Troy: A Brand of Fire
Page 56
Chapter Nineteen
What will Follow
Long ago, the great god Cronus castrated his father Uranus, and seized his power. Dying, Uranus prophesied that Cronus would suffer the same fate, and be killed by his own son.
Cronus resolved to avoid this destiny. When his wife Rhea gave birth he promptly swallowed the child, a girl whose mother had named her Demeter. He did the same when Hera was born, and then Hades and Poseidon. But Rhea came to hate him, not unnaturally, and when the sixth child was born she hid it away, and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling instead. He ate the stone, and the child Zeus was saved.
When he was grown Zeus fulfilled the prophecy, of course, forcing Cronus to disgorge the contents of his stomach, including the swallowed children. Cronus was then banished to Tartarus, an abyss of darkness and endless torment, as far below Hades and Heaven is high above the Earth. He is imprisoned there still, helpless and lost.
The stone Cronus had consumed remained on Olympus for many years. Later, Zeus wished to find the centre of the world, and to locate it he released two eagles, one from the extreme west and the other from the east. They met above Delphi, in Greece, and there Zeus set down the stone. He placed it on the slope of Mount Parnassus, between two towering cliffs called the Shining Ones, on the northern side of a deep valley.
It rests there still, anointed at dusk and dawn with scented oil. Plaintiffs who visit the shrine of the Pythia attach swatches of wool, in the hope the gods will harken to their pleas.
No visitor may pass beyond the stone without the permission of the priests of Apollo, who run the Oracle there. Violence is utterly forbidden.