Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video,
we’re going to discuss Cronus’s escape from Tartarus, this followed by him becoming the
king of the Isles of the Blessed, Greek Mythology’s version of heaven. We’re
going to begin with a recap of how Cronus ended up in Tartarus in the first place,
and then we’re going to see how Cronus extricated himself from perpetual punishment
and landed himself a cushy job in paradise, hanging out in bliss with the rapturous dead.
Alright, let’s get into it.
The fall of Cronus and the triumph of Zeus is one of Greek Mythology’s best
known stories. At the behest of Gaia, Cronus ambushed and castrated Uranus, his own father,
the primordial deity who personified the sky. By severing his father’s sex and then casting
the bloody mess into the sea, Cronus became the new king of creation. Unfortunately,
though, like his father before, he proved a tyrant, unfit for this loftiest of thrones.
A prophecy divulged to him revealed that he was fated to be usurped by one of his children,
repeating yet again the cycle of son supplanting father. To forestall such an eventuality,
he decided to devour all six of his children at the moment of their births, forcing Rhea, his
sister and wife, to promptly proffer her sons and daughters for said devourment only mere moments
after each labor. This happened five times. Rhea became more sorrowful and more resolved with each
loss. When it came time for the sixth child to be devoured, she instead swaddled a stone in a
blanket and gave it to Cronus, thus sparing her youngest child the awful fate suffered by the
previous five. The youngest child was Zeus, and though he had avoided his father’s stomach for the
time being, he was still in constant danger. Rhea, to ensure her defiance wasn’t wasted, arranged for
Zeus to be hidden away in remote secrecy, far from the eyes and ears of his father and those who did
his bidding. Years later, sequestered and long thought to have been imprisoned within the flesh
of his father, Zeus blossomed into manhood and grew into the fullness of his awesome power. He
departed the haven that had harbored him all the years of his life hitherto, and then he returned
and forced Cronus to disgorge his siblings. 10 cataclysmic years of war followed - Zeus and his
five siblings, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Demeter, against Cronus and the Titans. Finally,
with the help of the Uranian Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires, the Titans were beaten
into submission, their surrender forced by an indomitable alliance, their defeat sealed by an
overwhelming onslaught. Cronus and the other belligerent Titans who fought alongside him
were cast down into Tartarus, the primordial pit, the abyss beneath the earth. The Titans were now
fettered and forlorn in the desolate depths of the inescapable chasm, the brilliance of the sun and
the luminescence of the moon soon to be nothing more than a distant memory. They were condemned,
trapped for all of eternity while Zeus and those loyal to him reigned over the cosmos above. At
least, this is how the story usually goes. There’s also an interesting tradition in which Cronus
escapes from Tartarus; though perhaps saying that Cronus escaped is giving the Titan King
too much credit, the word ‘released’ being more apt in this context. In certain translations of
Hesiod’s Theogony, among the oldest works of Greek Mythology, it says that Zeus eventually
relented and let Cronus leave Tartarus; and not only was he released, he was given an
exalted position. The Isles of the Blessed are basically Greek Mythology’s version of heaven.
It’s a paradisiacal place located at the end of the earth, reserved for the best of humanity,
those who were virtuous and heroic in life. Cronus was appointed the king of this utopia and came
to rule over its spiritual denizens. The passage that explains this from Hesiod’s Theogony reads:
“And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling
Oceanus, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit… and Cronus rules
over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds.” Continuing in this same vein,
the idea of Cronus becoming the king of the Isles of the Blessed also features in other
later works. In Pindar’s Olympian Ode 2, a work of the 5th century BC, the spirits of the dead judged
worthy of reward walked the road of Zeus to the tower of Cronus, which is situated in the Isles
of Blessed. There the seat of Rhadmanthys, one of the three judges of the underworld, is said
to be by the right hand of the great father, the great father here an epithet for Cronus.
And that’s it for this video. If you enjoy the content,
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