Greek Mythology

 I've started a book on the Greek Gods because I am really interested in Greek Mythology and it was free. I've read about Zeus so far. The story goes that Cronos, the god of time and father of all gods, married his sister. He became the leader of the world by killing his father with a scythe, not before being told that one of his sons would better him and kill him too. So he was very careful so not to have one of his children better him. Once they were born he would immediately swallow them. One by one he ate all of his children until his wife became mad. The next child she had she took him to a cave to keep for a little while, put him in a golden cradle hanging by a tree, named him Zeus, went back to Mt. Olympus, took a rock, and covered it in sheets to look like a baby. Cronos, being careful as always, swallowed the rock. When this was done his wife went back to Zeus and gave him to a family that raised sheep and promised them their sheep would not be attacked by wolves. After Zeus grew up he was visited by his mother and was told about what had happened when he was a baby. With this knowledge they both planned on poisoning Cronos's drink making him throw up all the gods and a stone. Due to anger, Cronos released giant creatures as tall as trees from a prison called Titans and made them attack Zeus and the other gods. Of course, they weren't going down without a fight so the gods came together and fought the giant Titans. Eventually winning the fight, Zeus kills Cronos using the very scythe Cronos used against his father.

 At the end of every story there is a sentence that ties the story back to reality and uses the story to explain things from the real world. In the story about Zeus it says that maybe this story is the reason we see, on New Years, an old man with a scythe representing the old and a baby representing the new. The old person would be Cronos and the baby would be Zeus. Zeus ended up becoming the new leader of the gods, thus being the new. Out with the old (Cronos) in with the new (Zeus). Although in my opinion the new was probably not the best choice. Zeus did tend to cause troubles.