According to Hesiod, Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod named their first six sons and six daughters the Titans, the three one–hundred–handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one–eyed giants the Cyclopes.
Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within the Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint–bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea.
From the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes (the avenging Furies), the Meliae (the ash-tree nymphs), and (according to some) the Telchines. From the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite.
Ancient sources disagree on what happened to the sickle.
© Haydn Thompson 2021