Gaea

Gaea (Gaia, or Ge in Greek, meaning “Earth”) was the Greek personification of the Earth and one of the first beings to come into existence. In Hesiod’s Theogony she is the “ever-sure foundation” of all the immortals who hold Olympus. She bore Uranus, the Mountains and the Sea on her own, then became by Uranus the mother of the Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires, and she played a part in the rise of Cronus and then of Zeus, while also sending against them the Gigantes and Typhoeus (Theogony 116–138).

Gaea's Birth and Children

Gaea’s Birth

Hesiod says that first of all Chaos, the gaping void, came into being, and after it came “broad-breasted” Gaea, “the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus”, then misty Tartarus in a recess of the wide-pathed earth, and Eros, the most beautiful of the immortals (Theogony 116–122). Hesiod does not name a parent for Gaea; she simply comes into being after Chaos, the second of the first four. Chaos’ own offspring were Erebus and Night (Theogony 123).

Gaea’s First Children

Without a mate, Gaea brought forth three children: starry Uranus (the Sky), whom she made equal to herself so that he could cover her on every side and be a secure home for the blessed gods; the tall Mountains (Ourea), the pleasant haunts of the nymphs; and Pontus, the barren sea with its raging swell (Theogony 126–132).

Then she lay with Uranus and bore him the twelve Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys, and last of them crooked-scheming Cronus (Theogony 133–138). Next she bore the three Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes and Arges, who gave Zeus the thunder and made the thunderbolt (Theogony 139–146), and finally the three Hecatoncheires, Cottus, Briareos and Gyges, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads (Theogony 147–153).

By Pontus she had Nereus, the oldest of his children, then Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia (Theogony 233–239). She also bore Typhoeus to Tartarus (see below). Her other children include the Erinyes, the Gigantes and the Meliae, born from the blood of Uranus (Theogony 183–187); the giant Tityus is called her son in the Odyssey (11.576); and according to Apollodorus she became the mother of Erichthonius when the seed of Hephaestus fell on the ground (Library 3.14.6).

Gaea vs. Uranus

Uranus hated the dreadful children he had by Gaea from the beginning. As each was born he hid them all away in a hollow of Earth and would not let them come up to the light, and he took pleasure in his wicked work. Gaea groaned within, strained to the limit, and devised a treacherous plan (Theogony 154–160). She made a great sickle of grey adamant and told her children, trying to give them courage, that if they were willing to obey, they could punish their father’s wicked outrage, since he had been the first to devise shameful deeds (Theogony 161–166).

Gaea and Cronus

Fear seized all her sons, and none spoke. Only great Cronus, the crooked-scheming one, took heart and told his mother that he would do the deed, because he cared nothing for a father of ill name. Gaea was glad. She hid him in an ambush and put the jagged sickle in his hands, and told him the whole trick. Uranus came, bringing on the night, and spread himself over Gaea in desire of love. Then Cronus reached out from his hiding place with his left hand, took the great sickle with his right, and quickly cut off his father’s genitals and threw them behind him (Theogony 167–182). In the version of Apollodorus, Gaea persuaded the Titans to attack their father, and all except Oceanus did so; they then brought up the brothers who had been hurled down to Tartarus and gave the sovereignty to Cronus, who afterwards bound them again and shut them up in Tartarus (Library 1.1.4–5).

Gaea’s Later Progeny

The drops of blood from the wound fell on Gaea, and she received them all. As the years went round she bore the strong Erinyes, the great Gigantes (the Giants) shining in armour and holding long spears, and the nymphs whom men call Meliae, the nymphs of the ash trees, across the boundless earth (Theogony 183–187). Apollodorus names the three Furies as Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera (Library 1.1.4).

Gaea vs. Cronus

The Titanomachy

Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born from Rhea, to prevent any of the sons of Uranus from holding the kingly honour. He had learned from Gaea and starry Uranus that he was fated to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was (Theogony 459–465). When Rhea was about to bear Zeus, she begged her own parents, Gaea and Uranus, to devise a plan so that the birth would go unnoticed and that the Erinyes of her father and of her swallowed children might be avenged. They advised her and sent her to Lyctus in Crete. Gaea received the child, took him by night to a deep cave under the secret places of the holy earth on Mount Aegaeon, and Rhea gave Cronus a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in his place (Theogony 468–491). Later, tricked by Gaea’s cunning counsels, Cronus brought up his children again, first the stone, which Zeus set up at holy Pytho beneath the slopes of Parnassus (Theogony 492–500).

