So Zeus has
daddy issues. Not like how most people have daddy issues. Cronus wants to
literally eat Zeus to prevent his wife Rhea from spending any time with the
kids. He might also be worried one of them might supplant him as king of the
gods.
Cronus has
already done this with all of the other kids, but Rhea pulled a switcheroo when
it came to Zeus. She wrapped a rock in a blanket. Cronus fell for it.
I’d like to
take a moment to point out that titans are not the brightest of beings. I mean,
I’m not expecting godly intelligence, but being able to tell a living being
from a hunk of granite is a basic requirement. Cronus failed.
He swallows
the rock whole, just as he’s done with every single kid before. Zeus,
meanwhile, is raised by wild animals and taught how to be cunning. He grows up
and realizes that he is not actually strong enough to take on dear old dad
single-handed. So he does the smart thing. He frees the other titans,
specifically the hundred handed-ones and the Cyclopes—who forge his
thunderbolts. (These are different Cyclopes than those that Odysseus encounters
much, much later.)
With his
allies, Zeus easily defeats his father. The myths vary, one says he actually
cuts Cronus open to release his siblings. Another one says he just makes him
vomit them all up. Either way, it’s a family reunion and Zeus takes over as king of the gods, either decapitating dad
or imprisoning him.
This is the
second time where we’ve seen the son replace the father, which makes for a
disturbing trend, really. It would be one thing if the father passes away or
willingly steps down from the throne, but both with Uranus and Cronus we see
violent overthrow of the king.
Granted,
it’s not undeserved. Both Cronus and Uranus were total jerks (feel free to
replace that with a stronger word). It’s an odd precedent to set with the first
two rulers, though. It seems to be a model for Greek politics that if one ruler
is sufficiently corrupt or tyrannical, it’s okay to overthrow him.
I’d also
like to point out the role of the wives in this, too. In both cases, they were
the impetus for the sons to overthrow dad. It’s a shame that Cronus followed in
Uranus’s footsteps. We’ll have to see how Zeus does.