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51 an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders." "And Cronos hated his lusty sire," Hesiod wrote; but "Uranus rejoiced in his evil doing." It was then that Gaea "shaped a great sickle and told her plan to her dear sons," whereby their "sinful father" would be punished for his "vile outrages": to cut off the genitals of Uranus and put an end to his sexual drives. But "fear seized them all"; and only "great Cronos, the wily, took courage." And so it was that Gaea gave Cronos the sickle she had made of gray Hint and hid him "in an ambush" in her quarters, which were by the Mediterranean Sea. And Uranus came at nighttime, longing for love; and he lay about Gaea, spreading himself upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand to grasp; and in his right hand he held the great long sickle with jagged teeth. Swiftly, he cut off his own father's genitals, and cast them away, to fall behind him. . . into the surging sea. The deed was done, but the castration of Uranus did not com- pletely terminate his line of offspring. As his blood gushed forth, some of the blood drops impregnated Gaea, and she conceived and bore "the strong Erinyes" (female Furies of vengeance) "and the great Gigantes with gleaming armor, holding long spears in their hands; and the Nymphs whom they call Meliae ['the Nymphs of the ash tree']." Of the castrated genitals, leaving a trail of foam as the surging sea carried them to the island of Cyprus, "there came forth an awful and lovely goddess . . . gods and men call her Aphrodite ['She of the Foam']." The incapacitated Uranus called out to the monster-gods for ven- geance. His own children, he cried out, had become Titans, Strain- ers who had "strained and did presumptuously the dreadful deed"; now the other gods had to make sure "that vengeance for it would afterwards come." The frightened Cronos then imprisoned the Cy- clopes and the other monstrous giants far away, so that none would answer the call of Uranus. All along, while Uranus was busy bringing forth his own off- spring, the other gods were also proliferating; their children bore The Missiles of Zeus and India