Rhea, raped by Cronus,
gave birth to her famous children:
Hestia (Hearth Goddess);
and Demeter (Earth Mother);
and Hera of golden sandals;
and Hades the powerful,
who dwells in palaces beneath the hard ground [455]
with a likewise hard heart;
and Poseidon, the Earth Shaker, who rumbles loudly;
and Zeus, full of stratagems.
The Zeusfather of gods and husbands is he,
by whose thunder
the broad ground trembles.
But great Cronus quaffed them
to quell them. As each one emerged
out from her sacred womb
and reached the mother’s knees, [460]
he resolved in his mind
that not one of these noble children, descendants of the Sky,
would arrogate his honor.
Nobody else among the immortals would be King.
He had learned the openly obvious from the Earth
and the Sky, sparkled with stars.
For a husband like him, it was unavoidable.
A child would overthrow him. He knew,
no matter how mighty Cronus was,
deliberate action by a great god would win out. [465]
Not blind to the threat, therefore,
he kept watch, with keen anticipation.
As they were born, he quaffed them
to quell them. Rhea’s pain, however, was unerasable.
And so, when she was about to give birth
to the Zeusfather of gods and husbands,
her last and youngest child,
she implored her own dear parents, the Earth
and the Sky, sparkled with stars, [470]
to devise, together with her, a stratagem
so that she could give birth
in hiding
to her dear son.
Then, one day, his father would face the vengeful spirit
of his children, they whom Cronus
(in a famously evil stratagem) quaffed to quell.
Listening to their daughter,
they were persuaded.
They made clear to her
what must happen unavoidably [475]
for Cronus, the King
who was strongly competitive in spirit.
They sent Rhea to Lyctus,
a fertile district of Crete,
when she was about to give birth
to the youngest of her children,
great Zeus. Gigantic Earth herself
was there to hold him at birth. There
in wide Crete did the Earth nourish
and raise him for Rhea. [480]
Rhea had to travel there in haste,
conveying Zeus under cover of black night.
First, she arrived pregnant in Lyctus.
Then, after she held him in her hands,
she hid him deep in a cave,
deep within the hollows of sacred Earth,
deep beneath the Aegean mountain, dense with woodland.
Back at home, she wrapped a large stone
in swaddling clothes, and handed him over [485]
to the Great Lord, the Son of the Sky
(the Sky formerly known as King of the Gods).
Cronus seized it then with his hands.
He incited Rhea to sow that stone inside,
he, abominable Cronus. She delighted:
he didn’t know the son outside.
Replaced by a stone, her son still lived,
unconquered. Consequently, Cronus cared not
that someone might yet overthrow him and,
with a violent hand, [490]
remove his honor from him.
His honor, amid the immortals, was to be their Lord.
in the noble limbs
of the hidden Lord grow.
When one year had passed,
on Earth’s shrewd advice,
Cronus was tricked to ingest an emetic.
Cronus (despite his famously evil stratagem)
then vomited up his offspring. [495]
As he retched, he knew he would be conquered
by the skill and might of a son.
It was the last thing he had quaffed.
Zeus fixed it later in the wide-open ground,
for the Pythian oracle
at sacred Delphi,
under the mountain glens of Parnassus.
Ever since, the rock remains sign of his rule,
a wondrous attraction for mortals to see. [500]
the Cyclopes, from their deadly chains.
They too were unwanted sons of Sky.
But how thoughtlessly did father Sky bind them!
Returning the kindnesses of Zeus,
they showed gratitude.
The Cyclopes gave Zeus the thunder,
the smoldering bolt, the lightning.
Previously, these weapons had been locked away
in the vast Earth, inside Tartarus. [505]
Now, thanks to these trusty weapons,
Zeus is Lord, over mortals and immortals alike.