Uranus

The sky that will not let its children rise

Uranus is the sky. The early Greek poet Hesiod says that Gaia, the Earth, gives birth to him to cover her on every side. He is the starry sky, as large as Earth, and a safe home for the gods. Then Gaia and Uranus have children together. Now the sky that wraps around Earth becomes a force that will not let anything beneath it come out.

Hesiod says Uranus hates each child from the start. As soon as one is born, he hides it inside Gaia and does not let it into the light. The weight falls on Earth. She groans under the strain, and she makes the weapon that will part them.

Apollodorus, who retold the myths in a book called the Library, keeps the family but changes the prison. In his version Uranus is the first ruler of the whole world. He ties up the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers and throws them into Tartarus, a deep pit below the earth. The Titans stay free, so Gaia can ask them to attack. In Hesiod the hiding place is Gaia herself, and in Apollodorus it is the pit. In both versions, locking up his children is what turns them against their ruler.

The son in ambush

Gaia makes a sickle of adamant, a very hard metal, and tells her children what she plans. Only Cronus answers. She hides him in ambush and gives him the blade.

At night Uranus comes and stretches himself over Gaia, wanting to lie with her. Cronus reaches out from his hiding place, grabs his father with one hand and cuts with the other. Hesiod describes no battle for the throne. Uranus is brought down in the act that produced the children he kept down. The weapon was made by the very body in which he hid them.

Apollodorus spells out what this meant for power. All the Titans except Oceanus attack Uranus and hand the rule to Cronus. Uranus had been the first king. After the sickle, he no longer governs the world.

The sources give him no attempt to win back his throne. He matters for what the separation sets free.

What falls from the sky

Drops of blood fall onto Gaia. In time she gives birth to three groups. The Erinyes punish crimes within families. The Giants will later fight the gods of Olympus. The last are the nymphs of the ash trees. The attack on one father produces powers that carry on into later wars among the gods.

The cut flesh is thrown behind Cronus and falls into the sea. White foam gathers around it. A goddess grows there. She comes first towards holy Kythira, then reaches Cyprus, surrounded by the sea. Hesiod calls her Aphrodite because of the foam, and Cytherea because she came to Kythira.

So the birth of Aphrodite is also the last step in the fall of Uranus. The sky can no longer press Earth shut. Blood, avengers, warriors and desire all enter the world from the wound.

Why Uranus is both a god and a place

The name Ouranos means sky or heaven. In ancient Greek, the same word can mean the sky we see, the home of the gods and the figure in this family tree. Hesiod uses all three meanings. Uranus is a father who makes choices. He is also the cover that Gaia must force away before their children can stand in daylight.

This double nature explains why the surviving accounts tell few stories of people worshipping Uranus. The texts do not need to take him to a holy site to keep him present. Every later generation of gods lives between Earth and Sky.

Kythira keeps the result of his fall, not a temple to Uranus. In Hesiod, Aphrodite’s journey begins when what was cut from the Sky reaches the sea, and she first comes near that island. Uranus loses his rule to the sickle. What reaches Kythira is the new goddess born from his fall.