Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/41

Rh stand for ever at the extreme west, and to bear upon his shoulders the solid vault of heaven.

Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at their head placed in possession of power. They were not, however, yet quite secure; for Gæa, intermarrying with Tartarus, gave birth to a new and still more formidable monster called Typhôeus, of such tremendous properties and promise, that, had he been allowed to grow into full development, nothing could have prevented him from vanquishing all rivals and becoming supreme. But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at once with a thunderbolt from Olympus, and burnt him up: he was cast along with the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to question the sovereignty of the Kronids.

With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of beings. Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês agree upon the distribution before noticed, of functions and localities: Zeus retaining the Æthêr and the atmosphere, together with the general presiding function; Poseidôn obtaining the sea, and administering subterranean forces generally; and Hadês ruling the under-world or region in which the half-animated shadows of departed men reside. It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his sisters, and his and their divine progeny, we find the present Gods; that is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks recognized and worshipped. The wives of Zeus were numerous as well as his offspring. First he married Mêtis, the wisest and most sagacious of the goddesses; but Gæa and Uranos forewarned him that if he permitted himself to have children by her, they would be stronger than himself and dethrone him. Accordingly when Mêtis was on the point of being