Sky was the first who ruled over the whole world. According to Hesiod ( Hes. Th. 126ff. ), Sky (Uranus) was a son of Earth (Gaia), but afterwards lay with his own mother and had by her Cronus, the giants, the Cyclopes, and so forth. As to the marriage of Sky and Earth, see the fragment of Eur. Chrys., quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Bekker p. 751 (Nauck TGF(2), p. 633, Leipsig, 1889) ; Lucretius i.250ff. , ii.991ff. ; Verg. G. 2.325ff. The myth of such a marriage is widespread among the lower races. See E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London, 1873), i.321ff., ii.370ff. For example, the Ewe people of Togo-land, in West Africa, think that the Earth is the wife of the Sky, and that their marriage takes place in the rainy season, when the rain causes the seeds to sprout and bear fruit. These fruits they regard as the children of Mother Earth, who in their opinion is the mother also of men and of gods, see J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 464, 548 . In the regions of the Senegal and the Niger it is believed that the Sky-god and the Earth-goddess are the parents of the principal spirits who dispense life and death, weal and woe, among mankind. See Maurice Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Paris, 1912), iii.173ff. Similarly the Manggerai, a people of West Flores, in the Indian Archipelago, personify Sky and Earth as husband and wife; the consummation of their marriage is manifested in the rain, which fertilizes Mother Earth, so that she gives birth to her children, the produce of the fields and the fruits of the trees. The sky is called langīt ; it is the male power: the earth is called alang ; it is the female power. Together they form a divine couple, called Moerī Kraèng . See H. B. Stapel, “Het Manggeraische Volk (West Flores),” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Landen Volkenkunde , lvi. (Batavia and the Hague, 1914), p. 163 . And having wedded Earth, he begat first the Hundred-handed, as they are named: Briareus, Gyes, Cottus, who were unsurpassed in size and might, each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads. Compare Hes. Th. 147ff. Instead of Gyes, some MSS. of Hesiod read Gyges, and this form of the name is supported by the Scholiast on Plat. Laws 7, 795c . Compare Ovid, Fasti iv.593 ; Hor. Carm. 2.17.14 , iii.4.69 , with the commentators. After these, Earth bore him the Cyclopes, to wit, Arges , Steropes, Brontes, Compare Hes. Th. 139ff. of whom each had one eye on his forehead. But them Sky bound and cast into Tartarus, a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky. Compare Hes. Th. 617ff. and for the description of Tartarus, Hes. Th. 717ff. According to Hesiod, a brazen anvil would take nine days and nights to fall from heaven to earth, and nine days and nights to fall from earth to Tartarus. And again he begat children by Earth, to wit, the Titans as they are named: Ocean, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, and, youngest of all, Cronus; also daughters, the Titanides as they are called: Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, Thia. Compare Hes. Th. 132ff. who agrees in describing Cronus as the youngest of the brood. As Zeus, who succeeded his father Cronus on the heavenly throne, was likewise the youngest of his family ( Hes. Th. 453ff. ), we may conjecture that among the ancient Greeks or their ancestors inheritance was at one time regulated by the custom of ultimogeniture or the succession of the youngest, as to which see Folk-Lore in the Old Testament , i.429ff. In the secluded highlands of Arcadia , where ancient customs and traditions lingered long, King Lycaon is said to have been succeeded by his youngest son. See Apollod. 3.8.1 . But Earth, grieved at the destruction of her children, who had been cast into Tartarus, persuaded the Titans to attack their father and gave Cronus an adamantine sickle. And they, all but Ocean, attacked him, and Cronus cut off his father's genitals and threw them into the sea; and from the drops of the flowing blood were born Furies, to wit, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. Compare Hes. Th. 156-190 . Here Apollodorus follows Hesiod, according to whom the Furies sprang, not from the genitals of Sky which were thrown into the sea, but from the drops of his blood which fell on Earth and impregnated her. The sickle with which Cronus did the deed is said to have been flung by him into the sea at Cape Drepanum in Achaia ( Paus. 7.23.4 ). The barbarous story of the mutilation of the divine father by his divine son shocked the moral sense of later ages. See Plat. Rep. 2, 377e-378a ; Plat. Euthyph. 5e-6a ; Cicero, De natura deorum ii.24.63ff. Andrew Lang interpreted the story with some probability as one of a worldwide class of myths intended to explain the separation of Earth and Sky. See Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884), pp. 45ff. , and as to myths of the forcible separation of Sky and Earth, see E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture , i.322ff. And, having dethroned their father, they brought up their brethren who had been hurled down to Tartarus, and committed the sovereignty to Cronus. But he again bound and shut them up in Tartarus, and wedded his sister Rhea; and since both Earth and Sky foretold him that he would be dethroned by his own son, he used to swallow his offspring at birth. His firstborn Hestia he swallowed, then Demeter and Hera, and after them Pluto and Poseidon. Compare Hes. Th. 453-467ff.