When Cronus learnt that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children like his father before him, he swallowed all the children Rhea bore as soon as they were born. When Rhea had her sixth and final child, Zeus, she spirited him away and hid him inCrete, giving Cronus a rock to swallow instead, thus saving her youngest son who would go on to challenge his father's rule and rescue the rest of his siblings. Following Zeus's defeat of Cronus and the rise of the Olympian gods into power, Rhea withdraws from her role as the queen of the gods to become a supporting figure on Mount Olympus. She has some roles in the new Olympian era. She attended the birth of her grandsonApollo and raised her other grandsonDionysus. AfterPersephone was abducted by Hades, Rhea was sent to Demeter by Zeus. In the myth ofPelops, sheresurrects the unfortunate youth after he has been slain.
In early traditions, she is known as "the mother of gods" and therefore is strongly associated with Gaia andCybele, who have similar functions. The classical Greeks saw her as the mother of theOlympian gods and goddesses. The Romans identified her withMagna Mater (their form of Cybele), and the GoddessOps.
Some ancient etymologists derivedRhea (Ῥέα) (bymetathesis) fromἔρα (éra, 'ground', 'earth');[2] the same is suggested also by Ioannes Stamatakos.[3] Other roots have been suggested by modern scholarship butHjalmar Frisk considers a convincing etymology to be lacking.[4]
A different tradition, embodied inPlato[5] and inChrysippus,[6] connected the word withῥέω (rhéo, 'flow, discharge'),[7] Alternatively, the nameRhea may be connected with words for thepomegranate:ῥόα (rhóa), and laterῥοιά (rhoiá).[citation needed]
An alternative etymological hypothesis is that "re” (cloud/sky) as a foundational element in the ancient Illyric or pre-Albanian vocabulary could symbolize the sky or celestial phenomena. Given that Uranus is the sky god in Greek mythology, and "Rhea" is his daughter, it’s plausible to hypothesize that her name might have roots linked to "cloud" or "sky" in the ancient Balkanic language.[11][12]
Therefore, "Rhea", as a daughter of Uranus, could be etymologically connected to this root, implying "daughter of the sky" or "cloud-born," fitting her mythological role as a primordial sky goddess or divine mother associated with celestial elements.[13]
According to the Orphic myths, Zeus wanted to marry his mother Rhea. After Rhea refused to marry him, Zeus turned into a snake and raped her. She hadPersephone with Zeus.[16]
Rhea was born to the earth goddessGaia and the sky godUranus, one of their twelve (or thirteen[17])Titan children.[18] According toHesiod, Uranus imprisoned all his children, while Apollodorus states he only imprisoned theCyclopes and theHecatoncheires, not theTitans. With the help of Gaia, the youngest child,Cronus, overthrew his father, became king in his place, freed his siblings, and took his sister Rhea to wife.Ophion and Eurynome, adaughter ofOceanus, were said to have ruled snowyMount Olympus in the early age. Rhea and Cronus fought them, and threw them into the waves of the Ocean, thus becoming rulers in their place.[19] Rhea, skilled in wrestling, battled Eurynome specifically.[20]
Rhea hands the swaddled stone to Cronus, 2nd century AD,Capitoline Museums
Gaia and Uranus told Cronus that just as he had overthrown his own father and become ruler of the cosmos, he was destined to be overcome by his own child; so as each of his children was born, he swallowed them.[21] Rhea, Uranus, and Gaia devised a plan to save the last child, Zeus. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a cavern on the island ofCrete and gave Cronus a stone wrapped inswaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed; Rhea hid Zeus in a cave onMount Ida. Her attendants, the warrior-likeKouretes andDactyls, acted as bodyguards for the infant Zeus, helping to conceal his whereabouts from his father.[22] In some accounts, by the will of Rhea a golden dog guarded a goat which offered her udder and gave nourishment to the infant Zeus. Later on, Zeus changed the goat into an immortal among the stars while the golden dog that guarded the sacred spot inCrete was stolen byPandareus.[23]
In an obscure version, attested only on the east frieze of a temple atLagina, the goddess of crossroadsHecate assisted Rhea in saving Zeus from his father. The frieze shows Hecate presenting to Cronus the swaddled stone while the real infant is being whisked away in safety.[24][25]
While Zeus was still an infant hidden inCrete, Rhea caught her husband Cronus with his mistress the nymphPhilyra in the act; Cronus then transformed into a horse and galloped away, in order not to be seen by his wife.[26]
In some accounts, Rhea along withMetis gave Cronus the potion that made him disgorge the children he had eaten.[27]
Following Zeus's ascension, Rhea withdrew from spotlight as she was no longer queen of gods, but remained an ally of her children and their families.
