Adrasteia: the griffin who raised Zeus

Adrasteia was a nymph who served Gaia and, with her sisters, was given charge of the infant Zeus, to keep him hidden from his devouring father Cronos. For that service she paid dearly, cursed into the shape of a griffin and shut away within Mount Taygetos until the Spartans Kratos and Deimos loosed her chains.

Nurse of the infant Zeus#

Adrasteia was one of several nymphs in the service of Gaia. When Cronos, King of the Titans, devoured each of his children for fear of the prophecy that one would overthrow him, his wife Rhea could not bear to lose another. After her last child Zeus was born she had a seagull carry him away into Gaia's keeping, and tricked Cronos into swallowing the Omphalos Stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in his place.

With the child safe, Gaia set Adrasteia and her sisters to look after him and guard him from his father. Under their care Zeus grew strong, and in time he was old enough to make his own way in the world. After he departed, Adrasteia never saw him again, and often wondered what had become of him in the harsh lands beyond the mountain.

The curse of Cronos#

In time Cronos learned that Adrasteia and her sisters had hidden his son from him, and in fury he sought to punish them. The sisters fled before his wrath until they reached Mount Taygetos, and there, as the King of the Titans closed upon them, Adrasteia chose to give herself up so that the others might scatter like leaves in the wind and escape to parts unknown.

For her defiance Cronos did not grant her death. He cursed her instead, transforming her into a griffin, a creature so rare that only divine action could meld the lion with the eagle, and sealed her within the mountain to be her prison. Through the long years that followed she never learned what had become of her sisters, though she held to the hope that they would one day be reunited. Cut off from the world, she never knew of Zeus's rise nor of the Olympians who overthrew Cronos and the Titans.

Freed by Kratos and Deimos#

Long after, Kratos and his brother Deimos climbed Mount Taygetos in search of the missing Deimos and came upon a cave where Adrasteia lay bound in chains. To their astonishment the griffin spoke, asking whether her thrashing chains had harmed them, for she had been trying only to drive off a stymphalian bird that had taken to nesting at the summit. She revealed who she had been, telling them she had always been a protector of children, and Kratos struck away her bonds.

Adrasteia did not abandon them once freed. When the brothers later sought passage across the land she warned Kratos of a coming storm and bid him take shelter, and afterward she bore them to the Passage of Monuments in their search for Vasilis. As she left them she gave them her shackles, telling them to beat the iron against their shields whenever they had need of her, and she would come, save only directly into Sparta. When at last she recounted the whole of her tale to them, Kratos asked whether she wished to be restored to her former shape. She did not, answering that as a griffin she could do far more than she ever had before.