Greek Mythology

Greek Mythology - Titans & Olympians

Written by GHP on 6:54 AM

Greek Mythology - Titans & Olympians

Titans & Olympians

The Titans play an enormous role in Greek mythology. It is believed that they were responsible for the creation of mankind. Here is the story of their beginning in the Greek myths.

Uranus was the first child of Gaea. Uranus was known as The Sky and was Gaea’s main consort. Together they created four races of giants: the Hecatoncheires, the Cyclops, the Gigantes, and the twelve Titans.

Uranus disliked all his children and tried to keep them imprisoned inside their mother. Gaea, exhausted at this unending confinement and irritated with Uranus’ constant sexual attentions, encouraged her Titan children to rebel against him. Cronus, the youngest of all the children of Uranus, castrated his father with a sharp flint sickle. Afterwards, Cronus took control of the earth and the heavens along with this siblings, although some accounts say that the god Ophion and the Oceanid Eurynome ruled for a short time before Cronus. For humankind, Cronus’ reign was the Golden Age, a time when men treated each other with respect and lived in comfort, happiness and peace. Cronus made his sister Rhea his consort, and they had six children: Demeter, Poseidon, Hera, Hades, Hestia and Zeus. Like his father Uranus, Cronus feared that his children would overthrow him, so he swallowed the first five of his infants at birth. Rhea saved the youngest, Zeus, by giving Cronus a stone that he swallowed instead.

When Zeus grew up, Cronus regurgitate the children that he swallowed along with the stone, after ingesting a potion through Rhea’s trickery. Zeus along with his siblings immediately took up arms against their father and the older Titans. In a violent war called the Titanomachia, which lasted for ten years, Zeus finally turned the tide of battle by getting help from his uncles, the hundred-handed giants. Since the Titans were immortal and could not be killed, Zeus imprisoned them in Tartarus, where they remain for eternity.

Zeus then divided the world between himself and his two brothers. To Poseidon, he gave dominion over the Mediterranean Sea. To Hades, he gave the underworld, where the shades of humanity live on after death. For himself, Zeus took the sky and the earth, thus ensuring his position as the most powerful god of his generation. Ruled by Zeus, the new gods now lived on Mount Olympus in sumptuous palaces of bronze created for them by Hephaestus. One of Zeus’ three sisters, Hera, became his wife and queen. With Hera and though liaisons with other goddesses, he fathered the next generation of Olympians. Zeus always feared being dethroned by an ambitious heir. Two of his liaisons with mortal mortal women produced Dionysus and Heracles, both of whom were almost powerful enough to usurp their father. Some say that Dionysus did in fact do so, but the most common Greek mythology stories recognized Zeus as the last supreme deity.

Greek Mythology - Titans & Olympians