Gaia

Gaia (also spelled as Gaia or Ge) is the Greek primordial goddess of the Earth. She is the first being to have sprung forth from the void of Chaos. Her current husband is the Primordiai Tartarus, whom she conceived the Giants, and her former husband is Uranus, whom she had the Titans. Her Roman counterpart is Terra or Tellus, meaning "earth" in Latin.

Birth and Marriage to Uranus
Gaia was the first of the Primordials to emerge from Chaos, born when some of its matter collected to form the Earth. She was initially alone in the universe, as described by Hesiod in his Theogony: "In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss. But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being, her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all". Soon after, Tartarus was born, Eros, Erebus, Nyx and Uranus. Later Gaia married her brother Uranus. By this time, Gaia gave birth to the rustic domains and the mountains (Ourea).

Eventually, Gaia and Uranus had three sets of children together, namely the Titans, the Elder Cyclopes, and the Hekatonkeries. Although Gaia loved all her children, Uranus became distant from their family and resented their children, particularly the two younger races, as they were hideously ugly. Despite Gaia's protests, Uranus seized the Elder Cyclopes and the Hekatonkeries, chained them and cast them to the depths of Tartarus.

Murder of Uranus
Wroth at her husband's actions, Gaia called forth her remaining (and then favorite) children, the Titans, and presented to them her newly forged sickle. She requested one of them to step forward and take the sickle so as to kill Uranus and free their brothers from Tartarus. All of the Titans were ambivalent at the prospect of killing their father even though they all hated him, but the youngest and most power-hungry - Cronus - agreed to the deed. He accepted the sickle from Gaia and convinced his mother to lure Uranus down to Earth into attending a romantic dinner, so that he and his brothers - with the exception of Oceanus - could ambush him.

When Uranus showed up to meet with Gaia, Crius, Coeus, Hyperion, and Iapetus all sprang from their hiding places and ambushed their father. While the four brothers held Uranus down, Cronus used the scythe to castrate Uranus, casting Uranus' severed genitals into the ocean. The blood from his genitals bore forth Venus, or Aphrodite from the sea. However, Uranus cursed Cronus and said that he would one day be overthrown by his own children, just as Cronus had done to him. His children laughed but this was later revealed to be true. Gaia then proclaimed Cronus as lord of the universe and after the Elder Cyclopes and the Hekatonkeries were released, she sank into a deep slumber for a millennia.

At some point, Gaia had an affair with Pontus. Their children include Nereus, Thaumas (the embodiment of the sea's dangerous aspects), Phorcys, Ceto, and the "Strong Goddess" Eurybia.

Saving Zeus
Shortly after Cronus became king, he got disgusted by the appearance of his younger siblings, the Elder Cyclopes and the Hekatonkeries, and imprisoned them in Tartarus again, without the sleeping Gaia noticing. When Cronus married his sister Rhea - Gaia's favorite daughter - and had five godly children with her, he promptly swallowed each of them whole upon birth, fearing that Uranus' prophecy of being usurped by his own children would come to pass. While pregnant with her sixth child, Rhea was advised by the sleeping Gaia to go to Crete and deliver the child there. She named her child Zeus, and after Gaia hid him away in a cave, she returned to Mount Othrys and gave her husband a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes to swallow instead. A group of warrior nymphs called the Kouretes appeared near the entrance to Zeus' cave and clashed their spears against their shields - the noise that they made drowned out the sound of Zeus' crying.

Later, when Zeus grew up, he disguised himself as a Titan and journeyed to Mount Othrys, where he was appointed Cronus' cupbearer. He eventually invited all of the Titans to a drinking contest and put a powerful knockout potion into all of the Titans' jars, except for Cronus' in which he put a potion that would make him vomit up all that he had consumed. Being immortal beings, Gaia's godly grandchildren had all grown up completely undigested in their father's stomach and after being freed they declared war on the Titans. This Titanomachy, as it is known, lasted for eleven years and although the Titans initially had the upper hand against the gods, the gods eventually became experienced and powerful fighters as well and managed to defeat the Titans, banishing them to Tartarus.

Gigantomachy and Typhon
Upon reawakening and discovering that the Olympians banished her Titan children to the Pit, Gaia consorted with Tartarus and gave birth to a new set of children: the Giants, each one born to oppose a specific god. When it came to the Gigantomachy, the Olympians received help from Heracles and Dionysus - demigod sons of Zeus - and the Giants were all defeated.

Gaia's final act of defiance against the gods was in the form of Typhon, or Typhoeus, her monstrous son whom she goaded into attacking Olympus. He rose to the upper world and unleashed a path of destruction on his way to Mount Olympus. The gods rode into battle to face the storm giant, but his ferocious appearance scared them into fleeing all the way to Egypt. Only Zeus remained behind, and after a long battle, he managed to defeat Typhon by imprisoning him under Mount Etna. Following the defeat of yet another child of hers, Gaia admitted defeat and went back to sleep.

Interactions in her Slumber
During the wedding of Zeus and Hera, Gaia gave them a magnificent apple tree with golden apples as a present. Hera had the tree taken far off to the west and planted in a beautiful orchard. The Queen of Olympus employed the Hesperides, daughters of Atlas, to guard the tree, but as the nymphs would occasionally pluck an apple from the tree themselves, she put the fierce one hundred headed dragon Ladon - one of Gaia's grandchildren - there as well. This orchard was later named the Garden of the Hesperides.

At some point, the sleeping Gaia gave birth to a type of Centaurs called the Cyprian Centaurs. They were the result of Zeus accidentally impregnating her during his failed attempt to seduce Aphrodite.

When the nymph Daphne reached a dead end from the lovestruck Apollo, she cried to Gaia for help. The primordial took pity on her and transformed her into a laurel tree just as Apollo threw his arms around her. Heartbroken by the transformation that meant he had irrevocably lost her, Apollo declared that he still would honor her, wearing a crown of her leaves, which would become a symbol of victory for all time.

After Apollo drove her son Orion insane with the urge to hunt every beast on earth due to being in love with his virgin sister Artemis in fear she would break her vows, the giant's claims drew the attention of the sleeping Gaia. The earth Primordiai summoned a Giant Scorpion to sting her son, its poison finally putting an end to his life.