Featured Deity ZEUS (Zeus) King of the Gods Wielder of Thunder Preserver of Order

This web page is a complement to the section on pages 176-184 of your textbook. Please read that section either right before or right after the web page. Explore all the hyperlinks below, either as they come up or after you have finished reading the page through. Clicking on a link will open a new window on your computer's browser, so you won't lose contact with this page and you can continue reading while you wait for the new pages to load.

Roman Name: Jupiter Spouse: Hera (Roman: Juno) Sacred Regions: Dodona, Olympia, Nemea Sacred Plant: Oak Totem Bird: Eagle How to Identify Him: Look for a thunderbolt, an eagle, or a throne

For each deity profile I make up for this class, I will include the "How to Identify" category so you will find it easier to recognize the major Greek and Roman goddesses in ancient and modern art. Unfortunately, this is more difficult with Zeus than with any of the others--although you can usually tell it's Zeus, you can't always unless he's sitting on a throne, accompanied by an eagle, or carrying a thunderbolt as he is in the figure above. Sometimes, as on the coin and the vase painting pictured below, he wears a wreath that looks rather like a crown.

Zeus is called Jupiter in Roman mythology. You might also have heard him referred to as Jove, a version of the name Jupiter that stems from one of the Latin cases.

Ancient coin with Zeus and eagle on a Greek postage stamp

The king of the gods is generally portrayed as a mature, bearded man, but so are a number of his colleagues, and that can lead to confusion. As an example, the famous bronze god of Artemesion was found in 1926 in an old shipwreck at Point Artemesion, north of Athens, and because archaeologists have never recovered the item it held in its hand they can't agree whether it's supposed to be Zeus or his brother, the sea god Poseidon (who would hold a three-pronged trident rather than a thunderbolt). I've been told that at one time the National Archaeological Museum in Athens used to change the card in front of it every six months, allowing the god to be Zeus half the time and Poseidon the other half! (Note: the museum has restricted use of larger images in the page linked to in this paragraph, but the small "thumbnail" images are plenty sufficient to give you the idea.)

The picture to the left, a photograph of a vase painting from Attica (the area of Greece in which Athens is located, which produced the most sophisticated pottery during the classical period--especially the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.), shows Zeus sitting in judgment on his throne on Mount Olympus. As king of the gods, this was one of his most important roles. His daughter Athene, goddess of wisdom, stands on his left hand, and the goddess Themis, representing justice, hovers over his right shoulder. I'm not sure who the winged figure above his head represents, though I suspect Nike, goddess of victory. The woman seated at his feet takes a typical posture for a suppliant asking a favor. Achilles' mother, Thetis, takes a similar pose in Book I of Homer's Iliad when she needs to make a request on behalf of her son (note that this public-domain Victorian translation uses Roman rather than Greek names--including the "Jove" form--in the translation of a Greek text. This was not unusual in the 19th century).

Since Zeus is supposed to oversee the world and make sure the universe runs reasonably well, he is generally the god that people would appeal to when life seemed generally out of balance, in the hope that he would set things right again. As one might imagine, not everybody sees eye to eye on what "right" is. Thetis's request for Achilles, for instance, was made because she thought he had been wronged by King Agamemnon--but although he gains retribution for that wrong it is at the cost of a great many Greek warriors' lives and safety. In Sophocles' tragedy Antigone, the two main characters have diametrically opposed positions, yet each claims to be following the will of Zeus.

Zeus is also the protector of the city and of hospitality, or xenia. Because there were no hotels in ancient Greece, members of the aristocracy had a system worked out where the members of one family could stay at another's home and enjoy their protection. For that reason, the word xenos meant both "stranger" and "guest," and is sometimes translated as "guest-friend." The host was expected to provide guest-gifts and to feed and house his xenoi--and the descendents of his ancestors' xenoi, since these relationships were inherited--for as long as they were in town. Anyone who violated the law of xenia by mistreating a guest ran the risk of Zeus's wrath. Likewise anyone who broke an oath. In fact, Zeus had two epithets that referred to these functions: Zeus Xenios, as protector of hospitality, and Zeus Horkios, as protector of oaths, as well as the name Zeus Hikesios, which referred to his role as protector of suppliants.

In Greece today, "Hotel Xenia" is a popular name for tourist hotels.

Cornucopia

As you read in the Theogony, Zeus--and all his siblings--had a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with his father, so his mother sent him away to the island of Crete by his mother to be nursed by Amalthea, or Amaltheia, who was either a nymph or a goat--it depends on who's telling the story. To keep Cronus from finding (and eating) the baby, she suspended his cradle from a tree, thus preventing the infant Zeus from being found in heaven, on land, or in the sea. Some sources say that in her honor, Zeus later created the cornucopia and the constellation Capricorn.... but other contenders for that honor. For more information on the mythological and physical details about Capricorn, visit a guide to the constellations.

