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====Background to the rise of Zeus====
The first ruler of the gods was Uranus, the personification of the sky. He was married to Gaia, the goddess of the earth. Uranus had twelve children with Gaia. The original ruler of the world hid his children inside their mother (earth), after a prophecy that his children would overthrow him. Gaia hated him for this. The children of the sky and the earth were known in the ancient sources as the Titans. The youngest of these Titans was Cronus. He conspired with his mother to depose his father. Only he, among all the Titans, was brave enough to move against his father.<ref>Hesiod, Theogony, 113.</ref>
Gaia crafted a sickle for Cronus, and he sneaked upon his father and castrated him. Uranus was weakened, and Cronus was able to imprison his father in Tartarus, which is often mistakenly referred to as hell. Cronus imprisoned several monsters, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes with his father under the earth. He was regarded as the personification of time in the Classical sources. He, along with his sister Rhea, became the monarchs of the gods. His reign was considered to be a Golden Age when men did not require laws and where everything was shared equally.
[[File: Titan two.jpg|200px|thumb|left|A seventeenth-century painting of the Titans and the Olympians in battle]]
