Rhea (mythology)

Rhea
Titaness goddess of female fertility , motherhood and generation
Member of the Titans
Rhea presenting Cronus the stone wrapped in cloth.
Personal information
Consort Cronus
Offspring Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Zeus
Parents Uranus and Gaia
Siblings
Roman equivalent Ops, Magna Mater

Rhea (/ˈriːə/; Greek: Ῥέα [r̥é.aː]) is a character in Greek mythology, the Titaness daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus as well as sister and wife to Cronus. In early traditions, she is known as "the mother of gods" and therefore is strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, who have similar functions. The classical Greeks saw her as the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses, but not as an Olympian goddess in her own right. The Romans identified her with Magna Mater (their form of Cybele), and the Goddess Ops.

Etymology

Rhea or Cybele, drawing of a marble relief (1888)

Most ancient etymologists derived Rhea (Ῥέα) by metathesis from ἔρα "ground",[1] although a tradition embodied in Plato[2] and in Chrysippus[3] connected the word with ῥέω (rheo), "flow", "discharge",[4] which is what LSJ supports.[5] Alternatively, the name Rhea may be connected with words for the pomegranate, ῥόα, later ῥοιά.

The name Rhea may ultimately derive from a pre-Greek or Minoan source.[6][7][8] Graves suggested that Rhea's name is probably a variant of Era, 'earth'.[9]

Genealogy and myth

According to Hesiod, Cronus sired six children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus in that order.[10] Gaia and Uranus told Cronus that just as he had overthrown his own father, he was destined to be overcome by his own child; so as each of his children was born, Cronus swallowed them. Rhea, Uranus and Gaia devised a plan to save the last of them, Zeus. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed; Rhea hid her infant son Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida. Her attendants, the warrior-like Kouretes and Dactyls, acted as a bodyguard for the infant Zeus, helping to conceal his whereabouts from his father. According to Plato, Phorcys, Cronus and Rhea were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys.[11]

Cult

Rhea had "no strong local cult or identifiable activity under her control".[12] She was originally worshiped on the island of Crete, identified in mythology as the site of Zeus's infancy and upbringing. Her cults employed rhythmic, raucous chants and dances, accompanied by the tympanon (a wide, handheld drum), to provoke a religious ecstasy. Her priests impersonated her mythical attendants, the Curetes and Dactyls, with a clashing of bronze shields and cymbals.[12] The tympanon's use in Rhea's rites may have been the source for its use in Cybele's – in historical times, the resemblances between the two goddesses were so marked that some Greeks regarded Cybele as their own Rhea, who had deserted her original home on Mount Ida in Crete and fled to Mount Ida in the wilds of Phrygia to escape Cronus.[13] A reverse view was expressed by Virgil,[14] and it is probably true that cultural contacts with the mainland brought Cybele to Crete, where she was transformed into Rhea or identified with an existing local goddess and her rites.

Iconography

Rhea rides on a lion, Pergamon Altar, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Rhea only appears in Greek art from the fourth century BC, when her iconography draws on that of Cybele; the two therefore, often are indistinguishable;[15] both can be shown on a throne flanked by lions, riding a lion, or on a chariot drawn by two lions. In Roman religion, her counterpart Cybele was Magna Mater deorum Idaea, who was brought to Rome and was identified in Roman mythology as an ancestral Trojan deity. On a functional level, Rhea was thought equivalent to Roman Ops or Opis.

Depiction in ancient literature

In Homer, Rhea is the mother of the gods, although not a universal mother like Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother, with whom she was later identified.

In the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, the fusion of Rhea and Phrygian Cybele is completed. "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 Cronus, 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 Rhea with tambourines and drums".[16]

Descendants

Descendants of Cronus and Rhea [17]
Uranus' genitalsCronusRHEA
ZeusHeraPoseidonHadesDemeterHestia
    a [18]
     b [19]
AresHephaestus
Metis
Athena [20]
Leto
ApolloArtemis
Maia
Hermes
Semele
Dionysus
Dione
    a [21]     b [22]
Aphrodite

Modern namesakes

The name of the bird species Rhea is derived from the goddess name Rhea.[23]

The second largest moon of the planet Saturn is named after her.

Notes

  1. ↑ N. Hopkinson. "Rhea in Callimachus' Hymn to Zeus". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 104 (1984:176–177; the evidence was marshalled by O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, Munich, 1906, vol. II: 1524, col. II.
  2. ↑ Plato. Cratylus 402b–c.
  3. ↑ Chrysippus, Stoic 2.318
  4. ↑ ῥέω, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  5. ↑ Ῥέα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
  6. ↑ "Rhea - Greek goddess". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  7. ↑ Nilsson, Martin Persson (1 January 1950). "The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion". Biblo & Tannen Publishers – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ "Rhea was a broad: Pre-Hellenic Greek myths for post-Hellenic children". Children's Literature in Education. 12: 171–176. doi:10.1007/BF01142761.
  9. ↑ Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, section 7
  10. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 453 ff..
  11. ↑ Plato. Timaeus 40e. Translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
  12. 1 2 Roller, Lynn E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, University of California Press, 1999. p. 171.
  13. ↑ Roller, Lynn E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, University of California Press, 1999. p. 171. See also Strabo. Geography, 469, 12.
  14. ↑ Virgil. Aeneid, iii.
  15. ↑ Roller, Lynn E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, University of California Press, 1999. p. 171. ISBN 9780520210240
  16. ↑ (Apollonius of Rhodes), Richard Hunter, tr., 1993. Jason and the Golden Fleece (Oxford: Clarendon Press), Book II, p. 29f.
  17. ↑ This chart is based upon Hesiod's Theogony, unless otherwise noted.
  18. ↑ According to Homer, Iliad 1.570–579, 14.338, Odyssey 8.312, Hephaestus was apparently the son of Hera and Zeus, see Gantz, p. 74.
  19. ↑ According to Hesiod, Theogony 927–929, Hephaestus was produced by Hera alone, with no father, see Gantz, p. 74.
  20. ↑ According to Hesiod, Theogony 886–890, of Zeus' children by his seven wives, Athena was the first to be conceived, but the last to be born; Zeus impregnated Metis then swallowed her, later Zeus himself gave birth to Athena "from his head", see Gantz, pp. 51–52, 83–84.
  21. ↑ According to Hesiod, Theogony 183–200, Aphrodite was born from Uranus' severed genitals, see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
  22. ↑ According to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus (Iliad 3.374, 20.105; Odyssey 8.308, 320) and Dione (Iliad 5.370–71), see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
  23. ↑ C. Michael Hogan. 2009. Rhea pinnata, GlobalTwitcher.com, ed. N. Stromberg Archived 2011-10-04 at the Wayback Machine.

References

  • Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
  • Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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