Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/658

642 how to classify the parties opposed in them: among other things, we are taught that it will not always do to take them according to their descent, since Prometheus, for example, though the son of a Titan, fights on the side of the gods; and we are further helped to distinguish the Olympic party into two groups, consisting respectively of the gods with Zeus at their head, and of the heroes who began their existence as mortals. Without attempting to pursue this question of classification further, I now wish to make some additional comparisons showing how some of the principal figures in the mythology of the Greeks and other Aryans had their counterparts in the theology of the ancient Celts. Treating Zeus as the central figure in the Hellenic pantheon, and assuming his identity with the Týr of the Norsemen and the Nuada of the Irish, let us turn our attention to Cronus, whom Zeus is represented as having superseded and expelled. Now Earth wishing to be rid of her husband Uranus or Sky, incited her sons the Titans to mutilate him, but they all hesitated except the youngest, who is characterized as, or Cronus of crooked counsel. He accordingly accepted a sharp sickle from his mother and perpetrated the deed. His father Sky then cursed Cronus to suffer in his turn at the hands of his own offspring, wherefore Cronus took the strange precaution of devouring them as fast as they were born; but his wife Rhea succeeded in concealing one of them from his voracity. This was Zeus, and as soon as he grew to maturity he declared war on the Titans: proving victorious, he thrust Cronus and the other Titans into Tartarus, according to one account. Another, however, makes the dispossessed Cronus go to the Isles of the