(IT)
«A quello poi, avvolta di fasce, una grande pietra essa dette,/ al figlio d'Urano grande signore, degli dèi primo re»
(Esiodo, Teogonia, 485-6; traduzione di Graziano Arrighetti)
Mitologia
I
suoi primi cinque figli furono divorati da Crono (suo marito e loro
padre), che agì in quel modo perché temeva la profezia secondo cui
sarebbe stato detronizzato e vinto da uno di loro e Rea, per salvare
l'ultimo dei suoi figli, chiese aiuto ai propri genitori (Urano e Gea) che per salvare l'ultimo della sua prole la mandarono sull'isola di Creta. Qui si rifugiò nella grotta di Psychro, sul Monte Ditte, ove partorì.
Dopo il parto lei ingannò Crono che, raggiuntala sull'isola per mangiare
anche Zeus, ricevette da Rea una pietra avvolta in fasce anziché il
bambino, pietra che lui mangiò cadendo nell'inganno.
Culto
Il giovane re asiatico Adrasto, che combatté quale alleato di Priamo nella guerra di Troia, aveva una particolare devozione per questa dea.
Nella mitologia romana, Rea fu identificata con Opi e venne definita Magna Mater deorum Idaea.
Rea, raffigurata spesso su un carro tirato da due leoni, presenta una forte associazione con Cibele.
Rhéa présentant une pierre emmaillotée à Cronos dessin du bas-relief d'un autel romain Galerie mythologique, tome 1 d'A.L. Millin 1811
Rhea (/ˈriːə/; Ancient Greek: Ῥέα [r̥é.aː]) is a character in Greek mythology, the Titaness daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus as well as sister and wife to Cronus. In early traditions, she is known as "the mother of gods" and therefore is strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, who have similar functions. The classical Greeks saw her as the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses, but not as an Olympian goddess in her own right. The Romans identified her with Magna Mater (their form of Cybele), and the Goddess Ops.
Etymology
Most ancient etymologists derived Rhea (Ῥέα) by metathesis from ἔρα "ground" although a tradition embodied in Plato and in Chrysippus connected the word with ῥέω (rheo), "flow", "discharge", which is what LSJ supports. Alternatively, the name Rhea may be connected with words for the pomegranate, ῥόα, later ῥοιά.
The name Rhea may ultimately derive from a pre-Greek or Minoan source. Graves suggested that Rhea's name is probably a variant of Era, 'earth'.
Family
According to Hesiod, Cronus sired six children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus in that order. The philosopher Plato recounts that Rhea, Cronus and Phorcys were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys.
Mythology
Gaia and Uranus
told Cronus that just as he had overthrown his own father, he was
destined to be overcome by his own child; so as each of his children was
born, Cronus swallowed them. Rhea, Uranus and Gaia devised a plan to
save the last of them, Zeus. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a cavern on the
island of Crete, and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed; Rhea hid her infant son Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida. Her attendants, the warrior-like Kouretes and Dactyls, acted as a bodyguard for the infant Zeus, helping to conceal his whereabouts from his father.
In some accounts, by the will of Rhea a golden dog guarded a goat
which offered her udder and gave nourishment to the infant Zeus. Later
on, Zeus changed the goat into an immortal among the stars while the
golden dog that guarded the sacred spot in Crete was stolen by Pandareus.
Cult
Rhea had "no strong local cult or identifiable activity under her control". She was originally worshiped on the island of Crete,
identified in mythology as the site of Zeus's infancy and upbringing.
Her cults employed rhythmic, raucous chants and dances, accompanied by
the tympanon
(a wide, handheld drum), to provoke a religious ecstasy. Her priests
impersonated her mythical attendants, the Curetes and Dactyls, with a
clashing of bronze shields and cymbals.
