The Olympian gods and goddesses, who include Zeus (Jupiter*), Hera (Juno), and Poseidon (Neptune), came to power at the expense of their father, Cronus (Saturn). Cronus had come to power at the expense of his father, Uranus/Ouranos (Sky). Although Uranus didn't plan for it, his grandchildren did avenge his disfigurement. This article tells how that happened.
Earth and Sky produced numerous offspring, 100-armed monsters, cyclops, and the Titans.
Earth was saddened by the fact that Sky wouldn't let her children see the light of day, so she forged the sickle with which her son Cronus unmanned his father. From severed genitals of the dethroned Sky sprang Aphrodite. From his blood dripping on Earth sprang the much needed spirits of Vengeance.
Limited in their choice of suitable anthropomorphic mates from among their fellow Titans**, the humanoid Titans, Cronus and his sister Rhea, started a family. Their union produced the humanoid immortal gods and goddesses Hestia (Vesta), Demeter (Ceres), Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.
Saturn Devouring His Son By
Goya
Courtesy of ibiblio.com
Knowing his fate would echo his father's, Cronus tried to forestall his own demise by swallowing his children immediately after birth.
When her last child was due to be born, a grieving Rhea turned to her own parents. Since Gaia (Earth) had suffered similarly and since Uranus (Sky) had suffered the repercussions, they could and did advise her well. In accordance with their plan, she tricked her mate. Rhea gave a stone to Cronus instead of his last infant, Zeus. Zeus was then spirited off to safety where he grew to manhood. When he returned, someone tricked Cronus into regurgitating his other children, perhaps by giving him an emetic.
Zeus freed his father's brothers, the 100-armed, 50-headed Briareus, Cottus, and Gyes, whom grandfather Uranus (Sky) had imprisoned. On Zeus' side, on top of Mount Olympus [see Map section dI], they fought for 10 years alongside Zeus and his siblings. Ranged against the gods and their allies, the Titan brothers and sisters of Cronus, fought from their station atop Mount Othrys.
Eventually the Olympians won, the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, and Zeus was made king.
[8.8.3] When I began to write my history I was inclined to count these legends as foolishness, but on getting as far as Arcadia I grew to hold a more thoughtful view of them, which is this. In the days of old those Greeks who were considered wise spoke their sayings not straight out but in riddles, and so the legends about Cronus I conjectured to be one sort of Greek wisdom. In matters of divinity, therefore, I shall adopt the received tradition.
-- From a public domain translation of Description of Greece 8.8.3, by Pausanias; translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod.
The Vengeance Cycle
Revenge is serious business. In The House of Atreus, the cycle of revenge ended in a father (Agamemnon) killing his daughter Iphigenia and in turn being killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, or her lover, Aegisthus (Agamemnon's cousin). The son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Orestes, had no choice but to revenge his father by killing his mother. The Furies had to pursue the matricide. Similarly, when Cronus mutilated his father Uranus, he knew he deserved payback at the hands of his son Zeus. It's hard to understand why this tradition didn't carry through into the next generation -- why no one unseated the king of the Olympian gods. It was supposed to happen....
Knowing that "Metis [wisdom or cunning] was destined to produce ... an unruly son, the future king of gods and men," Zeus took more thorough precautions than his father had. Instead of just consuming the offspring, he swallowed the pregnant Metis. Stuck inside Zeus' belly, she continued to provide him with knowledge of good and evil. And that was the end of it.
Why didn't Zeus get his comeuppance? Was it because the Greeks didn't view Zeus' acts as reprehensible? No, says Norman O. Brown in his introduction to Hesiod's Theogony, it's because Zeus established a new world order based on law. Since Zeus represented the state, he was himself above its laws.
Athena (born from the head of Zeus although real mother was Metis)
Apollo (parents: Leto and Zeus)
Aphrodite
Hermes (parents: Zeus and Maia - Atlas' daughter)
Artemis (parents: Leto and Zeus)
Hephaestus (parent: Hera)
Demeter
Dionysus (parents: Zeus and Semele)
12, Hestia or Dionysus, Demeter, and Hades are sometimes eliminated)
Sources:
• [URL = www.lib.msu.edu/pubs/subject/su36.htm] Sources in Classical Mythology Bibliography
• [URL = http://www.ucd.ie/~classics/97/Luce97.html] J. V. Luce's "Homeric Poetry & Its Significance for the Modern World"
*In this article, at the first instance of a god's name, I am including alternate forms, generally, the Latin/Roman version. In the case of Uranus, however, the parenthetical form is not the Latin version of the god's name, but the English. For variations in spelling, see How Do You Spell...?
**The other Titans, Ocean, Tethys, Hyperion, Thea, and Crius, produced, not humanoid offspring, but natural bodies, like rivers and wind.
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