Source Verification: Rhea
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 Rhea have to hide Zeus's birth?
Her husband Kronos had learned that he was fated to be overthrown by one of his own children, just as he had overthrown his own father Uranus, and so he swallowed each child whole as Rhea bore them. By the time she was due to bear her sixth child, Rhea had already lost five and appealed to her parents Uranus and Gaia for a way to save this one and see Kronos punished.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 453-467
How did Rhea trick Kronos into not swallowing Zeus?
On the advice of Uranus and Gaia, Rhea traveled to Crete to give birth in secret, then handed Kronos a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in place of the newborn. Kronos swallowed it without noticing the substitution, believing he had disposed of his sixth child exactly as he had the first five.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 468-491
What happened to Rhea's other children after Kronos swallowed them?
They stayed alive inside Kronos until Zeus, grown to strength in hiding, forced his father to disgorge them. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon emerged in reverse of the order they had been swallowed, and together with Zeus they went on to defeat Kronos and the Titans in the Titanomachy.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 492-506
Is Rhea the same goddess as Cybele?
They were identified with each other rather than being the same figure from the start. Cybele was an Anatolian mother goddess whose cult spread into the Greek and then Roman world, and later Greek and Roman writers equated her with Rhea because both were maternal Titan-like figures associated with mountains, lions, and ecstatic music. The identification is a later syncretism, not part of Hesiod's own account of Rhea.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 453-467
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 453-506
- Apollodorus, Library 1.1.5-1.1.7
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)