“I’m sorry, mother. I know how much I owe to your loving care. Whom shall I marry?”
“There’s only one wife for you—my strongest, wisest, most beautiful daughter, the goddess Rhea, who will become Mother Earth after me.”
“Very well. Prepare the wedding.”
For a while after his marriage Cronos slept soundly and did not dream. But then a thought hit him.
“Was it really wise to get married?” he muttered to himself. “Rhea will surely give me sons, and it was a son my father warned me against. Or am I jumping at shadows? My mother loves me best. Had there been danger in wedlock, she would never have made me marry. Nevertheless, there are certain steps I can take. After all, I needed powerful allies to dispose of my father. I’ll see to it that no rebellious son of mine will have the same help.”
Whereupon Cronos performed his second great act of treachery. He visited the crater smithy where the Cyclopes wrought their marvelous tools and weapons and ornaments. He stood on the anvil and spoke to the giant figures whose single eyes were like pits of red light in the flickering forge fires. And he made his voice as sweet as the wind blowing off the mountain to sing among the pines and cedars.
“Brothers, sisters, dear Cyclopes clan, I owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be paid. In my youth you helped me against my savage sire, who was bent on my destruction. I remember … I remember … and have always loved you for what you did on that night long ago. Now, dearest kinfolk, I am in danger again. Enemies plot against me. Once again I need the help that only you can give. Matchless smiths that you are, use your skill, I pray, to fashion an iron cage with bars so massively wrought that no creature in heaven, on earth, or beneath it, no leviathan that prowls the depths of the sea shall be able to break out of that cage once its gate is bolted. Brothers, sisters, will you once again help your king in his hour of need?”
Cronos knew this was the way to handle the great, simple-hearted brutes. He knew that they were so parched for affection, so raw inside from being disliked by everyone, that they would believe anything he said if he praised them first and pretended to like them.
They did believe him and were eager to please him. They worked night and day until they had built an enormous cage, strong enough to hold a herd of wild elephants. The Cyclopes sent word to Cronos that the cage was finished and ready to receive his enemies.
Cronos came to the smithy, but not alone. He had instructed the hundred-handed giants to follow him to the crater and wait hidden on the slope until he called them. He entered the smithy and laughed with joy when he saw the huge cage. It was set on wheels, as he had asked, and its gate was bolted by an iron shackle whose link was as thick as the bars.
“Good work!” he cried. “But is it really as strong as it looks?”
“Stronger!” they shouted.
“Let’s test it,” he said. “It is very well known that you Cyclopes are the most powerful creatures in the entire world. If the cage can hold you, it can hold anyone. Please enter the cage, all of you. I’ll chain the gate and you must try to break out. It’s the only way to test what you have made.”
The Cyclopes yelled and clanged their tools; they were pleased with themselves. They filed into the cage laughing because they knew it was made so strong that even they, with all their volcanic force, could not escape. When the last one had entered, Cronos wrapped the chain around the sliding gate and stuck the great bolt through its links.
“Try to get out!” he called.
The Cyclopes flung themselves at the bars. They seized them with their enormous hands and tried to bend them. The bars held. Some of them had brought their sledgehammers inside. They swung the mallets, striking the bars, the gate and chain. Metal rang against metal in a hideous din. The very walls of the crater shook. But the cage held.
“It is strong, brother!” they called. “Stronger than strong! Now let us out. Open the gate and let us out.”
No one answered. They peered through the bars and saw only the forge fire and the dancing red shadows. Cronos had vanished.
“Cronos!” they cried. “Brother! King! Come open the gate!”
Thick shapes blotted the shadows. They saw the hundred-handed giants slithering into the smithy like giant centipedes. Silently, the invaders reached with their hundred hands. Silently, they seized the cage and rolled it out of the crater and down a chain of rocky passages—down, down to the deepest cavern that lies at the root of the mountain called Olympus. And there they left the cage and its cargo of leaping, howling, weeping Cyclopes.
