10 Reasons Greek Mythology Is Messed Up
8. From Mother’s Belly To Father’s Belly
Free from paternal control, Kronos occupied the empty throne and continued with the endogamous standards of the family by marrying his sister Rhea. They had six children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. However, Kronos knew they would learn from his steps that offshoots and begetters were destined to never carry a healthy relationship, so he did what he had to do and swallowed them all as soon as they were born. Oh, very mature, dad.
Nevertheless, Rhea proved once more that mothers were seemingly the only deities with common sense in the pre-Olympian world and hid his favourite son Zeus before he made it into his father’s esophagus.
Together with his milk brother Pan (whose ancestry is mostly obscure), the Greek version of Romanic Faunus, little Zeus lived in the island of Crete, breastfed by the goat Amalthea. Later, this would cause him to grow mighty as a king and to bring in the cornucopia out of thankfulness (or an accident, since some versions say he broke off one of the goat’s horns while fooling around). A nice detail either way.