Metis

"Wisdom, Skill, Craft." The Titan goddess of wisdom, advise and good counsel, and cunning and craftiness, is described as a daughter of Oceanus and Thetis. At the instigation of Zeus, she gave to Cronus a vomitive, whereupon he brought back his children whom he had devoured.1 She was the first love and wife of Zeus, from whom she had at first endeavored to withdraw by metamorphosing herself in various ways. She prophesied to him that she would give birth first to a girl and afterwards to a boy, to whom the rule of the world was destined by fate. For this reason Zeus devoured her, when she was pregnant with Athena, and afterwards he himself gave birth to a daughter, who issued from his head.2

Plato3 speaks of Porus as a son of Metis, and according to Hesiod, Zeus devoured Metis on the advice of Uranus and Gaea, who also revealed to him the destiny of his son.4

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References

Notes

  1. Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 2.1 ff.; Hesiod. Theogony, 471.
  2. Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 3.6; Hesiod. Theogony, 886.
  3. Symposium, p. 203, b.
  4. Comp. Welcker. Die Aeschylische Trilogie, p. 278.

Sources

  • Aken, Dr. A.R.A. van. (1961). Elseviers Mythologische Encyclopedie. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Bartelink, Dr. G.J.M. (1988). Prisma van de mythologie. Utrecht: Het Spectrum.
  • Lurker, Manfred. (2004). Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Demons. London: Routledge.