Tethys

In Greek mythology, Tethys (Greek Τηθύς), daughter of Uranus and Gaia^[1] was an archaic Titanessand aquatic sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but not venerated in cult. Tethys was both sister and wife of Oceanus.^[2] She was mother of the chief rivers of the world known to the Greeks, such as the Nile, the Alpheus, the Maeander, and about three thousand daughters called theOceanids.^[3] Considered as an embodiment of the waters of the world she also may be seen as a counterpart of Thalassa, the embodiment of the sea.

Although these vestiges imply a strong role in earlier times, Tethys plays virtually no part in recorded Greek literary texts, or historical records of cults. Walter Burkert^[4] notes the presence of Tethys in the episode of Iliad XIV that the Ancients called the "Deception of Zeus", where Hera, to mislead Zeus, says she wants to go to Oceanus, "origin of the gods" and Tethys "the mother". Burkert ^[5]sees in the name a transformation of Akkadian tiamtu or tâmtu, "the sea," which is recognizable inTiamat. Alternatively, her name may simply mean "old woman"; certainly it bears some similarity to ἡ τήθη, meaning "grandmother", and she is often portrayed as being extremely ancient (cf. Callimachus,Iamb 4.52, fr. 194).

One of the few representations of Tethys that is identified securely by an accompanying inscription is the Late Antique (fourth century CE) mosaic from the flooring of a thermae at Antioch, now at theHarvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts^[6] after being moved from Dumbarton Oaks.^[7] In the Dumbarton Oaks mosaic, the bust of Tethys—surrounded by fishes—is rising, bare-shouldered from the waters. Against her shoulder rests a golden ship's rudder. Gray wingssprout from her forehead, as in the mosaics illustrated above.

During the war against the Titans, Tethys raised Hera as her step-child,^[8] but there are no records of active cults for Tethys in historic times.

Tethys has sometimes been confused ^[9] with another sea goddess who became the sea-nymphThetis, the wife of Peleus and mother of Achilles during Classical times. Some myths imply a second generation relationship between the two, a grandmother and granddaughter.

Indicative of the power exercised by Tethys, one myth^[10] relates that the prominent goddess of the Olympians, Hera, was not pleased with the placement of Callisto and Arcas in the sky, as theconstellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, so she asked her nurse, Tethys, to help. Tethys, a marine goddess, caused the constellations forever to circle the sky and never drop below the horizon, hence explaining why they are circumpolar. Robert Graves interprets the use of the termnurse in Classical myths as identifying deities who once were goddesses of central importance in the periods before historical documentation.^[11]

Tethys, a moon of the planet Saturn, and the prehistoric Tethys Ocean are named after this goddess

Orpheus and Eurydice: An Ancient Greek Tale of Desperate Love

Be warned: this story is beautiful but tragic. It begins with Orpheus, the best musician that ever lived. One strum of his lyre, one note sung, and beasts would crawl to him, rocks would shift their moss to move to be closer, trees would tear their roots to be closer to him. He had more power than a mortal man ought to for he was the son of the Muse Calliope.

He lived his life simply and carelessly until the day he met Eurydice. She was a Dryad, and when they fell in love it meant everything to them. But the rustic god Aristaeus saw Eurydice's beauty and desired it, and did not care that she was unwilling and in love with another. She ran from him in terror, without thought to her step, and so it was she stepped on a poisonous snake in her flight. The venom of its bite killed her at once and her spirit went to the Underworld. Orpheus was inconsolable. His grief was bitter, but he did not let it lull him into a stupor, he decided to take action.

With his lyre, Orpheus descended into the Underworld. A normal mortal would have perished any number of times, but Orpheus had his lyre and his voice and he charmed Cerberus - the three-headed monster dog of Hades who guarded the Underworld - into letting him pass. Facing Hades and his cold Queen Persephone he played for them his sorrow at the loss of his love. The heart that was frozen by Hades' abduction melted in Persphone's breast and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even Hades could not help weeping. They let Orpheus through to Eurydice, but warned him very carefully: Eurydice would follow him into the light of the world and once she entered the sunlight she would be changed from a shade back to a woman. But if Orpheus doubted, if he looked back to see her, she would be lost to him forever.

Orpheus heard and rejoiced. He turned and left the dark hall of Hades and began his ascent back to life. As he walked he rejoiced that his wife would soon be with him again. He listened closely for her footfall behind him, but a shade makes no noise. The closer to the light he got, the more he began to believe that Hades had tricked him to get him out of the Underworld, that Eurydice was not behind him. Only feet away from the light Orpheus lost faith and turned around. He saw Eurydice, but only for a moment as her shade was whisked back down among the other dead souls. She was gone.

Orpheus tried again to enter the Underworld and demand her return, but one cannot enter twice the same way - and no other way was open to him. All that was left to him was death. Here the story changes. There are different stories of his death. Some say he played so mournfully that his songs called for death, and that the animals who surrounded him tore him apart, weeping as they did. Some say it was Maenads in a frenzy who ripped the singer to shreds. Some say he was struck down by Zeus for disclosing mysteries that were meant to be kept sacred. Either way, he was torn apart, and much of him was thrown to the winds. But the Muses mourned the death of their son and prodigy, and saved his head to sing forever.