Midway up the cavern chain, they met Cronos coming down. “Oh, best of giants,” he cried, “handiest of helpers! You have done me a great service this day. You have helped me rid myself of the monsters who dared plot against me. And now I shall reward you. Follow me down again and I shall lead you to my richest treasure vault, which is stacked high with bars of gold and chests of diamonds and rubies and emeralds. All shall be yours!”
Greedily, the giants followed him. They didn’t know that they, in turn, were being followed. They were so drunk with visions of treasure that they didn’t realize they were being trailed down the rocky tunnel by a band of Titans, those elder brothers of Cronos, who had become his court and served him in all ways.
Cronos led the giants down to a cave that had a narrow mouth but widened suddenly into a great chamber. It was just one level up from where the Cyclopes were penned—close enough, indeed, so that the giants could hear a faint shrieking as it drifted up through the rock floor. But they paid no heed. They rushed into the dark chamber, which grew darker still as the Titans came racing down the tunnel and rolled an enormous boulder across the mouth of the cave.
The giants milled about in the vanishing light, stunned that Cronos, who had used them to imprison the Cyclopes, was now imprisoning them.
But the realization grew. They knew they were being sealed up in the bowels of the earth. They raged and frothed, leaped and shouted. They pounded at the rock until their many hands were lumps of bloody gristle. But the rock stood against their blows. The Titans trundled other boulders down the tunnel, wedging them against the first great rock that blocked the portal, until the whole corridor was choked with boulders and the only way to free the captives would be to tear the mountain up by its roots.
4
The Cannibal God
With the Cyclopes and the giants now buried beneath tons of earth, Cronos slept peacefully again. But after a while he began to hear a faint shrieking at night. It seemed to be seeping out of the earth and floating up to the top of Mount Olympus, and he realized that the caged Cyclopes and the sealed-up giants must be howling underground.
“Ridiculous,” he said to himself. “Why should I let these sounds bother me? They can’t get out no matter how they howl.”
After some time the howling stopped, or he stopped hearing it, and Cronos almost forgot his prisoners. But now mighty oaks had grown from certain patches of earth where pieces of Uranus were buried, and when the wind blew, the oak leaves seethed, murmuring: “Beware, Cronos, beware.…”
In his sleep, Cronos heard the trees talking, and he was seized again by nightmare—which grew worse when Rhea told him she was pregnant.
“Will our firstborn be a son?” he whispered to himself. “Is this the one who will try to overthrow me as my father foretold? Hah! I’ll give the seditious brat no chance. If it’s a boy, I’ll drown him like a kitten. A daughter I may let live, for I am tender-hearted.”
But when his first child appeared, Cronos was in such a hurry to get rid of it that he didn’t wait to find out whether it was a boy or a girl, nor did he take the time to drown it. He simply swallowed it whole, as a cat swallows a grasshopper. It all happened so quickly that Rhea believed him when he told her that the infant had been born dead and that he had swiftly disposed of it so that she would not be saddened by the sight of the tiny corpse.
And she believed him the second time she gave birth and the babe vanished. She half believed
him the third time. But by the fourth time she was growing mistrustful. She tried to fight against her suspicions. Her husband was displaying greater grief at the loss of each child, and this confused her.
Then her fifth infant vanished before she could hold it in her arms. Cronos, weeping, told her that this one had also been born dead and that he had quickly burned the body to save her from distress. This time she found she could not believe him. He was sobbing loudly but his eyes were gleaming, and not with tears. Besides, she realized that he seemed a little fatter after each child vanished.
Rhea went to old Mother Earth and told her tale. “I have been wondering about this,” said Gaia. “All the rest of my Titan brood is very fertile; they have given me hundreds of grandchildren—big, beautiful ones. You and Cronos alone have given me none.”
“Oh, mother, what shall I do?”
“Send Cronos to me.”
Cronos came to her and she said, “Have you been murdering your children?”
“They were born dead. Didn’t Rhea tell you?”
“She told me much. Now you must tell what it means.”
