Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After the stone-substitution, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince Zeus increased quickly. As the years rolled on, great Cronus the wily was beguiled by the deep suggestions of Earth, and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son. He vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last. Zeus set that stone fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men. **Apollodorean mechanism:** When Zeus was full-grown, he took Metis, daughter of Ocean, to help him, and she gave Cronus a drug to swallow, which forced him to disgorge first the stone and then the children he had swallowed. With their aid Zeus waged war against Cronus and the Titans. Zeus then set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father—sons of Heaven whom Cronus in his foolishness had bound (in Hesiod’s narrative focus here, especially the Cyclopes who had been kept from the light). They remembered to be grateful and gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt and lightning; for before that, huge Earth had hidden these. In them Zeus trusts and rules over mortals and immortals. Apollodorus adds that Earth prophesied victory if Zeus should have as allies those hurled down to Tartarus; Zeus slew their jaileress Campe, loosed their bonds, and the Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder, lightning, and a thunderbolt, on Pluto a helmet, and on Poseidon a trident. Earlier in the poem Hesiod also explains how, when Zeus called all the deathless gods to Olympus and promised that whoever fought with him against the Titans would keep or receive due office, deathless Styx came first to Olympus with her children Zelus (Emulation), Nike (Victory), Cratos (Strength), and Bia (Force). Zeus honoured Styx greatly, appointing her the great oath of the gods, and her children to live always with him—so that Strength, Force, Victory, and Emulation become permanent companions of his rule. Earth further advised the gods that with the Hundred-Handers—Cottus, Briareos, and Gyes—they would gain victory. Zeus and the other children of Rhea brought those three up again to the light; after nectar and ambrosia revived them, they pledged to aid Zeus in dreadful strife (full battle in the Titanomachy entry). Thus Zeus rises: siblings restored from Cronus’s belly; the prophetic stone fixed at Delphi; thunder-weapons secured from the freed Cyclopes; Styx’s family bound to his side; the Hundred-Handers prepared as decisive allies.