Rhea (mythology)

Rhea
Titaness goddess of female fertility , motherhood and generation
Member of the Titans

Rhea presenting Cronus the stone wrapped in cloth.
Other names Cybele, Meter Theon
Abode Mount Cybele
Animals Lion
Symbol Turret crown, cymbal
Tree Fir tree
Mount lion
Personal Information
Consort Cronus
Offspring Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Zeus
Parents Uranus and Gaia
Siblings
Roman equivalent Ops

Rhea (/ˈriːə/; Greek: Ῥέα, Greek pronunciation: [r̥é.a͜a]) is a character in Greek mythology, the Titaness daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus, and 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

Most ancient etymologists derived Rhea ('Ρέα) by metathesis from έρα "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]

Genealogy and myth

Rhea (or Cybele), after a marble, 1888.

According to Hesiod, Cronus sired six children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus in that order.[9] Apart from Zeus, he swallowed all as soon as they were born, because he had learned from Gaia and Uranus that, as he had overthrown his own father, he was destined to be overcome by his own child. When Zeus was about to be born, however, Rhea sought Uranus and Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Cronus would get his retribution for his acts against Uranus and his own children. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and saved him by handing Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed. Rhea hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. Her attendants, the warrior-like Curetes 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.[10]

Cult

Rhea had "no strong local cult or identifiable activity under her control".[11] She was originally worshiped in 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.[11] 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.[12] A reverse view was expressed by Virgil,[13] 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 only appears in Greek art from the fourth century BC, when her iconography draws on that of Cybele; the two therefore, often are indistinguishable;[14] 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.

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

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 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 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".[15]

Descendants

Descendants of Cronus and Rhea [16]
Uranus' genitalsCronusRHEA
ZeusHeraPoseidonHadesDemeterHestia
    a [17]
     b [18]
AresHephaestus
Metis
Athena [19]
Leto
ApolloArtemis
Maia
Hermes
Semele
Dionysus
Dione
    a [20]     b [21]
Aphrodite

Modern namesakes

The name of the bird species rhea is derived from the goddess name Rhea.[22]

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. She hid Zeus from Cronus so he would not be eaten. 104 (1984:176-1770 p. 176; the evidence was marshalled by O. Grupp[e, 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".
  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. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 453 ff..
  10. ↑ Plato. Timaeus 40e. Translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
  11. 1 2 Roller, Lynn E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, University of California Press, 1999. p. 171.
  12. ↑ 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.
  13. ↑ Virgil. Aeneid, iii.
  14. ↑ Roller, Lynn E., In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, University of California Press, 1999. p. 171. ISBN 9780520210240
  15. ↑ (Apollonius of Rhodes), Richard Hunter, tr., 1993. Jason and the Golden Fleece (Oxford: Clarendon Press), Book II, p. 29f.
  16. ↑ This chart is based upon Hesiod's Theogony, unless otherwise noted.
  17. ↑ 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.
  18. ↑ According to Hesiod, Theogony 927–929, Hephaestus was produced by Hera alone, with no father, see Gantz, p. 74.
  19. ↑ 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.
  20. ↑ According to Hesiod, Theogony 183–200, Aphrodite was born from Uranus' severed genitals, see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
  21. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ C. Michael Hogan. 2009. Lesser Rhea: Rhea pinnata, GlobalTwitcher.com, ed. N. Stromberg

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.