Hey, it's Monday!

So, Greek creation myth. This week, instead of posting a giant block of bold text, I'll merely summarize.

In the beginning there may have been several different things, depending on whom you ask. Some say that there was merely void and Nyx, a great black bird, some say that there was Erebus, place where the souls of the dead dwell. We'll go with Nyx, since I like that one better. Nyx laid an egg in which Love was hidden, and he made the two halves of the egg in to Uranus and Gaea, the heaven and the earth. They fell in love and produced many children: three Cyclopes, the three Hecatoncheires, and twelve Titans. However, Uranus was a bad father and banished all except the Titans to the furthest regions of the earth. Gaea, angered by this treatment of her children, asked the Titans to kill their father, but the only one willing to do it was the youngest, Chronos.

Uranus was either killed or exiled, and it doesn't really matter which because not Chronos was on top! He was, however, a little paranoid and not much of a better father than his good old dad, because when he heard he would be overthrown by one of his children, can you guess what he did? That's right, kids, he swallowed his own children! Rhea, his wife and sister, (yes, ew, but this is Greek mythology, here, so get over it) decided after four or five that she had had just about enough of this, so when she was about to deliver her youngest child she went to visit some nymphs. She left her newborn son with them and fooled her husband, who was apparently not able to distinguish between a baby and a stone (maybe all his children were hard and lumpy?) into swallowing a rock instead of Zeus.

Meanwhile, back in nymph land, Zeus was raised into a strong young man and was given a potion that could make his father throw up his older siblings. Delightful! So he tricked his father into drinking it (probably by disguising it as a baby, or something) and hooray, all the gods were back! However, Chronos was not going down without a fight, and enlisted his Titan brethren (Except for Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Oceanus, who knew well enough to stay well out of it) into making war on the gods! Atlas was their military leader and almost won. Then Zeus banished the Titans into Tartarus, except for Atlas, to whom he gave the extra special duty of holding up the earth for the rest of eternity.

Zeus, deciding that the earth looked a little empty, had Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (afterthought) create man and animals, and give them each gifts to help them survive. Prometheus sat down to make man in the image of the gods, and Epimetheus gleefully started making animals. When Prometheus was done, he turned to his brother who blushingly admitted that he had given all of the gifts away. So Prometheus rolled his eyes and gave man fire, even though that was supposed to be for the gods only. It was supposed to be on the down low, but apparently Zeus found out and chained him to a wall where he was doomed to have his liver eaten out by a vulture every day. F o r e v e r. Tasty!

To Epimetheus Zeus gave the extremely clever Pandora and her lovely box, whose story I'm sure you know. Otherwise, look it up on Wikipedia, or something.

Mostly I like this story because all of the animals used up the special gifts. :P