Titans and the Golden Age of Man in Greek Mythology - First Generation
Coeus
Parents: Gaia and Uranus
Wife: Phoebe
Children: Leto, Asteria
Coeus is the Titan god of Intellect. He reigns over the art of learning, and guides those with inquisitive minds. In Greek mythology it is believed that he is the beginning of all knowledge.
Little is known about the Greek god Coeus and his original role in the mythology of the Titans. His name means 'query', or 'questioning.' His equivalent in Latin poetry (though he scarcely makes an appearance in Roman mythology) is Polus, who was the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve.
Of the six Titan brothers of the First Generation, Coeus was one of the four who conspired with Cronus in the ambush and castration of Uranus, their father.
Apparently, Coeus is best known as the father and grandfather of his more famous deities. From his union with his sister, Phoebe, came their children Leto, goddess of the oracles of the day, and Asteria, goddess of the oracles of the night. Phoebe is the goddess of the moon. Coeus and Phoebe are the grandparents of Apollo and Artemis, the Letoide twins fathered by Zeus.
Apollo is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities in Greek
and Roman mythology. He was the ideal of the beardless, athletic youth. Apollo is the god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; medicine, healing, and plague; music, poetry, and the arts. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshiped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Greco-Roman Neopaganism.Artemis, Apollo's twin sister, was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women. She was often depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her.
When the Titans were defeated by Zeus and the Olympians, Coeus, along with his brothers, was confined by Zeus in the Tartarean pit, which is a void beneath the foundations of Earth and Sea. Gaius Valerius Flaccus, who died around AD 90, was a Roman poet who flourished in the "Silver Age" under the emperors Vespasian and Titus. He wrote the Latin Argonautica in which he mentioned Coeus in the pit:
Coeus in the lowest pit (Tartarean) burst the adamantine bonds and trailing Jove�s (Zeus�) fettering chains invokes Saturnus (Kronos) and Tityus, and in his madness conceives a hope of scaling heaven, yet though he repass the rivers and the gloom the hound of the Furiai (Kerberos) and the sprawling Hydra�s crest repel him.
Zeus eventually released the Titans from the pit of suffering and gave them amnesty and pardons.
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Image Credits:
Artemis and Apollo Piercing Niobe�s Children with their Arrows
by Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825)
Wikipedia, Public Domain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Niobe_JacquesLouisDavid_1772_Dallas_Museum_of_Art.jpg
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