Rhea

Rhea (pronounced /ˈriː.ə/; ancient Greek Ῥέα) was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in Greek mythology. She was known as "the mother of gods." In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, theGreat Goddess, and was later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of theOlympian gods and goddesses, though never dwelling permanently among them on Mount Olympus. The Romans identified Rhea with the Goddess Ops.

Cronus, Rhea's Titan brother and husband, castrated their father, Uranus. After this, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hekatonkheires, the Gigantes and the Cyclopes and set the monster Campe to guard them. He and Rhea took the throne as King and Queen of the gods. This time was called the Golden Age.

Cronus sired six children by Rhea: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera andZeus in that order, but swallowed them all as soon as they were born, since he had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own child as he had overthrown his own father. When Zeus was about to be born, however, Rhea sought Uranus and Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Cronus would get his retribution for his acts against Uranus and his own children. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, handing Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed.

Then she hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. According to varying versions of the story:

1. He was then raised by Gaia,
2. He was suckled by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, soldiers, or smaller gods, shouted and clashed their swords together to make noise so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cry,
3. He was raised by a nymph named Adamanthea, who fed him goat milk. Since Cronus ruled over the earth, the heavens, and the sea and swallowed all of the children of Rhea, Adamanthea hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth, sea, and sky and thus, invisible to his father.

Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge the other children in the reverse order in which they had been swallowed, the oldest becoming the last, and youngest: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, then the rest. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus' stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Gigantes, the Hecatonkheires and the Cyclops, who gave him thunder and lightning, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Zeus and his siblings, together with the Gigantes, Hecatonkheires, and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Similarly, in later myths, Zeus would swallow Metis to prevent the birth of her child, Athena, but she was born unharmed, out of a wound made in his head by one of the other gods.

Cronus

Cronus or Kronos^[1] (Ancient Greek Κρόνος, Krónos) was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own sons, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, and imprisoned in Tartarus.

Cronus was usually depicted with a sickle, which was also the weapon he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Attic month of Hekatombaion, a festival called Kronia was held in honor of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as a patron of harvest. Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity with the Roman deity Saturn.

In ancient myth recorded by Hesiod's Theogony, Cronus envied the power of his father, the ruler of the universe, Uranus. Uranus drew the enmity of Cronus' mother, Gaia, when he hid the gigantic youngest children of Gaia, the hundred-armed Hecatonchires and one-eyed Cyclopes, in Tartarus, so that they would not see the light. Gaia created a great stone sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to persuade them to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and placed him in ambush. When Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle castrating him and casting his testicles into the sea. From the blood (or, by a few accounts, semen) that spilled out from Uranus and fell upon the earth, the Gigantes, Erinyes, and Meliae were produced. The testicles produced a white foam from which Aphrodite emerged.^[12]For this, Uranus threatened vengeance and called his sons titenes (according to Hesiod meaning "straining ones," the source of the word "titan", but this etymology is disputed) for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act.

Uranus

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Uranus (pronounced /ˈjʊərənəs/, /jʊˈreɪnəs/) is the Latinized form of Ouranos (Οὐρανός), theGreek word for sky (a cognate of the English word air). His equivalent in Roman mythology wasCaelus, likewise from caelum the Latin word for "sky". In Greek mythology, Uranus, or Father Sky, is personified as the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth (Hesiod, Theogony). Uranus and Gaia were ancestors of most of the Greek gods, but no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into Classical times,^[2] and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky and Styx might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic.^[3]

Most Greeks considered Uranus to be primordial (protogenos), and gave him no parentage, but rather being conceived from Chaos, the primal form of the universe, though in Theogony, Hesiod claims him to be the offspring of Gaia. Under the influence of the philosophers, Cicero, in De Natura Deorum ("Concerning the Nature of the Gods"), claims that he was the offspring of the ancient gods Aether and Hemera, Air and Day. According to the Orphic Hymns, Uranus was the son of the personification of night, Nyx.

Caused why he died:

Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea.

NOTE:

From the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite

Gaia

Gaea (pronounced /ˈɡeɪ.ə/ or /ˈɡaɪ.ə/; from Ancient Greek Γαῖα "land" or "earth"; also Gæa,Gaia or Gea, from Koine and Modern Greek Γῆ^[1]) is the primal Greek goddess personifying theEarth, the Greek version of "Mother Nature" or the Earth Mother, of which the earliest reference to the term is the Mycenaean Greek ma-ka (transliterated as ma-ga), "Mother Gaia", written inLinear B syllabic script.^[2]

Gaia is a primordial deity in the Ancient Greek pantheon and considered a Mother Titan or Great Titan.

Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra Mater or Tellus. Romans, unlike Greeks, did not consistently distinguish an Earth Titan (Tellus) from a grain goddess Ceres.^[3]

Hesiod's Theogony (116ff) tells how, after the birth of Chaos, arose broad-breasted Gaia, the everlasting foundation of the gods of Olympus. She brought forth Uranus, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her, the hills (Ourea), and the fruitless deep of the Sea, Pontus, "without sweet union of love," out of her own self through parthenogenesis. But afterwards, as Hesiod tells it, she is a great god of nature:

she lay with her son, Uranus, and bore the world-ocean god Oceanus, Coeus and Criusand the Titans Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Phoebe of the golden crown, and lovelyTethys. After they were born Cronus the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.