“Well, mother, your youngest daughter, the wife you chose for me, seems incapable of producing a live infant. But I’ll pretend no grief. For you must know what my father foretold with his last breath: that a son of mine would do to me what I was doing to him.”
“Then you have been killing them?”
“No need. They were born dead.”
“You’re a liar, my son.”
“I am king. The truth is what I say it is.”
“Cronos, I have loved you well, too well. For your sake I have committed crimes. I taught you to defend yourself against a murderous, evil father, thinking that your beauty was a sign of goodness and that you would reign justly and wisely over the boiling seas and the new-made earth and all the different kinds of things coming in to being. Now, alas, I see you turning into the very image of your bloody father. Stop, son. Stop, now! Don’t devour your children. Let them live and grow. And I shall forgive you. Rhea will forgive you. The blessings of the earth and its fountains shall be upon you. And you shall reign happily and well.”
“I am king, mother.”
“So was your father.”
“I am king and intend to remain king. I am the one to forgive or condemn, to bless or curse, to bestow life or death, as I please.”
Gaia left him and went to Rhea. “You must be brave, my daughter,” she said. “There is a way to save your next child, but it will require a great deal of courage on your part.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“When you become pregnant again, pretend you’re not until you can no longer conceal your condition. Then lie to him about the date so that he won’t be expecting you to go into labor until some time after you actually do. No one will know the truth except you and me. I shall attend your labor and be your midwife, and when the child is born, I shall take it to a safe place. Afterward, you will tell your husband that you have miscarried.”
“But my child, my first live one, how can I bear not to have it with me?”
“You shall visit him every day. I promise.”
“Will it be a boy?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t tell you, but I will tell you this: when I know something without knowing how, it always comes true. If we properly deceive your husband, you shall have a son and a mighty one—the next king of the gods, if all goes well.”
On the night that Rhea knew her baby was to be born, she crept out of the garden of Olympus and followed her mother down a moonlit slope to a grove of oaks. She saw light splintering among the hulking shadows; it was a golden cradle hanging from the tallest tree, glittering as it swung, as if the new moon itself had dropped from the sky and had been caught in the branches.
“That cradle is for the child you will bear tonight,” said Gaia.
“It’s lovely here,” said Rhea, “but quite close to Olympus. Suppose Cronos stumbles on this place while hunting?”
“I have chosen carefully,” said Gaia. “These oaks spring from the butchered body of your father. Their taproots drink of his vengeful blood. And so the trees have learned to hate Cronos, and will stand sentinel for us. Should he approach, every loud crow that nests in these branches will cry a warning and I shall hide the child before he comes. Enough talk now. It is time for you to bear your son.”
Rhea squatted on the great white pillars of her thighs. Her hair was a net of moonlight. Her bare feet clutched the ground. Gaia pressed her belly and caught the child as it slid out.
Shouting with glee, she held him to the sky. A west wind arose, making the moon rock like a boat. Stars danced. Night birds rejoiced.
Gaia gazed at her daughter. “We’ll have to change our plan,” she said. “Cronos will never believe that you had a miscarriage. You look too happy.”
“I can’t help it, mother. I am too happy.”
“Yes, and as soon as as he sees you, he’ll understand what has happened and will begin to hunt for the child.”
“What shall we do?”
Gaia snatched up a rock and wrapped it in a white cloth. “Go to him, holding this to your breast as if you were suckling a babe.”
“First let me hold my son. Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Yes.”
“My marriage almost killed me mother. But I’m alive again. Alive! This babe is the breath of life to me. I name him Zeus.”
This meant breath in their language.
“Zeus he is and shall be. Go now daughter. Take up your rock and go. Trick your husband and save your child.”
Cronos awoke from a deep sleep to see Rhea approaching. Her face was radiant; she held a white bundle to her breast and was humming a lullaby. Cronos leaped from the great bed, snorting and bellowing. He snatched the bundle from her and swallowed it clothes and all.
The stone lay heavily upon him and he thought: “Curse it, this is one solid brat she dropped. He sits on my gut like a rock. Undoubtedly, he was the one destined to make trouble, and she tried to hide him from me, the treacherous bitch! Well, never again. I’ll find a way to get rid of her, too.”
