Kronos, who had established himself as leader of the Titans, married his sister Rhea but, mindful of the prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, he made sure to swallow each of the children she birthed: Hestia (goddess of the hearth and domesticity), Demeter (goddess of the earth and fertility), Hera (goddess of women and marriage), Hades (god of the Underworld), Poseidon (god of the sea) and Zeus (god of the sky and thunder, and later to become the king of the gods) in that order. However, with the help of Gaia and Ouranos, Rhea managed to trick Kronos into saving Zeus from this fate, and then to further trick him into vomiting up his other five children.
Joining with Zeus, the other offspring of Rhea and Kronos (collectively known as the Olympian gods, for their chosen home on Mount Olympus), along with the Kyklopes, Prometheus and Epimetheus, then waged a great ten-year war on the Titans and the Giants for control of the cosmos. Eventually Zeus released the Hecatonchires from their imprisonment in Tartarus to shake the earth, allowing him to gain the upper hand in the struggle and, casting the fury of his thunderbolts at the Titans, throw them down into Tartarus.
- Who was the most powerful Olympian god? Did he create the world?
- Were the Greek gods eternal? Were they immortal?
- In part I and part II of Theogony, how many ways of "reproduction" are there in the text?
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