Hidden in a Cretan cave while his father was fed a stone in swaddling clothes
Rhea saved her youngest from Cronus, who had swallowed the others; he was nursed by the goat Amaltheia and guarded by the noisy Curetes.
Myth · Greek
Zeus
Greek mythology — king of the Olympians, god of sky and thunder
Zeus is the sky-father and king of the Greek gods, ruling from Mount Olympus with the thunderbolt forged for him by the Cyclopes. Youngest son of Cronus and Rhea, he was hidden in Crete, freed his swallowed siblings and led the ten-year war against the Titans, after which he and his brothers drew lots for the cosmos and he took the sky. He is the guarantor of oaths, hospitality and the order of things, and the father, by goddesses and mortal women alike, of a large part of Greek myth.
How to spot them
- ▸Thunderbolt, eagle, oak tree and aegis; epithets Xenios (of guests), Horkios (of oaths) and Nephelegereta (cloud-gatherer)
- ▸Youngest child of Cronus and Rhea; brother and husband of Hera
- ▸The oracle of the rustling oaks at Dodona; the chryselephantine statue at Olympia by Phidias
- ▸Serial shape-shifter in pursuit of mortals: swan, bull, shower of gold, eagle
- ▸Drew the sky when three brothers divided the cosmos by lot
Stories & episodes
Freed the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers to win a ten-year war against the Titans
The Cyclopes repaid him with the thunderbolt; the defeated Titans were cast into Tartarus.
Came to Danaë as a shower of gold in her bronze underground chamber
The son of that union was Perseus.
Carried a Phoenician princess to Crete on his back in the shape of a white bull
Europa bore Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon, and gave her name to a continent.
Took the form of a swan to father Helen and the Dioscuri
Leda's children hatched from an egg in the usual telling.
Appeared to Semele in his full divine splendour and burned her to ashes
Hera tricked her into asking to see him unveiled; the unborn Dionysus was sewn into his father's thigh.
Punished the theft of fire by chaining a Titan to a crag in the Caucasus
An eagle ate Prometheus' liver daily until Heracles shot it.
Loosed a flood that left only Deucalion and Pyrrha alive
The Greek deluge, told at length in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Key ideas
- As Xenios he protects guests and strangers and as Horkios he punishes broken oaths — the nearest thing Greek religion has to a moral guarantor
- The division of the cosmos by lot into sky, sea and underworld makes him first among equals rather than an all-powerful creator; even he defers to Moira, fate
Quick-fire facts
- •Roman equivalent: Jupiter (also Jove); Greek Zeus and Latin Iuppiter both descend from the Proto-Indo-European sky-father, Dyeus
- •Parents Cronus and Rhea; siblings Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon; married to his sister Hera
- •His birth, the Titanomachy and the swallowing of Metis are told in Hesiod's Theogony
- •He presides over the divine assemblies of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, which opens with his speech on mortal folly
- •His temple at Olympia held Phidias' seated ivory-and-gold statue, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- •His oldest oracle was at Dodona in Epirus, where priests read the rustling of sacred oak leaves
- •The Olympic Games and the Nemean Games were held in his honour
- •His desert shrine at Siwa in Libya, as Zeus-Ammon, was visited by Alexander the Great
- •Jupiter, the largest planet, is named for his Roman counterpart, and its four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — for his lovers
- •The horn of the goat Amaltheia became the cornucopia, the horn of plenty
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Zeus Cult titles, attributes and the ancient sources for each episode
- Hesiod — Theogony The birth of Zeus, the Titanomachy and the succession myth