URANUS
Uranus and Gaia—The Uranus group.
The universe had
been formed. It remained to be peopled. Gaia united with her
son Uranus and produced the first race—the Titans. There were twelve of them,
six male and six female: Oceanus, Caeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, Cronus;
Theia, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Themis.
Uranus and Gaea
then gave birth to the Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes and Arges, ‘who resembled
the other gods but bad only one eye in the middle of their forehead’. Finally
they bore three monsters: Cottus, Briareus and Gyges. ‘From their shoulders
sprang a hundred invincible arms and above these powerful limbs rose fifty
heads attached to their backs.’ For this reason they were called the
Hecatoncheires or the Centimanes.
Uranus could only
regard his offspring with horror, and as soon as they were born he shut them up
in the depths of the earth. Gaea at first mourned, but
afterwards grew angry and meditated terrible vengeance against her husband.
From her bosom she drew forth gleaming steel, fashioned a sharp sickle or harpe
and explained to her children the plan she had made. All of them hesitated,
struck with horror. Only the astute Cronus, her last-born, volunteered to
support his mother. When evening fell Uranus, accompanied by Night, came as
usual to rejoin his wife. While he unsuspectingly slept, Cronus, who with his
mother’s aid lay in hiding, armed himself with the sickle, atrociously
mutilated his father and cast the bleeding genitals into the sea. From the
terrible wound black blood dropped and the drops, seeping into the earth, gave
birth to the redoubtable Furies, to monstrous giants and to the ash-tree
nymphs, the Meliae. As for the debris which floated on the surface of the
waves, it broke into a white foam from which was born a young goddess,
Aphrodite, ‘who was first carried towards the divine Cythera and thence as far
as Cyprus surrounded with waves’.
From Larousse
Mythology…