Cronus and the Birth of Zeus
Also called: Cronus, Kronos, Rhea, Birth of Zeus
A legend handed down over the centuries.
A Greek myth told in Hesiod’s Theogony. Fearing a prophecy that a son would overthrow him, Cronus, king of the Titans, swallowed each child his wife Rhea bore. Rhea gave him a stone in swaddling clothes in place of her youngest, Zeus, and hid Zeus on Crete.
Original painter: Unknown, attributed to the Nausicaä Painter Photograph: Met museum · CC0 · Source
This Greek myth is told in Hesiod’s Theogony, with details added in Apollodorus’ Library. Cronus, now ruler of heaven, married his sister Rhea, but warned by Gaia and Uranus that he too would be overthrown by a son, he swallowed each child as it was born. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon were all imprisoned in their father’s belly.
Pregnant with her sixth child, Rhea went with her parents’ help to Crete, gave birth to Zeus, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed. Zeus grew up in secret in a cave on Crete; in later versions he was nursed by the goat Amalthea while the Curetes clashed their shields to drown his cries. Grown up, Zeus made Cronus disgorge his brothers and sisters. The Theogony says Zeus set up the stone at Delphi, and the 2nd-century traveller Pausanias wrote that he saw it there.