PART 6    Ch.XXXV.5

The Great Pelasgian empire

(The reign of Uranos - Oyranos, Munteanul)

 

PART 6

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XXXV. 5. The dethronement of Uranos.

 

According to what Greek and Phoenician traditions tell us, Uranos had been dethroned and chased off the empire by his youngest son, called Chronos by the Greeks and Saturnus by the Romans.

The causes of his ousting had been, as results from the theogony of Hesiodus, on the one hand the misunderstandings which existed between him and his wife Gaea or Terra, and on the other hand the hate which Uranos had for the Titans, his sons born of Gaea, whom he had thrown in subterranean prisons, so that the earth moaned because of their number. At Gaea’s instigations, writes Hesiodus, Saturn, the youngest of the Titans, suddenly attacks his father Uranos one night and severs his genitals with a curved sword of steel, wound because of which Uranos dies (Theog. v. 154 seqq).

 

We find the same tradition with the sacred writings of the Phoenician priests, attributed to Sanchoniaton. The priest Sanchoniaton had lived according to some, before the Trojan times, and had composed, based on Phoenician, Egyptian and other ancient sources, a history of the Phoenicians, written with great diligence and love for truth, which later, in the 2nd century ad was translated in Greek by Herennius Philo of Byblos (fragm. 2 in Phoenicum Historia in Fragm. Hist. gr. III. 567).

Sanchoniaton wrote the following about the dethronement of Uranos:

Uranos had a sister called Gaea, who he married, but he also had a large number of children with other women. Because of this, Gaea, in her jealousy, separated from Uranos after many misunderstandings, although he continued to receive her often in his house. When Uranos tried to kill the Titans though, or the sons born of Gaea, she asked for the help of the armed troupes which she had at her disposal, and placated all his attempts. But later, after Saturn had reached maturity, he decided to take revenge on his father for the injuries he had done his mother, and in this way, helped by his secretary Hermes Trismegistos (thrice great), started a war against Uranos. He chased him off the empire and occupied the seat of power. After some time Uranos, exiled from his empire, sent his daughters Astarte, Rhea and Dio to Saturn, in order to kill him by trickery and concealed means. Saturn conquered their hearts though through love and kindness, and married them.

Uranos had also invented a sort of stones which had spirit (lithoi emphichoi), called Baetulia, which he had fabricated with particular wisdom [1]; he started another war against Saturn, but in the 32nd year of his reign, Saturn caught his father Uranos in some Mediterranean place, where he had prepared some traps for him, and severed his genitals. With the blood running in springs and rivers, his spirit separated from the body. This place, Sanchoniaton tells us, had been later consecrated to Uranos.

 

[1. Pliny (XXXVII. 51) also mentions a type of stones of the class of the ceraunias or fulgurites, which were used for the breaking of fortresses and fleets (quae nigrae sint et rotundae, sacras esse, urbesque per illas expugnari et classes, easque betulos vocari). It seems though that the name baitulia of these stones “with spirit” (explosives) destined especially for wars, derived from an ancient Pelasgian word which had the same form as the Romanian “batalia” (TN – battle).

This term was very much used in the Middle Ages, in the Romanic countries. We find “batualia, quae vulgo battalia dicuntur” with Adamantius Martyrius (Diez, E. W. I. ed. 1853, p. 49)].

 

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