King in his father's place after he unmanned Uranus with the adamantine sickle, Cronus held the Golden Age — but, forewarned that his own son would overthrow him as he had overthrown Uranus, he swallowed each child Rhea bore, until she hid the infant Zeus in Crete and gave her husband a stone in swaddling clothes to swallow in his stead.1
The sickle of Cronus⚖
Uranus hid his children in the depths of Earth, and groaning Gaia forged a great sickle of adamant. Only crooked-counselled Cronus dared the deed: he unmanned his father, and from the blood sprang the Erinyes and the Giants, while from the foam where the severed flesh fell into the sea Aphrodite rose.2
The age of Cronus
King in his father's place, Cronus wed his sister Rhea. But he had learned from Gaia and starry Uranus that he was fated to be overthrown by his own son — and so he swallowed each child as it came from the womb to its mother's knees: Hestia, Demeter, gold-sandalled Hera, strong Hades, the deep-roaring Earth-Shaker. Unceasing grief took hold of Rhea. Ovid remembers his reign as the Golden Age, when the unploughed earth gave all things freely — before Saturn was thrust into gloomy Tartarus.3
The stone in swaddling clothes
When Rhea was about to bear Zeus, she begged her parents to devise a plan, and they sent her to Crete. Earth took the newborn to nurse in a remote cave while the armed Curetes clashed spear on shield to drown his crying. To Cronus, Rhea handed a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it without a doubt — the trick that saved the youngest child for the war to come.4
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