By the way, it's not just the ancients who named celestial objects after Greek mythological figures. One of the moons of the planet Jupiter--Zeus's Roman name--is named Amalthea. Another is named Metis, after the goddess that Zeus swallowed before giving birth to Athena (see page 4 of our textbook). Check out this page about Jupiter and its moons: fifty moons--plus some without names--is impressive! Since most of the named moons are traditionally given the names of Zeus's lovers, it's a good thing for the astronomers' sake that this deity's sexual appetites are notoriously prodigious. The moon named Leda appears as number 13 on the list. As described below, Leda was the mother of Helen of Troy and Castor and Pollux.

See also this Roman coin from the reign of Caesar Augustus, depicting Caesar on one side and Capricorn and the horn of plenty on the other. The myth continued from the Greeks on to the Romans. It would make sense that Caesar would want to be associated with the being from whom all good things flow, a cornucopia of generosity. Roman emperors were experts at using mythology to further their political purposes.

One tale that is usually consistent is the story of the aegis (see pages 192-193 in Harris and Platzner for a description of the aegis and photos of Zeus's daughter Athene wearing the thing), which is supposed to have been made of Amalthea's skin, preserved after her death--this, of course, is only a part of the versions of the myth where she is a goat rather than a nymph. I don't know how the snakes found their way onto the aegis, but they're always there. In the ancient world, snakes were often associated with immortality because of their trick of shedding their skin and becoming renewed.

Ironically, despite his role as keeper of the universal order, Zeus seems to be entirely incapable of keeping order in his own household. His children and siblings frequently defy him, and sometimes he seems positively overwhelmed by all the demands made upon him. And who wouldn't? The humorous vase painting below seems to capture his dilemma perfectly, as does a Renaissance painting of The Council of the Gods by the artist Peter Paul Rubens two millennia later.

Zeus's worst relationship seems to be with his sister/wife, Hera. The two were never well-suited, and their marriage was only a marriage of convenience in the first place: according to the story, after the battle with the Titans was over and Zeus and his other siblings had carved up the universe between them--with Poseidon taking the sea, Hades taking the underworld, Demeter taking the crops, and Hestia taking the hearth and home--there was nothing left over for Hera. So as a consolation prize, the newly-crowned king of the gods offered to marry her and make her the queen of heaven. Not surprisingly, she turned him down, so he had to resort to trickery in order to seduce her (more on that subject when we focus on Hera).

Hera became the guardian of marriage, which also is rather ironic, since Zeus became notorious for his many extramarital affairs. There were so many of these that you need a chart just to keep track of his more famous lovers and children. Some mythographers explain this in terms of Zeus's origins as a fertility god (as our book's editors put it on page 181, his many affairs "enrich the human gene pool with heroic stock"), but others claim that the reason for so many affairs with humans was to establish a "divine right of kings," as members of the aristocracy could claim the gods as ancestors through the lines of heroes with divine parentage. If that was the case, it backfired somewhat in the later classical period. Philosophers began to reject the idea of a womanizing deity. Socrates' suggestion that such behavior would be inappropriate for the ruler of the universe, and that the myths must therefore be allegorical rather than literal, was one of the reasons he was executed for "corrupting the youth" of Athens with such untraditional ideas.

This does not mean, as some people think, that all of the classical Greeks actually believed that the myths were literally true; what it does mean is that they were bothered by a departure from traditional religious practice. Socrates' assertion that Zeus did not have human impulses and thus did not have human needs could have interfered with the time-honored methods of sacrifices and worship. His contemporary, the comic playwright Aristophanes, pointed out in this passage of The Clouds just how topsy-turvey would be a world in which one questioned the traditions surrounding Zeus (see especially the telling line, "Just think. Zeus is out and Vortex is in!" followed by some rather graphic descriptions of digestive discomfort... "Vortex" is often translated as "Vertigo," which might make even more sense with reference to the sensation one might feel if the traditional order of the world were suddenly upset). Socrates' pupil, Plato, and Plato's pupil Aristotle, were both careful to make that distinction and to insist on the importance of worship according to custom. They learned from the example of their teacher's execution.

The Abduction of Ganymede
Peter Paul Rubens

But to get back to Zeus's many affairs. Although most of these were heterosexual, he did have one famous homosexual affair with the Trojan prince Ganymede, who became his cupbearer during meals on Mount Olympus and eventually was immortalized in the stars as the constellation Aquarius. In order to seduce Ganymede, Zeus turned himself into his own symbol, the eagle, and picked up the boy and flew off with him. It must have been a very large eagle. He was not the only god to fall in love with someone of the same sex; Apollo once fell for a youth named Hyacinthus, but that young man's fate was to become a flower rather than a constellation.

The photograph on page 183 shows Zeus striding off with Ganymede, but in this case he is depicted in human form.

