Rhea (mythology)

Rhea (mythology), in Greek mythology, mother of the gods, a Titan, the daughter of Uranus and Gaea, Heaven and Earth, and the sister and wife of the Titan Cronus. For many ages, Cronus and Rhea ruled the universe. Cronus, having been warned that one of their children was destined to seize his throne, tried to avert this fate by swallowing his offspring as soon as they were born. After the birth of her sixth child, the god Zeus, Rhea outwitted her husband by giving him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed, thinking it was the baby. In the meantime, she had hidden the child in Crete (Kríti). Later, when Zeus was grown, he forced his father to disgorge the stone, along with the five other children who had been born to Rhea: Poseidon, god of the sea; Hades, god of the dead; Demeter, goddess of the earth; Hestia, goddess of the hearth; and Hera, goddess of marriage, who became the wife of Zeus. In Roman mythology, Rhea was identified with Cybele, the great mother of the gods.