Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/34

 wrath of Mother Earth, who urged the Titans to revolt against their father and release their brothers from the Pit. But the Titans looked at the great Sky and were afraid, all except one huge giant named Saturn who picked up a keen-edged scythe and frightened his father into submission. Saturn then appropriated the throne and made Rhea his Queen, although he prudently swallowed all of the children that were born to him lest they in turn might take the throne. By the time Jupiter, her sixth child, was born, Saturn's wife was aroused to such a point of opposition that she concealed a stone in the infant's clothes and hid the 'mighty babe.' Jupiter, however, expressed himself so vigorously and so continuously that Rhea, in desperation, sent him away from Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, to an island named Crete, lying to the south of Greece. Here he was fed on honey, milk and ambrosia while his attendants danced and clattered and kept up a perpetual din. This concealment was quite necessary, for his uncles, the Titans, had now become a powerful race of giants and had decreed that not one of Saturn's heirs, but one of themselves would succeed to the throne. His nurses, by the way, and the goat with which he played, were afterwards placed in the sky as a reward for their kindness, the nurses, according to one legend, being accorded a position on the "V" of stars in the constellation of Taurus, while the goat was placed in the arms of the shepherd in Auriga.

When the Titans discovered that they had been deceived and that a child of Saturn's was among them, they rushed with furious war-cries upon Olympus. Hearing the commotion from the island of Crete, Jupiter rushed to the aid of his father, and so confident and strenuous was this powerful child, that the surprised Titans turned and fled. The young god then displayed an inherited trait and helped himself to his father's kingdom and the golden palace on the top of the mountain.