Greek Mythology Essay, Research Paper
The Greeks believed that the earth was formed before any
of the gods appeared. The gods, as the Greeks knew them,
all originated with Father Heaven, and Mother Earth. Father
Heaven was known as Uranus, and Mother Earth, as Gaea.
Uranus and Gaea raised many children. Amoung them were
the Cyclopes, the Titans, and the Hecatoncheires, or the
Hundred- Handed Ones. Uranus let the Titans roam free,
but he imprisoned the Cyclopes and the Hundred- handed
Ones beneath the earth. Finally, Gaea could not bear
Uranus’s unkindness to the Cyclopes and the
Hundred-Handed Ones any longer. Gaea joined Cronos,
one of the Titans; and together, they overcame Uranus,
killed him, and threw his body into the sea. Aphrodite,
goddess of love and beauty, later rose from the sea where
Uranus’s body had been thrown. Now Cronus became king
of the universe. Cronos married his sister, Rhea, and they
had six children. At the time of Cronos’s marriage to Rhea,
Gaea prophesied that one of his children would overthrow
Cronos, as he had overthrown Uranus. To protect himself,
Cronos swallowed each of his first five children — Hestia,
Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon — immediatly after
birth. After the birth of her sixth and last child, Rhea tricked
Cronos into swallowing a rock and then hid the child — Zeus
– on earth. Zeus grew up on earth and was brought back to
Mount Olympus as a cupbearer to his unsuspecting father.
Rhea and Zeus connived against Cronos by mixing a noxious
drink for him. Thinking it was wine, Cronos drank the
mixture and promptly regulated his five other children, fully
grown. Then Zeus and his brothers waged a mighty battle
against Cronos and the other Titans. Cronos and the Titans
were defeated when Zeus ambushed them with the help of
the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Headed Ones, and they
panicked and retreated. Cronos and the Titans were
imprisioned in the Earth where their fighting still causes
earthquakes from time to time. Zeus and his brothers and
sisters went to live on Mount Olympus, where they ruled
over the earth.