27
Ouranos, for help. Together they
hatched a devious plan to save
their daughter’s next child.Switched with a stone
Rhea followed her parents’ advice.
As soon as she had given birth
to Zeus, the last of her sons, and
before his father, Kronos, had had a
chance to see him, she hid the
baby away. Then she wrapped
a stone in swaddling clothes and
handed it to her unsuspecting
husband in place of the infant.
Kronos, in his rapacious greed,
did not even look at the bundle
before he tipped back his head,
opened his mouth wide, and
dropped it in. The “baby” tumbled
straight down into his stomach,
ready to join the jostling crowd of
children already there. Unknown to
Kronos, they had all survived in the
deep darkness of his belly. There
they grew in size and resentment.Brought up in safety
Meanwhile, Rhea, on the
recommendation of the child's
grandmother, Gaia, spirited the
infant Zeus away, carrying him
across the sea to the fertile island of
Crete. There, in a concealed cave on
the thickly wooded slopes of Mount
Ida (now known as Psiloritis, the
highest mountain on Crete), Rhea left
her son in the care of a warlike tribe
called the Kouretes. They, in turn,
gave the baby to a nymph named
Adamanthea (Amalthea in some
sources), who nursed Zeus in secret.
According to Hesiod, the nymphwas frightened that Kronos—
thanks to his universal authority
over the earth, sea, and sky—would
be able to see where his son was
being hidden. To prevent Kronos
from finding him, she hung Zeus
from a rope that dangled between
the earth and the heavens but was
in neither one realm nor the other.
Adamanthea cared for Zeus
and nursed him with milk from
a herd of goats that grazed nearby.
Whenever the baby gurgled,squealed, or cried, the Kouretes
danced and chanted to disguise
the sound. As a result, Kronos
was completely unaware that
his youngest son was still alive.Zeus seeks his father
In no time at all, it seemed,
Zeus grew to manhood. He was
hungry for revenge against his
cruel father. Yet if Zeus was ever
to emerge from hiding, some sort of
showdown between them would ❯❯See also: Origin of the universe 18–23 ■ The war of the gods and Titans 32–33 ■ Mount Olympus 34–35 ■ The founding
of Athens 56–57 ■ The sybil of Cumae 110–11ANCIENT GREECE
Zeus is protected from all-seeing
Kronos by his attentive nymph carers
and the noise of the Kouretes, as shown
in this 17th-century painting, The
Childhood of Zeus on Mount Ida.US_024-031_Olympian-Gods.indd 27 06/12/17 3:01 pm