And talking of the marine world, the first of the children that Gaia tried to win to her side were Oceanus and his sister Tethys.fn3 But they were in the middle of negotiating a share of the oceans with Thalassa, the primordial goddess of the sea. All of this generation were stretching and flexing their muscles at this time, establishing their areas of expertise and control, nipping, growling and testing each other’s strength and dominance like puppies in a basket. Oceanus had conceived the idea of creating tides and currents, which were to run like a great salt river around the world. Tethys was about to have his baby – no sin in those early days of course: propagation would not have been possible without incestuous couplings. She was pregnant with NILUS, the Nile, and would go on to give birth to other rivers and to at least three thousand Oceanids or sea nymphs, attractive deities who moved as easily on dry land as in the waters of the sea. They already had two fully grown daughters: CLYMENE, who was the lover of Iapetus, and the clever and wise METIS, who is due to play a very important part in what is to come.fn4 The pair were happy and looking forward to life on the ocean wave, so neither saw any reason to help kill their father Ouranos.
Next Gaia visited her daughter Mnemosyne, who was busy being unpronounceable. She seemed a very shallow, silly and ignorant being, who knew nothing and appeared to understand less. This was deceptive, for each day that passed she got smarter and smarter, more and more well informed and more and more capable. Her name means ‘memory’ (giving us the word ‘mnemonic’). At the time of her mother’s visit, the world and the cosmos were very young, so Mnemosyne had had no opportunity to prime herself with knowledge or experience. As the years passed, her endless capacity for the storage of information and sensory experience would make her wiser than almost anyone. One day she would mother nine daughters, the MUSES, whom we shall meet later.
‘You want me to help you kill Ouranos? Surely the Sky Father cannot die?’
‘Dethrone or disable him, then … it is no more than he deserves.’
‘I will not help you.’
‘Why not?’
‘There is a reason and when I know it I will remember it and tell you.’
Exasperated, Gaia went next to Theia, who was also paired off in another sibling union, to her brother Hyperion. In due course she would give birth to HELIOS the sun, SELENE the moon and EOS the dawn, quite enough parenting to be getting on with, so they too showed no interest in Gaia’s plans to depose Ouranos.
Despairing at her pallid and unadventurous brood’s refusal to live up to what she imagined to be their divine destinies – not to mention repulsed by how loved up and domesticated they all appeared to be – Gaia next tried Phoebe, perhaps the most intelligent and insightful of the twelve. From the earliest age shining Phoebe had shown that she possessed the gift of prophecy.
‘Oh no, Mother Earth,’ she said, when she had heard Gaia’s plan. ‘I could take no part in such a plot. I see no good coming from it. Besides, I’m pregnant …’
‘Damn you,’ snapped Gaia. ‘Who by? Coeus, I bet.’
She was right, Phoebe’s brother Coeus was indeed her consort. Gaia stormed off with renewed fury to visit her remaining offspring. Surely one of them had the stomach for a fight?
She called on Themis, who would one day be regarded everywhere as the embodiment of justice and wise counsel,fn5 and Themis wisely counselled her mother to forget the unjust idea of usurping Ouranos. Gaia listened carefully to this wise counsel and – as we all do, whether mortal or immortal – ignored it, choosing instead to try the mettle of her son Crius, who consorted with her daughter by Pontus, EURYBIA.
‘Kill my father?’ Crius stared at his mother in disbelief. ‘B-but how … I mean … why? … I mean … oh.’
‘What’s in it for us, mother?’ asked Eurybia, who was known as ‘the flint-hearted’.
‘Oh, just the world and all that’s in it,’ said Gaia.
‘To share with you?’
‘To share with me.’
‘No!’ said Crius. ‘Leave, mother.’
‘It’s worth considering,’ said Eurybia.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Crius. ‘I forbid it.’
Gaia turned with a snarl and sought out her son Iapetus.
‘Iapetus, beloved boy. Destroy the monster Ouranos and rule with me!’
The Oceanid Clymene, who had borne Iapetus two sons and was pregnant with another, stepped forward. ‘What mother could ask such a thing? For a son to kill his own father would be the most terrible crime. All Cosmos would cry out.’
‘I must agree, mother,’ said Iapetus.
‘A curse on you and a curse on your children!’ spat Gaia.
A mother’s curse is a terrible thing. We shall see how the children of Iapetus and Clymene, ATLAS, EPIMETHEUS and PROMETHEUS, met their ends.
Rhea, the eleventh of Gaia’s children to be asked, said that she would have no part in the plan, but – throwing up her hands to stop a savage torrent of abuse from her mother – suggested that her brother Kronos, the last of these strong beautiful children, might very well like the idea of deposing his father. She, Rhea, had heard him many times cursing Ouranos and his power.
‘Really?’ cried Gaia. ‘You say so? Well, where is he?’
‘He’s probably mooching around down by the caves of Tartarus. He and Tartarus get on so well. They’re both dark. Moody. Mean. Magnificent. Cruel.’
‘Oh god, don’t tell me you’re in love with Kronos …’
‘Put in a good word for me, mummy, please! He’s just so dreamy. Those black flashing eyes. The thunderous brows. The long silences.’
Gaia had always thought that her youngest’s long silences indicated nothing more than dullness of intellect, but she sensibly refrained from saying so. After assuring Rhea that she would of course recommend her warmly to Kronos, Gaia sped down, down, down to the caves of Tartarus to find him.
If you were to drop a bronze anvil from the heavens it would take nine days to reach the earth. If you were to drop that anvil from the earth it would take another nine days to reach Tartarus. In other words the earth is halfway between the sky and Tartarus. Or you might say Tartarus is as far from the ground as the ground is from the sky. A very deep, abysmal place then, but more than just a place. Remember Tartarus was a primordial being too, who was born out of Chaos at the same time as Gaia. So when she approached him, they greeted each other as family members will.
‘Gaia, you’ve put on weight.’
‘You look a mess, Tartarus.’
‘What the hell do you want down here?’
‘Shut up for once and I’ll tell you …’
These testy exchanges won’t stop them, at a future date, from mating and producing TYPHON – the worst and deadliest of all the monsters.fn6 But just now Gaia is in no mood for love or for trading insults.
‘Listen. My son Kronos – is he nearby?’
A resigned groan from her brother.
‘Almost certainly. I wish you’d tell him to leave me alone. He does nothing all day but hang around looking at me with his eyes drooping and his mouth open. I think he’s got some kind of man-crush on me. He copies my hairstyle and leans limply against trees and boulders looking miserable, melancholy and misunderstood. As if he’s waiting for someone to paint him or something. When he’s not gazing at me he’s staring down into that lava vent over there. In fact there he is now, look. Try and talk some sense into him.’