The war between the Titans, on Mount Othrys, and the Olympians went on for ten full years without a result. Then, on the advice of Gaea, the sons of Cronus brought up from the darkness the Hecatoncheires, whom Uranus had bound, because she had told them that with these allies they would win victory and glory. The Hecatoncheires fought for Zeus, and the Titans were hurled down beneath the earth (Theogony 617–643; compare 501–506 for the freeing of the Cyclopes). Zeus then became ruler of the gods; Hesiod says the gods urged him to take the kingship on the advice of Gaea (Theogony 881–885).

Gaea vs. Zeus

Gaea also turned against the Olympians. Apollodorus describes two challenges, the war of the Giants and the monster Typhon; Hesiod tells only the second.

The Gigantomachy

According to Apollodorus, Gaea, vexed on account of the Titans, brought forth the Giants, whom she had by Uranus. They were huge in body and invincible in strength, and they hurled rocks and burning oaks at the sky. The gods had an oracle that none of the Giants could be killed by gods alone, but only with the help of a mortal, so Gaea searched for a herb to protect them. Zeus forbade Dawn, the Moon and the Sun to shine, cut the herb himself and then, through Athena, summoned Heracles. With Heracles’ help the gods defeated the Giants, though Porphyrion and Alcyoneus were among the strongest of them (Library 1.6.1–2). In Hesiod, by contrast, the Giants are simply born from the blood of Uranus (Theogony 185).

Typhoeus

After the Giants, Gaea, still more angry, mated with Tartarus and gave birth to Typhon in Cilicia, a monster that surpassed all her other children in size and strength (Apollodorus, Library 1.6.3). Hesiod places him after the Titans were driven out of heaven: Gaea bore Typhoeus, her youngest child, to Tartarus through the gift of golden Aphrodite (Theogony 820–822). He had a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with fire flashing from his eyes (Theogony 823–828), and from him come the stormy winds that harm sailors (Theogony 869–880). With Echidna he is said to have been the father of Orthus, Cerberus and other monsters (Theogony 306–312). Zeus fought him and defeated him with thunderbolts, and Typhoeus was thrown into Tartarus (Theogony 853–868).

The Truce

After the victory over Typhoeus, Gaea advised Zeus rather than opposing him. Hesiod says that the gods urged Zeus to rule on her counsel (Theogony 881–885), and that when Metis was about to bear Athena, Zeus tricked her with soft words and swallowed her, on the advice of Gaea and starry Uranus, so that no other god would hold kingly honour in his place; Metis was fated to bear first the grey-eyed Tritogeneia, and then a son who would be king of gods and men (Theogony 886–900). Apollodorus adds that golden apples were a gift of Earth when Zeus married Hera, and that a dragon guarded them (Library 2.5.11).

Gaea at Delphi

Aeschylus begins the Eumenides with the Pythia saying that she honours first among the gods Gaia, the first prophet, and after her Themis, who sat second on her mother’s oracle seat, then Phoebe, who gave it to Phoebus Apollo as a birthday gift (Eumenides 1–8). Pausanias agrees that, according to the stories told, in the earliest times the oracular seat belonged to Earth, who appointed the mountain nymph Daphnis as prophetess there (Description of Greece 10.5.5).

Gaea in the Homeric Hymns

The Homeric Hymn to Earth, the Mother of All, praises her as well-founded Earth, eldest of all beings, who feeds all creatures on land, in the sea and in the air (Homeric Hymn 30.1–4). It says that from her come men’s children and harvests, and that it is for her to give life to mortals and to take it away (Homeric Hymn 30.5–7), and it ends by greeting her as the mother of the gods and wife of starry Uranus (Homeric Hymn 30.17).

Gaea Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 116–138, 139–187, 233–239, 306–312, 459–506, 617–643, 820–900; Homeric Hymn 30 to Earth, the Mother of All; Homer, Odyssey 11.576; Apollodorus, Library 1.1.4–5, 1.6.1–3, 2.5.11, 3.14.6; Aeschylus, Eumenides 1–8; Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.5.5. Hesiod covers many of these stories throughout his Theogony. A shorter text is the Homeric Hymn to Earth, the Mother of All.

See Also: The Creation, Uranus, Cronus, Zeus, Titanomachy, Gigantomachy, Typhon, Rhea, Pontus, Tartarus