Rhea (Ops)

Titaness and earth-goddess. Rhea was the daughter of Uranus and Gaea. According to Diodorus Siculus, Rhea's other name was Pandora. Rhea was identified by the Romans as the goddess Ops and Magna Mater.

Rhea married her brother Cronus and was the mother of the Olympians: Hestia, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hera and Zeus.

When it was prophesied that her children would overthrow her brother/husband Cronus, he took steps to prevent it. As Rhea gave birth to each child, Cronus would take the infant and swallow the child. When her youngest son Zeus was born, fearing that she would lose all her children, Rhea wrapped swaddling cloth around a stone and gave it to her husband. Cronus unwittingly swallowed the stone. Rhea secretly sent her son to Crete, where Zeus was brought up by mountain nymphs and the Curetes.

She later helped Zeus to force her husband to disgorge her other children. Rhea and her mother (Gaea) provided emetic to the Oceanid Metis, Zeus' first wife. Metis served the emetic to Cronus with his drink, so that Cronus vomited out his five children.

See Creation, Theogony of Hesiod.

As Ops, she was the goddess of plenty or fertility. Ops was worshipped along with Consus, a god with an obscure function.

She was sometimes identified as Cybele, a Phrgyian earth/mother goddess. Rhea was also associated with the Cretan goddess Dictynna, who was previously known as Britomartis.

According to the Orphic myth, after Zeus was born, her name was changed to Demeter. As Demeter, she was raped by her son Zeus so that she gave birth to Persephone. In turn, Zeus would rape their daughter (Persephone) so that she became the mother of Dionysus, known to the Neoplatonists as Zagreus.