Source Verification: Ouranos
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Why did Kronos castrate Ouranos?
Because Gaia asked him to, and he was the only one of her children willing. Hesiod gives the reason as what Ouranos was doing to them: hiding each child inside the earth as it was born, taking pleasure in it, and leaving Gaia stretched and groaning. Apollodorus gives a narrower reason, that Ouranos had thrown the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers into Tartaros. The two accounts differ over whether the grievance was all the children or only some.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 154-182
What came from the blood of Ouranos?
Three things in Hesiod, all born from the drops that fell on Gaia: the Erinyes, who punish oath-breaking and kin-murder; the Giants, in armour and holding spears; and the Meliae, the nymphs of the ash tree. The severed parts themselves fall into the sea, gather white foam, and Aphrodite is born from it. The wound that ends the first reign therefore produces both the enforcers of divine law and the goddess of desire.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 176-206
Where Accounts Differ
- cause of the castration
- birth of Aphrodite
- Hesiod makes the grievance the hiding of all the children; Apollodorus makes it the imprisonment of the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers specifically.
- The birth of Aphrodite from the severed parts is Hesiod's account. Homer makes her the daughter of Zeus and Dione instead, and the two are not reconciled anywhere in antiquity.
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 126-138
- Hesiod, Theogony 154-182
- Hesiod, Theogony 176-206
- Apollodorus, Library 1.1.1-1.1.4