Uranus (god)

Uranus was the primordial god (protogenos) of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges descended to rest upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Uranus was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaea was the earth.

Uranus and Gaea had twelve sons and six daughters. He locked the eldest of these--the giant Cyclopes and Hecatonchires--away inside the belly of Earth. Gaia suffered immense pain and persuaded her Titan sons to rebel. Four of these positioned themselves at the corners of the world, ready to grasp their father as he descended to lie with Earth, while the fifth, Chronos, took his place in the centre and there castrated Uranus with an adamantine sickle. The sky-god's blood fell upon the earth, producing the avenging Erinyes and the Gigantes (Giants). When Chronos flung the castrated genitals into the sea, Aphrodite was born.

Uranus prophesied the fall of the Titans and the punishments they would suffer for their crimes--a prophecy brought to fruition by Zeus who deposed the five brothers and cast them into the pit of Tartaros.