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( Rhea (mythology))
Rhea (ancient Greek ??a) was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in classical Greek mythology. She was known as "the mother of gods." In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great goddess and later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses, though never dwelling permanently among them on Mount Olympus. In Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, the fusion of Rhea and Phrygian Cybele is complete. "Upon the Mother depend the winds, the ocean, the whole earth beneath and the snowy seat of Olympus; whenever she leaves the mountains and climbs to the great vault of heaven, Zeus himself, the son of Kronos, 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 Rheia with tambourines and drums".[1] If Rhea is indeed Greek, most ancient etymologists derived '??a by metathesis from ??a "ground",[2] but a tradition embodied in Plato[3] connected the word with ?e??, "flow". Rhea was wife to Cronus and mother to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon, and Zeus. In art, Rhea is usually depicted seated in a throne flanked by lions or on a chariot drawn by two lions, and is not always distinguishable from Cybele. In Roman mythology, her counterpart Cybele was Magna Mater deorum Idaea and identified with Opis or Ops.
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