In some traditions, Rhea disapproved of her childrenHera and Zeus getting married, so the two had to elope in order to be together.[28] Rhea was present in the birth of her grandsonApollo, along with many other goddesses, the most notable exceptions being Hera andEileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, whose absence leftLeto in terrible agony.[29] Rhea was said to be a goddess who eased childbirth for women.[30]
AfterDemeter reunited with her daughterPersephone, Zeus sent Rhea to persuade Demeter to return toOlympus and rejoin the gods.[31]
Rhea raised another one of her grandsons,Dionysus, after the fiery death of his mother, the mortal princessSemele.[32] Later on she went on to heal Dionysus's raging madness, which had been inflicted on him by the jealous Hera, causing him to wander around aimlessly for some time.[33] Rhea gave Dionysus theamethyst, which was thought to prevent drunkenness.[34] Rhea sometimes joined Dionysus and hisMaenads in their frenzy dances.[35]
Rhea andAphrodite rescuedCreusa, the wife ofAphrodite's sonAeneas, from the slavery the Greeks would have subjected her to after thefall of Troy.[37] As for Aeneas, when he landed inItaly, a local warlord namedTurnus set his pine-framed vessels ablaze. Rhea (orCybele[38]), remembering that those hulls had been crafted from trees felled on her holy mountains, transformed the vessels into sea nymphs.[39]
AfterMelanion won the hand ofAtalanta in marriage thanks to the help he received fromAphrodite, he neglected to thank her. Thus the goddess inflicted them with great passion for each other when they were near a temple of Rhea. The two then proceeded to have sex inside the temple. In anger, Rhea turned them into lions.[40]
At some point, a mortal man named Sangas offended the goddess, and she turned him into a river that bore his name;Sangarius (nowSakarya River) inAsia Minor.[41] In a similar manner a Phrygian man namedPyrrhus tried to rape her, but the goddess changed him into stone for his hubris.[42]
In oneOrphic myth, Zeus was filled with desire for his mother and pursued her, only for Rhea to refuse him and change into a serpent to flee. Zeus also turned himself into a serpent and raped her.[43] The child born from that union was their daughterPersephone, and afterwards Rhea becameDemeter.[44] The child, Persephone, was born so deformed that Rhea ran away from her frightened, and did not breastfeed her daughter.[43]
Rhea had "no strong local cult or identifiable activity under her control."[45] She was originally worshiped on the island ofCrete, identified in mythology as the site of Zeus's infancy and upbringing. Her cults employed rhythmic, raucous chants and dances, accompanied by thetympanon (a wide, handheld drum), to provoke a religious ecstasy. Her priests impersonated her mythical attendants, the Curetes and Dactyls, with a clashing of bronze shields and cymbals.[45]
The tympanon's use in Rhea's rites may have been the source for its use inCybele's – in historical times, the resemblances between the two goddesses were so marked that some Greeks regarded Cybele as their own Rhea, who had deserted her original home on Mount Ida in Crete and fled to the wilds of Phrygia to escape Cronus.[46][failed verification]
Rhea was often referred to asMeter Theon ("Mother of the Gods") and there were several temples around Ancient Greece dedicated to her under that name. Pausanias mentioned temples dedicated to Rhea under the name Meter Theon in Anagyros in Attika,[47]Megalopolis inArkadia,[48] on the Acropolis of Ancient Corinth,[49] and in the district of Keramaikos in Athens, where the statue was made by Pheidias.[50] In Sparta there was furthermore a sanctuary toMeter Megale ("[the] Great Mother").[51] Olympia had both an altar[52] and a temple to the Meter Theon:
A temple of no great size [at Olympia] in the Doric style they have called down to the present day Metroion (Temple of the Mother), keeping its ancient name. No image lies in it of the Meter Theon (Mother of the Gods), but there stand in it statues of Roman emperors.[53]
Her temple inAkriai, Lakedaimon, was said to be her oldest sanctuary in thePeloponnese:
Well worth seeing here [at Akriai, Lakedaimon,] are a temple and marble image of the Meter Theon (Mother of the Gods). The people of Akriai say that this is the oldest sanctuary of this goddess in the Peloponnesus.[54]
Statues of her were also standing in the sanctuaries of other gods and in other places, such as a statue of Parian marble by Damophon in Messene.[55] The scene in which Rhea gave Chronos a stone in the place of Zeus after his birth was assigned to have taken place on Petrakhos Mountain in Arcadia[56] as well as on Mount Thaumasios in Arcadia, both of which were holy places:
Mount Thaumasios (Wonderful) lies beyond the river Maloitas [in Arkadia], and the Methydrians hold that when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, she came to this mountain and enlisted as her allies, in case Kronos should attack her, Hopladamos and his few Gigantes. They allow that she gave birth to her son on some part of Mount Lykaios, but they claim that here Kronos was deceived, and here took place the substitution of a stone for the child that is spoken of in the Greek legend. On the summit of the mountain is Rhea's Cave, into which no human beings may enter save only the women who are sacred to the goddess.[57]