The tympanon's use in Rhea's rites may have been the source for its use in Cybele's
– in historical times, the resemblances between the two goddesses were
so marked that some Greeks regarded Cybele as their own Rhea, who had
deserted her original home on Mount Ida in Crete and fled to Mount Ida
in the wilds of Phrygia to escape Cronus. A reverse view was expressed by Virgil,
and it is probably true that cultural contacts with the mainland
brought Cybele to Crete, where she was transformed into Rhea or
identified with an existing local goddess and her rites.
Rhea was often referred to in ancient times by the title Meter Theon
(Mother of the Gods) and there where several temples around Ancient
Greece dedicated to her under that name. Pausanias mentioned temples
dedicated to Rhea under the name Meter Theon in Anagyros in Attika, Megalopolis in Arkadia, on the Acropolis of Ancient Corinth, and in the district of Keramaikos in Athens, where the statue was made by Pheidias. In Sparta there was further more a sanctuary to the Meter Megale (Great Mother). Olympia had both an altar as well as a temple to the Meter Theon:
"A temple of no great size [at Olympia] in the Doric style
they have called down to the present day Metroion (Temple of the
Mother), keeping its ancient name. No image lies in it of the Meter
Theon (Mother of the Gods), but there stand in it statues of Roman
emperors."
Her temple in Akriai, Lakedaimon was said to be her oldest sanctuary in Peloponessos:
"Well worth seeing here [at Akriai, Lakedaimon] are a temple
and marble image of the Meter Theon (Mother of the Gods). The people of
Akriai say that this is the oldest sanctuary of this goddess in the
Peloponessos."
Statues of her were also standing in the sanctuaries of other gods
and in other places, such as a statue of Parian marble by Damophon in
Messene.
The scene in which Rhea gave Chronos a stone in the place of Zeus after
his birth was assigned to have taken place on Petrakhos Mountain in
Arcadia as well as on Mount Thaumasios in Arcadia, both of which were holy places:
"Mount Thaumasios (Wonderful) lies beyond the river Maloitas
[in Arkadia], and the Methydrians hold that when Rhea was pregnant with
Zeus, she came to this mountain and enlisted as her allies, in case
Kronos should attack her, Hopladamos and his few Gigantes. They allow
that she gave birth to her son on some part of Mount Lykaios, but they
claim that here Kronos was deceived, and here took place the
substitution of a stone for the child that is spoken of in the Greek
legend. On the summit of the mountain is Rhea's Cave, into which no
human beings may enter save only the women who are sacred to the
goddess."
The center of the worship of Rhea was however on Crete, where the Ida
Mountain was said to be the place of the birth of Zeus. Reportedly,
there was a "House of Rhea" in Knossos:
"The Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knosos [in
Krete], at the place where even to this day men point out foundations of
a house of Rhea and a cypress grove which has been consecrated to her
from ancient times."
Upon the Ida Mountain, there was a cave sacred to Rhea:
"In Crete there is said to be a sacred cave full of bees. In
it, as storytellers say, Rhea gave birth to Zeus; it is a sacred place
and no one is to go near it, whether god or mortal. At the appointed
time each year a great blaze is seen to come out of the cave. Their
story goes on to say that this happens whenever the blood from the birth
of Zeus begins to boil up. The sacred bees that were the nurses of Zeus
occupy this cave."
Iconography
Rhea only appears in Greek art from the fourth century BC, when her iconography draws on that of Cybele; the two therefore, often are indistinguishable; both can be shown on a throne flanked by lions, riding a lion, or on a chariot drawn by two lions. In Roman religion, her counterpart Cybele was Magna Mater deorum Idaea, who was brought to Rome and was identified in Roman mythology as an ancestral Trojan deity. On a functional level, Rhea was thought equivalent to Roman Ops or Opis.
Depiction in ancient literature
In Homer, Rhea is the mother of the gods, although not a universal mother like Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother, with whom she was later identified.
