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
dying
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.
The
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 >>