Metis- Greek GodDeity"First Wife of Zeus"

Cunning Over Force

Metis was an Oceanid, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys — one of three thousand sea-daughters born to the old gods of water. Her name means "cunning counsel," the intelligence that finds a way when strength cannot. When young Zeus moved against his father Kronos, who had swallowed five of his own children to prevent them from overthrowing him, he turned not to a warrior but to Metis. She prepared an emetic potion — Apollodorus says she mixed it and Zeus fed it to Kronos in a drink — and the old god vomited up the children he had swallowed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. With them came the stone Rhea had wrapped in swaddling clothes and given Kronos in place of Zeus. Craft, not force, freed the future Olympians.

The Swallowing

After the Titans' defeat, Metis became Zeus's first wife and conceived a child. But Gaia and Ouranos delivered a warning: Metis's daughter would match Zeus in wisdom and courage, and if she bore a second child — a son — he would overthrow Zeus as king of gods, just as Zeus had overthrown Kronos, and Kronos had overthrown Ouranos before him. Zeus acted with the same cunning his wife had taught him: he tricked Metis with persuasive words and swallowed her whole while she was still pregnant. In some accounts she shifted shape in a desperate attempt to escape, but Zeus consumed her regardless.

The daughter continued to grow inside him. When the time came, a terrible pain split Zeus's skull, and Hephaestus struck the god's head with a bronze axe. Athena sprang out fully grown and clad in armor, shouting a war cry that shook Olympus. Pindar says heaven and earth trembled at her birth.

Metis did not die. She remained inside Zeus, and Hesiod says he placed her there so she could counsel him on good and evil forever after. She never emerged. Her counsel never ceased.