Friday 6 September 2013

Tartarus


Tartarus
                          In Greek Mythology, Tartarus was described as both a deity and a place in the lowest depths of the underworld. First Gaea, goddess of earth, had come out of Chaos, the great void of emptiness within the universe and then Tartarus. Gaea created mountains, low lands, rivers, lakes and seas. Tartarus built his home deep below the world of Gaea

                                       
Gaea...............
                           
               Gaea mated with Tartarus with the help of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and bare her youngest child Typhon, also know as the father of all monster. In one version, Tartarus was described as the son of Aether and Gaea.  Later Tartarus was described as the deepest region of the world, the lower of the two parts of the underworld, where the gods locked up their enemies.
Tartarus
    

                         According to Greek legend,  Uranus (heaven or sky) came every night to cover the Gaea (earth) and mate with her, but he hated the children she bore him. Their first six sons and six daughters  were the Titans, and then the three one-hundred-handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes.

Uranus imprisoned Gaea's youngest children (Hekatonkheires and Cyclopes) in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaea. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing. He ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea.
                          When Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans, he imprisoned the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard. Zeus killed Campe and released the imprisoned giants to aid in his conflict with the Titans. The gods of Olympus eventually triumphed. Cronus and many of the other Titans were banished to Tartarus, though Prometheus, Epimetheus, Metis and most of the female Titans were spared. In some versions, Cronus later earned Zeus' forgiveness and was released from Tartarus to become ruler of Elysium. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, he threw him into Tartarus.

Hades...underworld
      


 Later, Tartarus was described as the place in the lower world in which the spirits of wicked men are punished for their crimes, also know as Hades or underworld.......

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