Rhea in the ancient sources

Ancient Sources / Figures / Rhea

17 passages from 10 ancient authors that tell of Rhea, in the original with English translation, author by author in the order the Greeks read them. Rhea was one of the Titans, daughter of Uranus and Gaea. She was the sister and wife of Cronus, also a Titan. She was responsible for the way things f... For the story in one place, read our article on Rhea.

Hesiod (2)

Hesiod, Theogony 450–479Rhea and Cronus; the birth of Zeus (450-479)Hecate is made a nurse of the young. Rhea bears Cronus Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus, and Cronus swallows each child as it is born, because Gaia and Uranus have told him his own son will overcome him. When she is about to bear Zeus, Rhea asks her parents for a plan, and they send her to Lyctus in Crete, where Gaia receives the child.
Hesiod, Theogony 615–649Zeus releases the Hundred-Handers (615-649)Zeus and the gods, at Gaia's advice, bring the Hundred-Handers, Obriareus, Cottus and Gyes, up from the gloom beneath the earth where their father Uranus had bound them. The ten-year war between the Titans on Othrys and the gods on Olympus is evenly balanced, and Zeus feeds the three nectar and ambrosia and asks them to stand with the younger gods against the Titans.

Homer (2)

Homer, The Homeric Hymns 2.395–495Hymn 2 to Demeter (5): reunion and the MysteriesPersephone tells her mother how she was seized and made to taste the seed, and mother and daughter spend the day in joy. Rhea brings Zeus's message, and Demeter agrees that Persephone will spend a third of the year below and the rest with the gods. Demeter makes the fields fruitful again and teaches her rites to the leaders of Eleusis, and the hymn closes with a blessing on those who have seen them.
Homer, The Homeric Hymns 2.1–86Hymn 2 to Demeter (1): the abduction of PersephonePersephone is gathering flowers in a meadow when the earth opens and Hades seizes her and carries her away in his chariot. Her mother Demeter hears her cry, searches the earth for nine days with torches, and learns the truth from Hecate and from Helios, who tells her that Zeus gave Persephone to Hades.

Apollodorus (1)

Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca), with the Epitome 1.1.1–7Uranus, the Titans and the birth of ZeusSky (Uranus) and Earth have the Hundred-handers, the Cyclopes and the Titans, and Sky casts the Cyclopes into Tartarus. At Earth's urging the Titans attack their father, and Cronus mutilates him with an adamantine sickle, so that the Furies are born from the blood. Cronus takes the sovereignty, binds his brothers again, marries Rhea and swallows his children at birth, until Rhea hides the infant Zeus in a cave in Crete among the Curetes and nymphs and gives Cronus a stone to swallow.

Pindar (1)

Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.1–100Olympian 2: for Theron — the house of Cadmus and the Isles of the BlestPindar praises Theron of Acragas, victor in the chariot race, and prays that time may heal the sorrows of his house. He recalls the house of Cadmus, with Laïus, Oedipus, the Fury that made his sons kill one another, and Polyneices' son Thersander. He then describes the afterlife, in which the wicked are punished and the good go to the Isles of the Blest, where Rhadamanthys judges and Peleus, Cadmus and Achilles dwell, and he ends by answering envy with the praise of Theron's generosity.

Apollonius Rhodius (1)

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.1078–1152The halcyon's omen and the rites for the Mother on DindymumTwelve days of storm keep Argo at Cyzicus until Mopsus reads the cry of a halcyon as a command to appease the Mother of the gods on Mount Dindymum. The heroes build an altar, Orpheus leads an armed dance, a spring wells up from the mountain, and the winds drop.

Callimachus (1)

Callimachus, Hymns 1.1–96Hymn to ZeusThe poet asks where Zeus was born, on Ida in Crete or in Arcadia, and calls the Cretans liars for building his tomb. He tells how Rhea bore Zeus in Parrhasia and washed in a spring she struck from the mountain, how the nymph Neda carried him to Crete and how the Dictaean Meliae and Adrasteia reared him on the milk of the goat Amaltheia. The hymn praises Zeus as the god who took kings for his portion, and ends with a prayer for goodness and prosperity.

