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The first part of three, of the creation of the Greek World: The Coming of the Olympians, The First Days of the Olympians, The Making of Mankind.
Related Articles: Themes of Myths- Creation

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The Coming of the Olympians
In the beginning, there was Chaos. In it, nothing existed until one day the first entities took form in the shape of Gaia- Mother Earth. Gaia bore a son named Uranus, who became the heavens. Slowly, the world took shape as a huge flat dish with its many landforms, where the sky stretched over the land like a dome, touching the oceans at its boundaries.

Gaia and Uranus had many children: the three giants, fifty headed and each with a hundred arms; the three Cyclops, one eyed creatures who had enormous strength; and most importantly, the twelve Titans. Six were male, beginning with Okeanos, Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetos and Cronos; and six were females, namely Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys.

Uranus was an uncaring father, and when angered by his children, sent the Giants down into Tataros, the deep underworld. Angered, Gaia plotted against Uranus and had her son, Cronos to castrate his father using a sickle she gave her. From Uranus' blood came twenty- four giants, the three Erinnyes and the Furies. From where Cronos threw his father's genitals into the sea, came Aphrodite: the goddess of beauty and love.

With his father dead, Cronos now succeeded the throne. Yet he remembered that in his father's Rhea passing a stone to Cronosdying breath, his father warned him that for his act, he would be dethroned by his own son. Cronos took his sister, Rhea, as his consort. With every child that Rhea bore, Cronos swallowed it, until Rhea could no longer take it. With her next pregnancy, she gave her child to the mountain nymphs and in the place of the child, gave Cronos a stone wrapped in cloth, which Cronos swallowed unsuspectingly.

The child soon grew into Zeus, and when he was old enough to take the throne, Gaia helped him poison Cronos. Cronos vomited all his swallowed children, all fully grown, in all their immortal glory. They became known as the Olympians- Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.

ZeusThe war soon raged between the Olympians, who had taken their seat of power on Mount Olympus, and the Titans, on Mount Othrys. The battle caused much destruction, until finally Gaia could no longer bear it, and told Zeus a secret about how he might win the war. The secret was the Giants and Cyclops, who had been imprisoned in Tataros. They harboured a deep hatred for the Titans who had imprisoned them, and would be pivotal to winning the war.

And so with the help of these creatures, The Olympians won the war against the Titans. The Titans were rounded up and were sent to Tataros save those who had sided with them during the war, like Metis and Prometheus. Atlas, the leader of the Titans, was made to hold the sky on his shoulders forever. The days of the Olympians had begun.

Next: The First Days of the Olympians >>