Ara .::. Mane Scruffy

Arae
Translation: The Altar
Ara belongs to the Hercules family of constellations.

There are several myths associated with the constellation. In one of them, Ara represents the altar on which Zeus and other gods vowed to defeat the Titans and overthrow Cronus, who ruled the universe. Cronus was one of the 12 Titans who had deposed his father Uranus, the previous ruler.

When a prophecy said that the same fate would befall Cronus and he would be defeated by one of his own children, to prevent it from happening, he swallowed all his children – Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon – all of them future gods and goddesses. When the youngest child, Zeus, was born, his mother Rhea hid him in Crete and gave Cronus a stone to swallow, telling him the stone was Zeus.

When Zeus grew up, he made Cronus vomit his brothers and sisters. Once freed, they swore to overthrow Cronus and the Titans. The war between the gods and the Titans lasted a decade and the gods won in the end. Zeus became the god of the sky, ruling from Olympus, Poseidon became the god of the sea, and Hades the ruler of the underworld. Zeus placed the altar among the stars to commemorate the gods’ victory.

In another story, Ara represents the altar of Lycaon, the king of Arcadia who decided to test Zeus by serving him a meal of a dismembered child, and later tried to kill the god while he slept. Zeus, enraged, transformed Lycaon into a wolf and killed his 50 sons with lightning bolts. In one version of the tale, the sacrificed child was Arcas, the son of Zeus and Lycaon’s daughter Callisto.

aureyna x Boombah
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