Ouranos

The myth hesiodic of Ouranos

Ouranos is a paramount divinity personifying the Ciel. He is the son of Gaïa (the Ground) which she only generates, and the older brother of Ouréa, male personification of the Mountains, and Pontos, male personification of the Flood.

Linked with his own mother, it generates the Titans and Titanides, the Cyclops and the Hécatonchires, giants with the hundred arms. Ouranos fears and hates Hécatonchires although they are his/her children, and he imprisons them in the Tartar , leaving the Cyclops and the Titans in freedom. Gaïa then persuades his/her son Cronos to reverse his/her father. This one émascule Ouranos and, of the blood which spouts out, Gaïa generates another race of monsters, the Géants, the three avenger goddesses, the Érinyes, as well as the Méliades. As for the sliced genitals, they fall into the sea where they give rise to the goddess of the Love, Aphrodite.

Origins and posterity of Ouranos in the post-hesiodic traditions

The post-hesiodic traditions more readily give birth to Ouranos from only the Nyx (the Night) (which, according to the orphic tradition, the sceptre of the world would have voluntarily transmitted to him, that it held of her own father Phanès (various fragments orphic) or of Héméra (the Day) and of Éther (the celestial Light) (Hygin, Fables , préf.). In addition to the Titans, the Cyclops and the Hécatonchires, they recognize several other children, all to him born from Gaïa, among which three older Muses, three Moires or rural gods Pan and Aristée (various sources). Some also give birth to from Gaïa fertilized by the blood of Ouranos mutilated the god Silène, father of the Satyres (Nonnos, Dionysiaques), even the whole race of the people Phéacien (fragment of Alcman). Lastly, Cicéron, in (Natural of the gods) successively allots to the loves Ouranos and of Héméra, the goddess of the Jour, the birth of the celestial Aphrodite and a first Hermes older than the son of Zeus and Maia.

Ouranos and of the tradition evhemerist

An alternative, of origin evhemerist, makes of Ouranos the first king of the Atlantes and the inventor of the Astronomie, which explains why after its death, its subjects would have divinisé it as a god of the Sky and an ancestor of all the other gods (Bibliothèque of Diodore of Sicily, delivers III, 14). In this tradition, he is the husband of Titéia and the father of forty-five children, among whom the Titans Atlas, Cronos and Hypérion. Its two first-born is girls, Rhéa, also called Pandore and Basiléia (the Royal one), which inherits the throne telamon to dead of his/her father, marries Hypérion, generates with him Hélios and Séléné, but disappears from terrestrial surface after the assassination of her husband and of his/her son by the others Titans and commits suicide it of Séléné. Cronos and Atlas then divides the antique kingdom of Ouranos, the first establishing its capacity on Sicily, Italy and North Africa, of which it is driven out later by Dionysos (then regarded as the son of Am and Amalthée), the second on the areas located at the extreme-Occident of the known world (Spain, Morocco and Mauritania). It is only after " death; terrestre" of Dionysos and Am that the heritage telamon returned in its totality to Zeus, the son of Cronos and Rhéa. (Sources: Diodore of Sicily, historical Library, III and following).

Another legend, probably imported of Phénicie by Philon de Byblos and for which one knows no French translation, also makes to Ouranos a human monarch become god after the death of his father during a shooting party. Driven out capacity by its sons Cronos, Atlas and Dagon, it tries to go up on its throne by sending his daughters Rhéa, Dioné, Aphrodite-Astarté, Hora and the Durée to allure Cronos in order to kill it by treachery. Cronos thwarts the plot, marries Rhéa, done of the four other emissary, all charming, its concubines and ends up killing Ouranos at the conclusion of a combat, thirty-two years exactly after him to have concealed its sceptre. The spirit of Ouranos is dissipated in water of the river on the banks of which Cronos had cut down it, and its old subjects carry it at once to the row of the gods. Years later, at the end of a new armed conflict, Cronos is relieved by his/her son Zeus, while the Western empire of Atlas, namely the Iberian peninsula and North of Africa, returns by heritage to Hadès then, after death without direct heir to this last, with its nephew Hermes. (Source: Eusèbe, quoting Philon de Byblos, Prep. Ev., I, IV).

Worship

Ouranos does not have almost any role in the myths, except those with character theogonic or evhemerist, and the Greeks did not return any worship to him, contrary to his wife and mother Gaïa.

Assimilation

It is called Uranus or Coelus at the Romains.

Sources

(I, 1).
(v. 126-193).
Ouranos, wire and " héritier" night: Texts and fragments orphic.
Ouranos, wire of Ether and the Day: Hygin, Fabulae, foreword.

Simple: Uranos

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