Rhea, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Rhea was the wife and sister of Cronus, the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus). It was Rhea who, having seen each of her first five children swallowed by her husband, took counsel of her parents Uranus and Gaia, fled to Crete to bear her sixth child Zeus, hid him with the mountain-nymphs and the Curetes, and tricked Cronus with the stone. She thus stood at the hinge of the Titanic and Olympian generations, the mother of the gods who would overthrow her husband, and her cult — particularly in Crete and on the islands of the Aegean — preserved her as the great mother-goddess, often identified or fused with the older Cretan mountain-mother and with the Phrygian Cybele (Volume I), whom the Greeks recognized as their own Rhea under another name.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Hesiod, Theogony 453–506; Apollodorus 1.1.5–7. Rhea's Cretan cult is attested by Diodorus Siculus (5.65–66) and by archaeological remains at Crete, where the cave of Zeus on Mount Ida was the supposed site of his concealment. The identification of Rhea with Cybele (Magna Mater) is attested from at least the fifth century BCE and was systematized in the Roman period; she is the Greek term, Cybele the Phrygian, but the cult-figure is largely the same.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Consort ofCronusRhea was the wife and sister of Cronus
Sibling ofCronusRhea was the wife and sister of Cronus
Child ofUranusthe daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the mother of the six original Olympians
Child ofGaiathe daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the mother of the six original Olympians
Parent ofHestiathe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Parent ofDemeterthe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Parent ofHerathe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Parent ofHadesthe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Parent ofPoseidonthe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Parent ofZeusthe mother of the six original Olympians (Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus)
Named as the same god asCybeleoften identified or fused with the older Cretan mountain-mother and with the Phrygian Cybele
Named as the same god asOpsat an early date she was identified with Greek Rhea

The same god in other rooms

The ancient sources themselves name these as one god under different names. See Cybele, Rhea and Ops hung together

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Titans and Their Children. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1600–1100 BCE: Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
c. 1100–800 BCE: Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
late 8th–7th centuries BCE: The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
7th–6th centuries BCE: Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
6th–5th centuries BCE: Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
5th century BCE: Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
4th century BCE: Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
323–31 BCE: Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.