After confining the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires to Tartarus, Cronus established his reign. He married his sister Rhea, and under his lordship the Titans produced many offspring. Yet Cronus could not allow his own children to survive, for both Gaea and Uranus had prophesied that Cronus would be supplanted by a son. When Rhea, his wife, gave birth to the gods and goddesses Cronus swallowed Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon shortly after each was born. Rhea was furious and took pains to save her sixth child, Zeus, from his father. She bore Zeus in secret and then gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling bands to swallow instead.
Attended by nymphs, Zeus grew to manhood on Crete. Cronus, meanwhile, was growing old. So Zeus sought advice on how to defeat him from the Titaness Metis, who prepared an emetic potion. Disguised as a cupbearer, Zeus gave this potion to Cronus, who vomited up Zeus's brothers and sisters, as well as the stone Rhea had given him. The gods were alive and unhurt, and together with Zeus they triumphed over Cronus and bound him in Tartarus. Zeus then set up the stone at Parnassus, a monument to his victory over the Titan king.
Zeus's triumph, however, was far from secure. The other Titans, with the exception of Prometheus and Oceanus, rebelled under these upstart gods. For ten years the fighting lasted, a cosmos-shaking battle in which the elements of nature raged without check. Neither the gods nor the Titans could secure a decisive victory. But then Zeus went down to Tartarus and released the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed monsters. The Cyclopes awarded Zeus their weapons of thunder and lightning, and the Hecatoncheires pelted the Titans with boulders. And at last the Titans were defeated. Zeus imprisoned them in Tartarus, and he condemned the rebel Atlas to stand forever at the edge of the world and bear the heavens on his shoulders.
