Coming Of The Immortals
The first thing that came to mind when one speaks of the Greek Immortals would be Zeus, king of the Gods. But Zeus was not the first of the Gods. In the early days, even before the arrival of Zeus, there were many other Gods. But these Gods were terrible and cruel, spreading chaos wherever they went. They were the children of the Sky and the Earth, and the people called them the Giants and the Titans. The leader of these Gods were Cronos, who was also the most feared.
Cronos owned a sickle, and he often used it to cut pieces off his father, the Sky.
"For now you may be the ruler, but your children will treat you the same way as you treat us! And one of them will rule instead of you!" The Sky and the Earth told Cronos.
Cronos was very angry over this, and as soon as his children were born, he swallowed them whole one after another. Among them were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, and even Hades and Poseidon.
Cronos' wife, Rhea, couldn't stand the cruelty of her husband, and as soon as her youngest son was born, she hid him away in a cave on the island of Crete. When Cronos asked for the child, she gave him a stone wrapped in baby clothes, and he swallowed the stone, thinking it was the child.
This child is none other than Zeus, destined to rule after Cronos. In Crete, he was guarded and raised by the mountain nymphs. When he was fully grown, he sought the help of Metis, who gave him a magic herb. Zeus later put this herb into Cronos' wine, which made Cronos very sick. Then the swallowed children escaped from his body, all very much alive and angry. The swallowed stone came up too, and to this very day it stayed where it first fell, at Delphi.
With the aid of his brothers and sisters and also the one-eyed giants Cyclopes, Zeus battled Cronos and the Titans. The Cyclopes made Zeus thunderbolts, made Poseidon a trident, and also made Hades a helmet of invisibility. With these weapons, the war finally ended with Zeus' side being the victor. Cronos and the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, a fiery prison below Earth. In later days, wicked souls were sent there too to suffer.
Zeus and his brothers then decided that Zeus would be the King of Heaven, Poseidon the King of Sea, and Hades the King of the Dead. They also built a palace on Mount Olympus, which became home of the Gods. Finally, they restored stability to the geography of the land, for the Titans had thrown mountains about.
Not all Titans were against Zeus, however. Some Titans fought against Cronos, and these Titans were treated equally as the other Gods on Mount Olympus after the war.
And not all Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus. One such Titan was Atlas, who was punished to stand on the top of Mount Atlas and hold up the sky on his shoulders.
Thus, the Immortals had come.
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