The personified spirit (daimon) of Strength and Power — son of the Titan Pallas and the Oceanid Styx, and one of the four wonderful children who dwell forever at Zeus's side.1
Cratos is the personification of Strength and Power, the brute might by which the will of Zeus is enforced. In Hesiod's Theogony he is numbered among the children whom the Oceanid Styx, daughter of Ocean, bore in love to the Titan Pallas: after Zelus (Emulation) and trim-ankled Nike (Victory) she brought forth Cratos (Strength) and Bia (Force), wonderful children. Apollodorus gives the same parentage, listing Cratos as one of the four offspring of Pallas and Styx under the name Dominion, and Hyginus too keeps the line of Pallas and Styx, rendering the same figure under his Latin name Potestas (Power) — so on his descent the sources agree.2
These four children, Hesiod says, have no house apart from Zeus, nor any dwelling nor path except that wherein the god leads them, but dwell always beside Zeus the loud-thunderer. The reason is given in the Theogony's account of the Titanomachy: when Zeus summoned the immortals to Olympus and promised honour and office to whoever would fight at his side against the Titans, deathless Styx came first of all the gods — on the counsel of her father Oceanus — bringing her children with her. Zeus honoured her with very great gifts and made her the great oath of the gods, while her children he appointed to live with him forever.3
Because of that primeval allegiance, Strength belongs wholly to the king of the gods: where Emulation drives the gods to surpass one another and Victory crowns the contest won, Cratos and his sister Bia (Force) are the raw power that carries out the divine sentence. Their place is not at the feast but at the work of compulsion, ever at hand to make the word of Zeus into deed.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
