Rhea

Rhea was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaea, the earth, in classical Greek mythology. She was known as "the mother of gods." In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great Goddess, and later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses, though never dwelling permanently among them on Mount Olympus. In Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, the fusion of Rhea and Phrygian Cybele is complete. "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 of Kronos, makes way, and all the other immortal gods likewise make way for the dread goddess," the seer Mopsus tells Jason in Argonautica; Jason climbed to the sanctuary high on Mount Dindymon to offer sacrifice and libations to placate the goddess, so that the Argonauts might continue on their way. For her temenos they wrought an image of the goddess, a xoanon, from a vine-stump. There "they called upon the mother of Dindymon, mistress of all, the dweller in Phrygia, and with her Titias and Kyllenos who alone of the many Cretan 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 Rheia with tambourines and drums".[1]

Rhea was wife to Kronos and mother to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon, and Zeus.

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

Kronos sired several children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, 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 Ouranus and Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Kronos would get his retribution for his acts against Ouranos and his own children. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, handing Kronos 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 Kronos would not hear the baby's cry, 3. He was raised by a nymph named Adamanthea, who fed him goat milk. Since Kronos 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. Later Rhea married and had two children with the god Olympous.

Zeus forced the Titan Kronos to disgorge the other children in reverse order of swallowing: 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 Kronos an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Kronos' stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Kronos, the Gigantes, the Hecatonkheires and the Cyclopes, 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 Kronos 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.

Most often Rhea's symbol is a pair of lions, the ones that pulled her celestial chariot and were seen often, rampant, one on either side of the gateways through the walls to many cities in the ancient world. The one at Mycenae is most characteristic, with the lions placed on either side of a pillar that symbolizes the goddess.