The center of the worship of Rhea was however on Crete, where Mount Ida was said to be the birthplace of Zeus. Reportedly, there was a "House of Rhea" in Knossos:
The Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knosos [in Krete], at the place where even to this day men point out foundations of a house of Rhea and a cypress grove which has been consecrated to her from ancient times.[58]
Upon Mount Ida, there was a cave sacred to Rhea:
In Crete there is said to be a sacred cave full of bees. In it, as storytellers say, Rhea gave birth to Zeus; it is a sacred place and no one is to go near it, whether god or mortal. At the appointed time each year a great blaze is seen to come out of the cave. Their story goes on to say that this happens whenever the blood from the birth of Zeus begins to boil up. The sacred bees that were the nurses of Zeus occupy this cave.[23]
Rhea only appears in Greek art from the fourth century BC, when her iconography draws on that ofCybele; the two therefore are often indistinguishable;[45] both can be shown wearing a crown (either aMural crown or aPolos), seated on a throne flanked bylions, riding a lion, and on achariot drawn by two lions. InRoman religion, her counterpart Cybele wasMagna Mater deorum Idaea, who was brought to Rome and was identified in as an ancestral Trojan deity. On a functional level, Rhea was thought equivalent to RomanOps orOpis.[citation needed]
InHomer, Rhea is the mother of the gods, although not a universal mother likeCybele, thePhrygianGreat Mother, with whom she was later identified.
In theArgonautica byApollonius of Rhodes, the fusion of Rhea and Phrygian Cybele is completed. "Upon the Mother depend the winds, the ocean, the whole earth beneath the snowy seat of Olympus; whenever she leaves the mountains and climbs to the great vault of heaven, Zeus himself, the son ofCronus, makes way, and all the other immortal gods likewise make way for the dread goddess," the seerMopsus tells Jason inArgonautica; Jason climbed to the sanctuary high onMount Dindymon to offer sacrifice and libations to placate the goddess, so that the Argonauts might continue on their way. For hertemenos they wrought an image of the goddess, axoanon, from a vine-stump. There "they called upon the mother of Dindymon, mistress of all, the dweller in Phrygia, and with herTitias andKyllenos who alone of the manyCretan Daktyls of Ida are called 'guiders of destiny' and 'those who sit beside the Idaean Mother'." They leapt and danced in their armour: "For this reason the Phrygians still worship Rhea with tambourines and drums".[59]
^Hopkinson, p. 176, noting: "For a full collection of evidence see O. Gruppe,Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (Munich 1906), 1524 n. 2".
^Ιωάννης, Σταματάκος (2012).Dictionary of the Ancient Greek Language. Εκδόσεις Δεδεμάδη. p. 874.ISBN9789609876292.῾Ρέᾱ = Γη, από το ἔρα με μετάθεση των φθόγγων.
^Sidwell, R.T. (1981). "Rhea was abroad: Pre-Hellenic Greek myths for post-Hellenic children".Children's Literature in Education.12 (4):171–176.doi:10.1007/BF01142761.S2CID161230196.
^Hathaway, Nancy (2001).The friendly guide to mythology: a mortal's companion to the fantastical realm of gods, goddesses, monsters, and heroes. New York: Viking.ISBN978-0-670-85770-8.
^Proclus,Commentary on Plato's Cratylus 403 e (90, 28 Pasqu.) [= Orphicfr. 145 Kern; West 1983, p. 217; Kerényi 1976, p. 112. Demeter was usually said to be the daughter ofCronus and Rhea.
^According toHesiod,Theogony927–929, Hephaestus was produced by Hera alone, with no father, see Gantz, p. 74.
^According toHesiod'sTheogony886–890, of Zeus's children by his seven wives, Athena was the first to be conceived, but the last to be born; Zeus impregnated Metis then swallowed her, later Zeus himself gave birth to Athena "from his head", see Gantz, pp. 51–52, 83–84.
^According toHesiod,Theogony183–200, Aphrodite was born from Uranus's severed genitals, see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
Anonymous,The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Gantz, Timothy,Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes:ISBN978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1),ISBN978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
Grimal, Pierre,The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.ISBN978-0-631-20102-1.
Hard, Robin,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H. J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,ISBN9780415186360.Google Books.
Hesiod,The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Lycophron,Alexandra (orCassandra) inCallimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921 .Internet Archive
Pausanias,Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Tripp, Edward,Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970).ISBN069022608X.
Valerius Flaccus,Argonautica translated by Mozley, J. H. Loeb Classical Library Volume 286. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928.Online version at theoi.com.
_03.jpg)
.jpg)
