The 12 Titans Who Ruled the World Before Zeus & the Gods - Greek Mythology

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss all 12 of the elder Titans, the 12 first-generation Titans born to Gaia and Uranus Let's get into it.Starting us off is CronusIn Hesiod's theogony, the 12 first-generation Titans are the eldest children of Gaia, the personification of the earth, and of Uranus, the personification of the sky. After them were born the trio of Uranian cyclopes, god-like except for having a single eye, and the trio of Hecatonchires, monstrous behemoths with 100 arms and 50 heads. Uranus tolerated the Titans, but he despised his younger children, especially the Hecatonchires, whom he thought abominations and kept imprisoned within the earth. They were unsurpassed in size and unassailable in strength, and having them trapped inside of her subjected Gaia to constant anguish. Cronus, who detested his lusty father, rose up to be his mother's champion. He ambushed his father and castrated him with a sickle of adamant, this act separating earth and sky, two planes previously conjoined, and marking his ascendancy to the throne, deposing his emasculated father. Cronus learnt of a prophecy that told of his usurpation by one of his children. He endeavored to preempt prophecy by swallowing each of his children the moment they were born, but he was deceived by Rhea, his wife, who gave him a stone to swallow in Zeus' stead. Zeus was raised in secret, and when he was a man grown, he came out of hiding, freed his siblings, and waged war against the Titans; and the result of this cataclysmic conflict was the imprisonment of Cronus and many of the other Titans in the depths of Tartarus. At number 2 we have RheaRhea is a Titan who can be categorized by the earth-mother archetype. Life and fertility certainly constituted the majority of her purview, but, less intuitively, so was death, in implicit and secondary fashion, within her sphere of influence, because, while antithetical, it was also complementary, punctuating the end of the life cycle so that subsequent new life could begin.