The personification of the Sky crowned with stars. According to Hesiod's Theogony, he is the son of Gaea. After she gave birth to High Mountains and Pontus, the sea, Gaea united with Uranus with whom she bore six Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, Cronus, six Titanides: Theia, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Phoebe (1), Tethys, Themis, three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes, Arges, and three Hecatoncheires: Cottus, Briareus, Gyges.
Uranus hated his children and he kept them locked in the depths of the Earth. In order to take a revenge against her husband, Gaea persuaded her son Cronus, the youngest Titan, to castrate his father. In return, she promised Cronus that he would rule the world. So, Gaea released Cronus and armed him with a sickle. When Uranus came to lie with Gaea that night, Cronus cut off his father's testicles and threw them into the sea. From the wound black blood dropped and the drops, seeping into the earth, fertilized Gaea and she gave birth to the Erinyes, the Giants, and to the ash-tree Nymphs, the Meliads. Uranus' discarded genitals broke into a white foam from which was born a young goddess, Aphrodite.
This act of mutilation is usually said to have taken place at Cape Drepanum in Achaea, which is supposed to have taken its name from Cronus' sickle (Greek drepanon = 'sickle'). Sometimes it is situated on the island Corcyra, the land of the Phaeacians. The island is said to be the sickle itself, which was thrown into the sea by Cronus, and the Phaeacians were born of the god's blood.
There are two prophecies attributed jointly to Uranus and Gaea. First, the prophecy which warned Cronus that he would be dethroned by one of his sons (see Cronus). Second, the prophecy which warned Zeus that he would be dethroned by the child he would have by Metis. It was in response to this prophecy that Zeus swallowed Metis when she was pregnant with Athena (see Zeus, Athena).