Ouranos, better known as the Latinized version Uranus, was one of the very first gods to emerge from Chaos and forms part of the primordial group of gods alongside Gaia and Tartarus. He cruelly hid his children, leading one of his sons, Cronus, to castrate his father and usurp his role as ruler of the heavens, only to be overthrown by his own son, Zeus.
Uranus was the personification of the sky or heavens. While often considered equivalent to the Roman god Caelus, he seems to have been an independent primordial deity who became important in Mithraism.
Out of Chaos: How Uranus Became the Sovereign of the Sky
According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Uranus either emerged from Chaos shortly after Gaia or was born from Gaia, the personification of the Earth. He then mated with Gaia, and they had many children, starting with the 12 Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronos.
The pair also gave birth to the Cyclopes, often numbered three and called Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, and the Hecatoncheires, which means the “hundred-handed ones,” who are also often numbered as three: Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges.
The First Cosmic Tyrant and the Terrors of Tartarus
Ouranos emerged as the “first who ruled over the whole world” (Apollodorus 1.1.1). But he hated his children with Gaia for some reason, and so he sent them away to Tartarus. This upset Gaia, who created a sickle capable of hurting Ouranos and gave it to her children, urging them to punish him for his act.
Only the youngest of the Titans, Cronos, was willing to take on his father. So, with the help of his mother Gaia, he tricked his father into coming to her bedchamber. When Ouranos arrived, Cronos castrated him with the sickle.
The Castration of Uranus and the Separation of the World
This heinous act caused some of Ouranos’ blood to spatter on the earth, creating the Furies, Giants, and Meliae nymphs. Some of his seed also splashed in the ocean as white foam, and Aphrodite was born from this foam (though other stories about her birth survive).
When Ouranos was castrated, he no longer came down to cover Gaia each day, but stayed in the sky, conceived of by the ancient Greeks as a bronze dome held up by the titan Atlas.
The Three Generations of Greek Gods
With their father now castrated, the Titans were encouraged to band together and take control of the cosmos, with Cronos as their leader. Uranus swore that vengeance would come. He warned Cronos that his own sons would overthrow him, just as he had been overthrown.
Later, fearing his own children, Cronos swallowed the children he had with Rhea to prevent them from challenging him. Rhea went to Lyctus on Crete to give birth to Zeus and save him from Cronos, and with Zeus, they got Cronos to vomit up the other children, who overthrew him and took control of the cosmos as the Olympian gods.
Uranus’ Continuing Role in Greek Myth
While Uranos played no further role in recorded Greek mythology, he was nevertheless depicted on the Pergamon Altar, which shows scenes from the Gigantomachy, the war between the giants (other children of Cronos) and the Olympians. He is represented as bearded with wings, and fights against the giants with a sword.
There is no evidence that Ouranos received cultic worship in ancient Greece. He was one of the old gods, belonging to a previous generation of creation and power. For the Greeks at the time, Zeus and the Olympians were much more potent and present forces.
Caelus: Rome’s Complex Sky God
While the Romans called Ouranos by the name Uranus, which gives the planet its name, they also associated the primordial sky god with their own god Caelus. He was conceived of as the sky above and also the masculine creative force, which came together with Terra (earth and the equivalent of Gaia) to start creation. They were sometimes called pater et mater (father and mother).
According to Latin authors, Caelus was the son of Aether (air) and Dies (daylight), and the father of Mercury, often considered the Roman equivalent of Hermes, who was a son of Zeus. With the goddess Trivia, Caelus was also the father of Janus, a uniquely Roman god without a Greek counterpart who was the god of new beginnings and crossroads, as well as Saturn (a god of time) and Ops (fertility).
Caelus and the Cult of Mithras
The earliest evidence of Caelus in Roman art comes from the age of Augustus in connection with the cult of Mithras. There is also evidence that he was associated with Jupiter, often considered the equivalent of Zeus and also a sky god. One inscription records the divine title Optimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iuppiter.
It may be Caelus who is depicted in the cuirass of the statue of Augustus found at Prima Porta, at the very top above the four horses of the quadriga of the sun god. He is a mature, bearded man holding a cloak over his head so that it billows to form an arch in the sky.
In Mithraism, Caelus often appears in dedicatory inscriptions. He is sometimes depicted as an eagle bending over a sphere of heaven marked with symbols of the planets of the zodiac. He seems to be a form of the Zoroastrian god Ahura-Mazda, who is invoked in Latin as Caelus Aeternus Iuppiter.
Some Roman writers used Caelus as the concept to understand the Jewish monotheistic god. Juvenal identified the Jewish god with Caelus and said that the Jews worshipped numen Caelus. Florus suggested that the Temple of Jerusalem was home to Caelus.
Leave a Reply