Uranus (mythology) three one-hundred-handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes. Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods." From the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes (the avenging Furies), the Meliae (the
Uranus (mythology) Classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic. The most probable etymology traces the name to a Proto-Greek form *"worsanós" (Ϝορσανός) enlarged from *"ṷorsó-" (also found in Greek "ouréō" 'to urinate', Sanskrit "varṣá" 'rain', Hittite "ṷarša-" 'fog, mist'). The basic Indo-European root is "*ṷérs-" 'to rain, moisten' (also found in Greek "eérsē" 'dew', Sanskrit "várṣati" 'to rain', Avestan aiβi."varəšta" 'it rained on'), making Ouranos the 'rainmaker'. A less likely etymology is a derivative with meaning 'the one