o 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
Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth. Just
as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus
and Gaea. As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the
various elements. Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the
sun--as among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were
the Wind and the Sea. The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth
was 'Cronus of crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.' Now
even as the children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were 'concealed
between the hollows of their parents' breasts,' so the Greek Heaven
used to 'hide his children from the light in the hollows of Earth.'
Both Earth and her children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the
children conspired against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their
counsels. Thereupon Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge
their wrongs.[34] Now fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who,
like Tutenganahau, was all for action. Cronus determined to end the
embraces of Heaven and Earth. But, while the Maori myth conceives of
Heaven and Earth as of two beings which have never been separated
before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously approach his wife from a
distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand, armed with a sickle of
iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus were Heaven and Earth
practically divorced. But as in the Maori myth one of the children of
Heaven clave to his sire, so, in Greek, Oceanus remained faithful to
his father.[35]

This is the first portion of the myth of Cronus. Can it be denied that
the story is well illustrated and explained by the New Zealand
parallel, the myth of the cruelty of Tutenganahau? By means of this
comparison, the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. Just as the
New Zealanders had conceived of Heaven and Earth as at one time
united, to the prejudice of their children, so the ancestors of the
Greeks had believed in an ancient union of Heaven and Earth. Both by
Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and Earth were thought