Mother of the Olympians and Deceiver of Cronus

Rhea was a Titaness, daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and both sister and wife to Cronus, king of the Titans, a pairing typical of the generation of deities Hesiod's Theogony describes. She bore Cronus six children, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and finally Zeus, and watched Cronus swallow each of the first five at birth, driven by fear of a prophecy that one of his own children would overthrow him just as he had overthrown his own father Uranus. When Rhea became pregnant a sixth time, she appealed to her parents Uranus and Gaia for a way to save the child, and following their counsel she gave birth to Zeus in secret on Crete, then wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus to swallow in the infant's place, a deception Cronus apparently did not detect. Rhea hid the true infant Zeus in a Cretan cave, where later tradition adds that armed attendants called the Kouretes danced and clashed their weapons together to drown out the baby's cries so that Cronus would not hear him, and Zeus grew to adulthood there before returning to free his siblings and lead the war that overthrew his father. Later Greek tradition, recorded by the traveler Pausanias, held that the very stone Cronus swallowed in Zeus's place was preserved at Delphi, anointed with oil and wrapped in wool by worshippers who came to see it long after the myth itself had passed into legend.