Crius

• 1. Introduction

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  Crius, also spelled Krios or Kreios, was one of the Titans, the children of Uranus, the Sky, and Gaia, the Earth. In Greek his name is written Κρεῖος or Κριός, and the second form is also the ordinary Greek word for a ram. Yet the myths give him almost nothing to do. He has no famous deed, no memorable speech and no story that belongs to him alone. That raises a puzzle. Why does a figure this faint sit among the Titans at all? And what did the poets who recorded him actually want from him?

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• 2. The Ram Nobody Mentions

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  In the ancient Greek calendar, the new year began in spring, when the constellation Aries was the first to appear in the sky. Aries is the ram of the zodiac, so a Titan named for a ram might seem an obvious partner for it. Classical writers do not ordinarily make that link. The reason given is Crius's chthonic position, meaning his place down in the underworld, far from the heavens. His name and the sky's first constellation share a word, but the myths keep them apart. What the tradition does preserve about him is a family, set down by Hesiod.

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• 3. Fathers of Stars and Winds

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  According to Hesiod, Crius married Eurybia, a daughter of Gaia and of Pontus, the Sea. Together they had three sons: Astraios, Pallas and Perses. Astraios then joined with Eos, the Dawn, and their union brought forth Eosphoros, Hesperus and Astraea. It also produced the other stars and the winds. A Titan with no story of his own thus stands at the head of a line that fills the night sky and the air. Of the three brothers, it is Perses who matters most to the last part of this story.

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• 4. The Ten-Year War

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  The Titanomachy, the war between the Olympian gods and the Titans, lasted ten years. Crius was inexorably drawn into it, but the tradition assigns him no specific part to play. He is present on the losing side without any recorded moment of his own. When the Titans lost, he was banished along with the others to Tartarus, the lower level of Hades. His fall is the same as everyone else's, which is exactly why he is described as the least individualized of the Titans.

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• 5. Filling Out the Roster

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  The scholar M. L. West has proposed an explanation for why Crius is on the list at all. Hesiod, he suggests, started from a core group of Titans and then added more. Lists of Titans were extended so that their total would match the Twelve Olympians. West points to three additions drawn from the archaic tradition of Delphi: Coeus, Themis and Phoebe. Phoebe's name was one that Apollo took on with the oracle. Crius may be a further interpolation of the same kind. His interest for Hesiod lay in being the father of Perses and the grandfather of Hecate. West describes Hesiod as an "enthusiastic evangelist" for Hecate. On that reading, the faintest Titan earned his seat because of a granddaughter.

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