἱ Τῑτᾶνες , hoi Tītânes , singular : ὁ Τῑτᾱ́ν, -ήν , ho Tītân ) were the pre-Olympian gods. According to the Theogony of Hesiod , they were the twelve children of

13144-537: The upper world. Rather they were the gods who dwelt underground in Tartarus , and as such, they may have been thought of as "gods of the underworld", who were the antithesis of, and in opposition to, the Olympians, the gods of the heavens. Hesiod called the Titans "earth-born" ( chthonic ), and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , Hera prays to the Titans "who dwell beneath the earth", calling on them to aid her against Zeus, just as if they were chthonic spirits. In

13268-477: The vegetation cult was related with the deity of the cave. During the Bronze Age, a goddess of nature dominated both in Minoan and Mycenean cults. In the Linear B inscriptions po-ti-ni-ja (potnia) refers to the goddess of nature who was concerned with birth and vegetation and had certain chthonic apects. Some scholars believe that she was the universal mother goddess. A Linear B inscription at Knossos mentions

13392-423: The war. In the Theogony both Atlas and Menoetius received punishments from Zeus, but Hesiod does not say for what crime exactly they were punished. Atlas was famously punished by Zeus, by being forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders, but none of the early sources for this story (Hesiod, Homer, Pindar , and Aeschylus ) say that his punishment was as a result of the war. According to Hyginus however, Atlas led

13516-456: The weight of the sky ... Zeus freed the Titans", and in another poem (476 BC), Pindar has Cronus, in fact, ruling in the Isles of the Blessed , a land where the Greek heroes reside in the afterlife: Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus' road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of

13640-668: The word "Titan" comes from the Greek τίτανος, signifying white "earth, clay, or gypsum", and that the Titans were "white clay men", or men covered by white clay or gypsum dust in their rituals. The planet Saturn is named for the Roman equivalent of the Titan Cronus. Saturn's largest moon, Titan , is named after the Titans generally, and the other moons of Saturn are named after individual Titans, specifically Tethys , Phoebe , Rhea , Hyperion , and Iapetus . Astronomer William Henry Pickering claimed to have discovered another moon of Saturn which he named Themis , but this discovery

13764-490: Was an ally of Zeus during the Titanomachy. The female Titans, to the extent that they are mentioned at all, appear also to have been allowed to remain free. Three of these, according to the Theogony , become wives of Zeus : Themis , Mnemosyne , and Leto , the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe . Themis gives birth to the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne gives birth to

13888-433: Was associated with Hades . In a local legend a hollow in the earth was the entrance to the underworld, by which the souls could pass easily. In Elis she was called Demeter- Chamyne (goddess of the ground), in an old chthonic cult associated with the descent to Hades. At Levadia the goddess was known as Demeter- Europa and she was associated with Trophonius , an old divinity of the underworld. The oracle of Trophonius

14012-459: Was considered sacred by the locals because it protected their crops. They called the statue "Saint Demetra", a saint whose story had many similarities to the myth of Demeter and Persephone, except that her daughter had been abducted by the Turks and not by Hades . The locals covered the statue with flowers to ensure the fertility of their fields. This tradition continued until 1865, when the statue

14136-469: Was famous in the antiquity. Pindar uses the rare epithet Chalkokrotos (bronze sounding). Brazen musical instruments were used in the mysteries of Demeter and the Great-Mother Rhea - Cybele was also worshipped with the music of cymbals. In central Greece Demeter was known as Amphictyonis (of the dwellers-round), in a cult of the goddess at Anthele near Thermopylae (hot gates). She

14260-598: Was forcibly removed by Edward Daniel Clarke and donated to the University of Cambridge . The statue is now located in the Fitzwilliam Museum , the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. Demeter's two major festivals were sacred mysteries . Her Thesmophoria festival (11–13 October) was women-only. Her Eleusinian mysteries were open to initiates of any gender or social class. At

14384-476: Was installed in the already ancient Temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera , Rome's Aventine patrons of the plebs ; from the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at Enna, in Sicily , was acknowledged as Ceres' oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognized as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Persephone. Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone after the latter's abduction into

14508-438: Was later freed when Zeus made Cronus disgorge all of his children by giving him a special potion. Demeter is notable as the mother of Persephone, described by both Hesiod and in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as the result of a union with her younger brother Zeus. An alternate recounting of the matter appears in a fragment of the lost Orphic theogony, which preserves part of a myth in which Zeus mates with his mother, Rhea , in

14632-511: Was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele , and she was identified with the Roman goddess Ceres . Demeter may appear in Linear A as da-ma-te on three documents ( AR Zf 1 and 2, and KY Za 2), all three dedicated to religious situations and all three bearing just the name ( i-da-ma-te on AR Zf 1 and 2). It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in

14756-412: Was said to be the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon. According to Pausanias, a Thelpusian tradition said that during Demeter's search for Persephone, Poseidon pursued her. Demeter turned into a horse to avoid her younger brother's advances. However, he turned into a stallion and mated with the goddess, resulting in the birth of the horse god Arion and a daughter "whose name they are not wont to divulge to

14880-430: Was somewhat of a minority belief, possibly via conflation of Demeter with her daughter, as most sources state that the parents of Dionysus were Zeus and Persephone, and later Zeus and Semele. Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) describes Demeter as the second daughter of Cronus and Rhea , and the sister of Hestia , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus . In Arcadia, a major Arcadian deity known as Despoina ("Mistress")

15004-428: Was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus. Through her brother Zeus, she became the mother of Persephone , a fertility goddess and resurrection deity . One of the most notable Homeric Hymns , the Homeric Hymn to Demeter , tells the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades and Demeter's search for her. When Hades, the King of the Underworld, wished to make Persephone his wife, he abducted her from

15128-452: Was the goddess of young corn and young vegetation and "Iouloi" were harvest songs in honour of the goddess. The reapers called Demeter Amallophoros (bringer of sheaves) and Amaia (reaper). The goddess was the giver of abundance of food and she was known as Sito (of the grain) and Himalis (of abundance ). The bread from the first harvest-fruits was called thalysian bread ( Thalysia ) in honour of Demeter. The sacrificial cakes burned on

15252-400: Was the patron goddess of an ancient Amphictyony . Thermopylae is the place of hot springs considered to be entrances to Hades , since Demeter was a chthonic goddess in the older local cults. The Athenians called the dead "Demetrioi", and this may reflect a link between Demeter and the ancient cult of the dead, linked to the agrarian belief that a new life would sprout from the dead body, as

15376-558: Was willing. So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush", gave him an adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father. This enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume supreme command of the cosmos, with the Titans as his subordinates. Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control. Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of

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