In the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes,
the fusion of Rhea and Phrygian Cybele is completed. "Upon the Mother
depend the winds, the ocean, the whole earth beneath the snowy seat of
Olympus; whenever she leaves the mountains and climbs to the great vault
of heaven, Zeus himself, the son of Cronus, makes way, and all the other immortal gods likewise make way for the dread goddess," the seer Mopsus tells Jason in Argonautica; Jason climbed to the sanctuary high on Mount Dindymon to offer sacrifice and libations to placate the goddess, so that the Argonauts might continue on their way. For her temenos they wrought an image of the goddess, a xoanon, from a vine-stump. There "they called upon the mother of Dindymon, mistress of all, the dweller in Phrygia, and with her Titias and Kyllenos who alone of the many Cretan Daktyls of Ida
are called 'guiders of destiny' and 'those who sit beside the Idaean
Mother'." They leapt and danced in their armour: "For this reason the
Phrygians still worship Rhea with tambourines and drums".
Descendants
Descendants of Cronus and Rhea
Uranus' genitals
Cronus
RHEA
Zeus
Hera
Poseidon
Hades
Demeter
Hestia
a
b
Ares
Hephaestus
Metis
Athena
Leto
Apollo
Artemis
Maia
Hermes
Semele
Dionysus
Dione
a
Aphrodite
Modern namesakes
The name of the bird species Rhea is derived from the goddess name Rhea.
Rhea, the second largest moon of the planet Saturn is named after her.
Rhea or Cybele, drawing of a marble relief (1888)
Rhea rides on a lion, Pergamon Altar, Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Claus Ableiter - Own work
Pergamonnmuseum Berlin, Pergamonaltar, Gigantomachie, Rhea reitet auf einem Löwen, Rhea rides on a lion, Andrasteia (?)
Rhea is the partner of Cronus and the mother of Zeus. Along with Cronus she was the offspring of Gaea the earth and Uranus the heavens and they were Titans of the Earth.
This
giant mosaic reveals Saturn's icy moon Rhea in her full, crater-scarred
glory.
This view consists of 21 clear-filter images and is centered at 0.4
degrees south latitude, 171 degrees west longitude.
The giant impact basin Tirawa is seen above and to the right of center.
Tirawa, and the even larger basin Mamaldi to its southwest, are both
covered in impact craters, indicating they are quite ancient.
The bright, approximately 40-kilometer-wide (25-mile) ray crater seen in
many Cassini views of Rhea is located on the right side of this mosaic
(at 12 degrees south latitude, 111 degrees west longitude). See PIA07764
for a close-up view of the eastern portion of the bright, ray crater.
There are few signs of tectonic activity in this view. However, the
wispy streaks on Rhea that were seen at lower resolution by NASA's
Voyager and Cassini spacecraft, were beyond the western (left) limb from
this perspective. In high-resolution Cassini flyby images of Dione,
similar features were identified as fractures caused by extensive
tectonism.
Rhea is Saturn's second-largest moon, at 1,528 kilometers (949 miles)
across.
The images in this mosaic were taken with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera during a close flyby on Nov. 26, 2005. The images
were acquired as Cassini approached the moon at distances ranging from
79,190 to 58,686 kilometers (49,206 to 36,466 miles) from Rhea and at a
Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of about 19 degrees. Image scale in
the mosaic is 354 meters (1,161 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were
designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center
is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The NASA image has been processed to enhance contrast and had black panels added to its borders.NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Rhea, stampa, dea, Surrealismo, Amanda Scott
Rhea: The Mother of Gods of the Olympus - Mythology Dictionary #13 ...
cronus & rhea
Goddess Rhea.
Rhea Prayer Beads: Titan Goddess of the Earth, Mother of the Greek Gods
Rhea - The Goddess of Nature by TylerBeetun
Rhea Titan by Damaximos
REA
rhea__queen_of_the_titans_by_ledemonderazgriz
Rhea
Rhea is the partner of Cronus and the mother of Zeus. Along with Cronus she was the offspring of Gaea the earth and Uranus the heavens and they were Titans of the Earth.
rhea_by_ysgraithe
Rhea Titan by Kota-King-1
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