Read Online Percy Jackson's Greek Gods by Rick Riordan, John Rocco - Free Book Online

kneel.
    “Ah, my dear uncles!” Zeus chuckled. “Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetus—you four are going straight to Tartarus, where you will remain for all time!”
    The four brothers hung their heads in shame, but General Atlas laughed at his captors.
    “Puny gods!” he bellowed. Even wrapped in chains, he was intimidating. “You know nothing of how the universe works. If you throw these four into Tartarus, the entire sky will fall! Only their presence at the four corners of the earth keeps the wide expanse of Ouranos from crashing down upon us.”
    “Maybe.” Zeus grinned. “But fortunately, Atlas, I have a solution! You’re always boasting how strong you are. From now on, you’re going to hold the sky up all by yourself!”
    “What?”
    “Brontes, Arges, Steropes,” Zeus called. “He’s all yours.”
    The Elder Cyclopes dragged Atlas to a distant mountaintop where the sky was very close. I don’t know how they did it, but they caused the sky to form a new central support pillar—a single funnel cloud, like the bottom point of a spinning top. They chained Atlas to the mountain and forced the entire weight of the sky onto his shoulders.



Now you’re thinking, Why didn’t he just refuse to hold it, and let the sky fall?
    I did mention the chains, right? He couldn’t run away without getting flattened. Also, it’s hard to appreciate unless you’ve done it (which I have), but holding the sky is kind of like being stuck under a loaded barbell during a bench press. All your concentration goes into keeping that thing from crushing you. You can’t lift it, because it’s too heavy. You can’t release it, because it will squash you as it drops. All you can do is hold it in place, sweating and straining and whimpering “Help!” hoping somebody will walk through the gym, notice you being slowly pressed into a pancake, and lift the weight off you. But what if no one does? Imagine being stuck in that situation for eternity.
    That was Atlas’s punishment. All the other Titans who fought in the war got off easy. They were pitched headfirst into Tartarus.
    Which leaves us with the million-drachma question: What happened to Kronos?
    There are a lot of different stories. Most agree that the Crooked One was dug out of the rubble and brought before Zeus. Most say he was bound in chains like the other Titans and tossed into Tartarus.
    According to some later traditions—and I kind of like this version—Zeus took his father’s scythe and sliced him up the way Kronos had sliced up Ouranos. Kronos was thrown into Tartarus in teeny-tiny pieces. Supposedly, that’s where we get the idea of Father Time with his scythe, being deposed every January first by Baby New Year—though it’s difficult to imagine Zeus in a diaper and a party hat.
    Some versions claim that Zeus released Kronos from Tartarus many years later—either to live out his retirement in Italy, or to rule the Isles of the Blest in Elysium. Personally, I don’t buy that. It doesn’t make sense if you believe that Kronos was chopped to bits. And if you know Zeus, you know he’s not exactly the forgive-and-forget type.
    Anyway, Kronos was done. The age of the Titans was over.
    The Titans who didn’t fight against the gods were allowed to stick around. Some, like Helios and Selene, kept their jobs. Some even intermarried with the gods.
    Zeus named himself the new king of the cosmos, but he was smarter than Kronos. He sat down with his brothers and said, “Look, I want to be fair about this. How about we throw dice for control of different parts of the world? Highest roll gets first choice.”
    Hades frowned. “I have rotten luck. What parts are we talking about?”
    “The sky, the sea, and the Underworld,” Zeus offered.
    “You mean Tartarus?” Poseidon asked. “Gross!”
    “I mean the upper Underworld,” Zeus said. “You know, the nice part nearer to the surface. That’s not so bad—big caves, lots of jewels, riverside real estate on the