Diodorus Siculus (3)

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Books 4 to 6 (the Greek myths) 5.68.1–5.72.5Zeus and the children of Cronus in CreteAccording to the Cretans the children of Cronus and Rhea discovered or introduced many arts, and the sea, the hearth and the corn belong to Poseidon, Hestia and Demeter. The historian gives the conflicting accounts of how Zeus became king, the places in Crete tied to his infancy, his benefactions to mankind and the punishment of the Giants.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Books 4 to 6 (the Greek myths) 5.64.1–5.67.5Early Crete: the Dactyls, the Curetes and the TitansThe Cretans claim that the Eteocretans were native to the island, and that the Idaean Dactyls discovered fire and the working of metals. They tell of the Curetes and of the Titans near Cnosus under Cronus' rule, whose age is described with lines of Hesiod, and of Hyperion's observation of the heavens.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Books 4 to 6 (the Greek myths) 6.1.1–11Euhemerus on the godsIn a fragment on the gods the historian is quoted as dividing them into eternal ones, such as the sun and moon and stars, and terrestrial ones, such as Heracles and Dionysus, who were honoured as gods for their benefactions. He then summarises the account of Euhemerus, who sailed from Arabia to the island of Panchaea, where a golden stele recorded the deeds of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus as kings.

Pausanias (4)

Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.36.1–10Methydrium, Mount Maenalus and the road to the MistressPausanias describes Methydrium, named for its position between two rivers, with a temple of Horse Poseidon and Mount Thaumasius, where the Methydrians place Rhea's deceit of Cronus. Leaving Megalopolis by the Gate to the Marsh he lists the temple of the Good God, the grave of Aristodemus, the sanctuary of Athena the Contriver, the precinct of the North Wind and the grove of Demeter in the Marsh. He then covers Mount Maenalus, sacred to Pan, and the Meetings of Three Ways, and the road to Macareae, Daseae and the Acacesian Hill.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.8.1–12Mantinea: Rhea's lamb spring and the history of the cityPausanias describes the sanctuary of Demeter near Nestane and the spring Arne, where Rhea is said to have hidden the infant Poseidon among lambs, and states that he treats such Greek stories as riddles of old wisdom. He tells how Antinoe moved the people of Mantinea to the new site behind a snake, and how Agesipolis took the city by diverting the river Ophis against its brick walls. The section follows the city's later alliances, its renaming Antigonea after Antigonus, its support for Augustus at Actium and Hadrian's restoration of the name Mantinea.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.41.1–10Phigalia: the sanctuary of Eurynome and the temple of Apollo at BassaePausanias describes the common grave of the Oresthasians at Phigalia, the river Lymax, named from the purification of Rhea, and the river Neda. At their meeting stands the sanctuary of Eurynome, opened only once a year, with a wooden image bound in golden chains and shaped like a fish below the hips. He describes the stone temple of Apollo the Succourer on Mount Cotilius at Bassae, built by Ictinus, which he ranks next to the temple at Tegea for beauty. The spring on Mount Cotilius and an Aphrodite at Cotilum close the section.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.2.1–7Plataea: the tomb of Mardonius, the graves of the Persian war and the temple of HeraPausanias describes the ruins of Hysiae and Erythrae on Mount Cithaeron and the supposed tomb of Mardonius, and the spring and rock at which Actaeon is said to have looked on Artemis. He discusses the places linked to Pentheus and Oedipus on Cithaeron. At Plataea he describes the graves of the Greeks who fought the Medes, the altar of Zeus of Freedom and the Eleutheria games, the trophy and the shrine of the heroine Plataea. He ends with the temple of Hera, with its Praxitelean images of Rhea and Hera Full-grown and the seated Bride by Callimachus.

Nonnus of Panopolis (1)

Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 9.169–228Book 9: The boy Dionysos hunts; Semele's boastAt nine years old Dionysos hunts hares, stags and tigers and drives lions for Rheia. He grows up among the Pans in the Phrygian hills. Semele, in Olympos, boasts over Hera that Zeus himself brought her son to birth and that Rheia nursed him.

Orpheus (attributed) (1)

Orpheus (attributed), Orphic Hymns 12–16Hymns 12-16: Hercules, Saturn, Rhea, Jupiter, JunoHercules is praised as the untamed, strong-handed god of the twelve labours. Saturn (Kronos) is invoked as the mighty Titan and husband of Rhea, and Rhea as the daughter of Protogonus and mother of gods and men. The group ends with Jupiter (Zeus), the supreme king of the gods, and Juno (Hera), his queen of the air.