Turning himself into a bird wasn't such an unusual trick for Zeus--he turned himself into a swan to seduce Leda (mother of Helen of Troy and the twins Castor and Pollux, the Dioskouri or Gemini--although they were twins, only Pollux was Zeus's son; Castor was the child of Leda's mortal husband, as was Helen's twin sister Clytemnestra). Zeus made something of a habit of turning himself into birds and animals, usually to conceal his infidelity from the ever-vigilant Hera, part of whose role as guardian of marriage was to try to prevent this sort of behavior.

No one knows why such shape-changing became part of Zeus's background, but there are a number of theories, including the idea that the god's power was supposed to manifest itself in many different elements of nature. This last idea appeals particularly to artists, both ancient and not-so-ancient, who liked to indicate his presence through his various forms or attributes; perhaps one of the best examples of just how subtle yet pervasive Zeus's presence could be is the Renaissance painter Antonio Allegri da Correggio's depiction of the courtship of Jupiter and Io, in which Zeus (Jupiter) appears as a cloud.

Zeus turned himself into a bull in order to carry off the princess Europa, and into a ray of sunlight or a shower of gold to seduce Perseus's mother Danaë, whose jealous father had locked her into a tower with only a tiny window through which the god was able to enter. This scene was imagined, in a surprisingly similar manner, by the usually dissimilar artists Rembrandt and Titian.

The tables were turned in the case of Io, to whom he came in the form of a man...but then he turned her into a cow in order to hide her from Hera. (Note: the Io link will take you to a list of annotated references, all hyperlinked. You don't need to follow any of the hyperlinks if you aren't interested, but do read down the list to get an idea of the story. Europa and Io are important because major geographic features were named after them, in Europa's case the continent of Europe and in Io's case both the Ionian Sea and the Bosporus strait, "bos" coming from the root word for "cow"). Because of her time in Egypt Io is often associated with the Egyptian cow goddess Hathor.

Most of the myths that deal with Zeus are either the tales of creation and the fights with the Titans and the giants as described in our text, or tales of his many love affairs, or tales of his protection of mortals who respect his laws. One of the more charming stories is the folk tale of Philemon and Baucis (scroll down the page past Midas to get to the story, plus a passage from a poem about it by the Irish author Jonathan Swift, best known as the author of Gulliver's Travels).

The main places associated with Zeus are Dodona, pictured to the right, and Olympia, which is a city in the southern area of Greece known as the Peloponnesus and is not to be confused with Mount Olympus, which is much further north.

Dodona was the site of Zeus's oracle, where a priest or priestess interpreted the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves of the sacred oaks. Sir James Frazer, author of the influential (if not entirely trustworthy, as Elizabeth Vandiver points out) multi-volume Victorian commentary on ancient myth entitled The Golden Bough, traced some interesting connections between Zeus's relationship with the oak and similar Celtic and Teutonic traditions.

Olympia is probably best known today for being the site of the ancient Olympic games. There were actually four famous sites for Panhellenic competitive games, which is why the Olympics took place only once every four years: the Olympic games at Olympia, the Nemean games at Nemea, the Pythian games (named for the Python, a monster slain by Apollo) at Delphi, and the Isthmian games at Isthmia (on the southeast side of the Isthmus of Corinth). The games at both Olympia and Nemea were sacred to Zeus, the Pythian games were sacred to Apollo, and the Isthmian games were sacred to Poseidon.

The famous sculptor Pheidias, who designed the Parthenon in Athens, was commissioned to create a massive gold and ivory statue of Zeus for the temple at Olympia, and the result was so spectacular it became one of the seven wonders of the world, along with the pyramids of Egypt and the hanging gardens at Babylon.

Because the Olympic games were the most prestigious, Zeus became associated with athletes. The 5th-century (B.C.) Greek poet Pindar was known for his odes that drew on stories of the gods, including Zeus, to parallel and praise the athletes who competed in the various games. (Optional: Listen to Pindar's famous Olympian Ode in ancient Greek, with text displayed, on YouTube!)

The ancient travel writer/historian Pausanias, writing in the second century A.D., tells how in the Altis, the sacred grove dedicated to Zeus at Olympia, there were a number of bronze statues of Zeus that had been paid for out of the fines levied on athletes who cheated (you don't need to read the entire page here--just the first three or four paragraphs. It's a very long excerpt). I recently read an article in a news magazine that was scandalized by the "recent" upswing in Olympic athletes who cheat, and I couldn't help wondering what the author would have thought of all those statues in the Altis.

If you are interested in Olympia and would like to look at another web page with larger, clearer pictures and different text, try this one at Thinkquest. It includes maps and a really nice photograph of the arch through which the athletes would emerge into the stadium. It is a bit slow to load, so you might load it into another window and read this page as the other one comes up.