5
Zeus
Rhea didn’t dare inflame her husband’s suspicions by going to the grove too often or staying long enough to suckle her babe. So Gaia employed wet nurses—two nymphs who had recently given birth. One of them was a wood nymph named Melissa who belonged to the bee clan; her breasts ran with honey. The other, Lacta, was a meadow nymph, and the baby god drank rich milk from her breasts. So huge was his appetite, though, that he had soon sucked the nymphs dry and his grandmother had to import a she-goat.
The goat’s name was Amalthea. Larger than any cow, she had a pelt of tightly curled fur, white as cloud fleece. Her eyes were slanted pools of yellow light; her horns, silvery gold as the new moon. Three nipples ran with milk, three ran with honey, and she never went dry. She not only suckled the young Zeus but allowed him to ride her like a horse. She swam with him, stood under the trees when he climbed them, and guarded him while he slept. She was the first creature he ever loved, and there was no one he ever loved more.
Now the godling had a quality that not even his doting mother or his wise old grandmother could appreciate. He was born with a sense of kingship that gave each of his senses imperial power. He claimed everything that touched his awareness: tree, nymph, spider, fish, cat, raindrop, wind, star, mudhole. Nothing was too big, too small, too wet, too dry, too old, or too young. Everything fascinated him; nothing disgusted him or made him afraid.
Zeus learned that he could do more with his eyes than see. His gaze carried the essence of himself along the line of his sight and seized all that he looked upon. He could make pebbles dance. As he grew, he made rocks move. They wrenched themselves out of their sockets of earth to roll after him. By simply looking at birds, he could make them motionless, then loose them again to fly in circles about h
is head.
All this time, Cronos, who was as patient as he was crafty, kept watching Rhea very closely. He also sent his Titan courtiers out daily, spying in all directions, until finally one came to him with a disturbing report. Cronos sent for Rhea and said: “I hear of a magical child roaming the woods—a boy, very handsome and supple as a sapling. Do you know anything about him?”
“No, my lord.”
“You know, wife, I had a dream about this. I saw the lad running across a field and a boulder rolling after him like a pet dog. You were standing beside me, watching, and when I asked you about him, you said: ‘Boy? What boy? There’s no boy here.’ See how you are? Always lying.”
“I cannot help what you dream. I know nothing of such a lad. Are you sure he exists? Have you seen him when you were awake?”
“There are those who have.”
“Perhaps he is of the Titan brood? A nephew of ours, then?”
“Nonsense! Any such child would have been introduced at court, you know that. Rhea, something is wrong. Something dwells in the forest and has become a menace to me. I shall go hunting tomorrow. I’ll take my hounds, who can track down any game, and my spear that never misses its mark. I’ll run him like a deer, whoever he is, and cut him down when he’s brought to bay.”
Rhea fled the garden of Olympus and sought her mother. “Hide my son!” she cried. “Do it now. His father comes a-hunting!”
And she sobbed out her tale.
“The boy will be hidden deep, deep …” said Gaia. “But only long enough for Cronos to grow unwary. Then we must take action to end this terror.”
She called Zeus to her and said, “You must leave this place and go underground.”
“For how long?”
“Until your father decides that you don’t exist.”
“What shall I do underground?”
“Learn what lies beneath, for it is also part of your realm-to-be, and not the least part. Explore its caves, its buried rivers, the roots of mountains. Observe the veins of iron and copper and tin. Study jewels that look like lumps of coal until the eyes grow wise. Look upon giant worms, wintering serpents, and twisted demons who reside in the clefts of rocks and shall serve you when you have founded death’s domain. But, most importantly, you must visit your impounded kinsfolk—the Cyclopes, in their terrible cage, and the walled-up giants of a hundred hands. Go to them, learn their grief, judge the heat of their rage, and think how to befriend them. For it is these monsters who will help you establish your kingdom. Go, grandson, go under now. I shall send you word when it is safe to return.”
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Page 27
