'The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not
men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods? Yet even they
admit that Zeus bound his own father Cronus, because he wickedly devoured
his sons; and that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Uranus, for
a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when _I_ proceed against
_my_ father, people are angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of
talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.'

Here Socrates breaks in. He 'cannot away with these stories about the
gods,' and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which
he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his
father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can tell you
many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.' {48}

* * * * *

We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled the
early philosophers of Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to
respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet at the very outset
of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who mutilated and bound
their own parents. Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they
were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro. The problem
remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such
myths?

* * * * *

Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have
been given by scholars. Near the beginning of things, according to
Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to