Zeus and his Reign1
The greatest god of Greece’s mythology. Common legend made Zeus the eldest son of
Kronos (Cronus) and Rhea, the father time and mother goddess of lore. Dreading
how Cronus had swallowed all of their previous children, Rhea bore Zeus secretly in a
cave of the island of Crete, where he was suckled by the goat Amalthea, while a
Curetes (Cybele’s armored war dancers) drowned the cries of the child by the clash of
their weapons and ritual dance. Meanwhile, Rhea outwitted Cronus by giving him a
stone to swallow instead.
After he grew up and first came of age, before sparking his great war with the Titans,
Zeus strategically picked the great goddess Metis (the goddess of wisdom and skill) to
be his first wife. To surmount the curse of his father Cronus and his grandfather
Uranos, each of whom was overthrown by his firstborn child, Zeus swallowed Metis
after impregnating her with his firstborn divine child. As a result, when she was born,
Athena (Minerva) came bursting out of Jupiter’s own head, with a resounding war cry
of loyalty to her father (and mother) Zeus. This furthermore earned him governance
over Athena’s more modern powers of wisdom, craft, and cunning in counsel and the
arts of war.
Before being swallowed, as her wedding gift, Metis designed a charm for Zeus that
enabled him to make Cronus disgorge the children he had swallowed. This not only
caused an upheaval in cosmic time (pun-intended): it also produced new warriors and
faithful allies to Zeus. With the help of his brothers and sisters Poseidon (Neptune),
Hades (Pluto), Hestia (Vesta), Demeter (Ceres), and Hera (Juno), Zeus went on to
overthrew Cronus and banish the Titans—and the raw power and lawlessness they
embodied—to Tartarus forever. With new control over the world in his charge (punintended), Zeus promptly divided rule three ways between himself and his male
siblings. He claimed the heavens first, then Poseidon and Hades took the seas and the
underworld. The earth and Olympus were appointed the common possession of all
the three and the their Olympian family.
As king of the gods, Zeus’s power subsumes, confers, and directs the powers of all the
other gods combined together, under his sway. This is why, after assuming sole
power over the universe, he takes so many wives. Each wife gives him a new realm to
govern and a new form of leadership. By bearing children to represent him in each of
these realms, Zeus consolidates his power and delegates his authority throughout the
entire cosmos. All of his wives, children, and allies interconnect, in concert, to
channel the myriad divine powers of the earth and cosmos into his scepter and
lightning bolt. As “The Deus” (“The God”), Zeus weaves his power throughout the
Adapted liberally from:
http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php?method=did&regexp=2389&setcard
=1&media=1&link=0
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entire divine family, establishing his role as a unifier and grand patriarch by
embodying all the gods and all their diverse divine powers in his own person.
Each wife plays a vital role in this dynasty. Regarded pre-eminently as his queen and
highest wife, Hera stands first among all. As Queen of the Gods and second in power
beside him, she bears him his powerful children Ares (Mars), Hephaestus (Vulcan),
and Hebe (Youth).
Zeus then went on to take even further goddesses as wives and consorts to his
governance. The first whom he took after Metis and Hera was the Titaness Themis.
Connected to the word “thesis”, her name means to “put down” good counsel, strong
custom, and wise counsel. Zeus mated with her to establish good rituals and pious
devotion to the divine order. Through this union, he sired two sets of sister
goddesses, called the Hours and the Fates. This was an overture that also won him
power over the progress of physical as well as metaphysical time and inevitability.
The next goddess on his marriage itinerary was the Eurynome. A Titan goddess of
beauty, she was a source of all rivers, and connected to the flows of nature, and of the
distribution of its fruits. With her, Zeus bore a trio of goddesses called the Graces,
who were governesses of culture, thanksgiving, and refinement.
With his sister Demeter (Ceres), Zeus promptly bore the goddess Persephone
(Proserpina) next. She was fated to become a twin goddess of life and death, the
guardian of springtime on earth and the Queen of the Dead in the Underworld. This
union strengthened his bond with his Olympian brother Hades (Pluto), sealing the
covenant and laws of the Fates connecting life and death, justice and retribution.
From there, with the Titan goddess Mnemoysene (Memory), Zeus went on to bear the
9 Muses, goddesses who gave him a stake in all of the arts and philosophies and
higher pursuits of the Humanities. Not only did this connect him more intimately with
humankind, but it gave him governanace over the Muses’ arts of history, dance,
architecture, sculpture, poetry (epic and lyric), painting, music, theater (comedy and
tragedy), and astronomy.
Zeus’s next task was to sire his closest allies and ambassadors to all of the heavens
and earth. For this task he chose the ancient Titaness Leto, a goddess of pure light
and the cosmos’s magnetic poles, as they contain both heaven and earth. With her
Zeus bore the powerful Olympians Apollo and Artemis (Diana). As the god of the Sun,
Apollo enlightened the day, while Diana complemented the night with her light of the
moon. On earth, Apollo occupied cities and civilization, law courts and institutions,
whereas Diana occupied the wilderness and its haunts. Prophecies haled Apollo as
the divine golden child and high prince of the Olympians. As Sun god, he symbolized
the light of the higher, intellectual mind, and its arts of prophecy, medicine, math and
science, philosophy, reason, and perfect order. Diana the twin complemented these
powers, serving as the goddess of darkness and the powers of the night—
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wildernesses, the hunt, the magic of the moon, and creation’s bond with animal and
floral nature.
Through the obscure goddess Maia, Zeus then sired his youngest born and most loyal
Olympus Hermes (Mercury). Mercury bridges all the worlds created above and
before him, crossing all boundaries carrying not just messages, but commerce, travel,
crossroads, and the trickster spirit between realms of the cosmos, between gods, and
among humankind too….
In Asia, the summit of Mount Ida in the Troad (above Troy) was especially and
beyond all other places the most sacred home to Zeus. As he presides over the gods
and the whole of nature, so also is he serves as the ruler of men, who all stand in need
of his help, and to whom, according to Homer, he weighs out their destinies on golden
scales [IL. viii 69, xxii 209], and distributes good and evil out of the two jars which
stand in his palace, filled the one with good and the other with evil gifts [xxiv 527].
But his natural attributes are goodness and love; accordingly, Homer constantly calls
him "the father of gods and men." He gives to all things a good beginning and a good
end: he is the saviour in all distress. From him comes everything good, noble, and
strong, and also bodily vigour and valour, which were exhibited in his honour,
particularly at the Olympian and Nemean games. He is also the giver of victory;
indeed the goddess Nike (“Victory”), and her brothers and sister, Force, Might, and
Strife (Gr. Bia, Krotos, Zelos), are his constant companions and sole charges.
As ruler of the world and protector of these powers, from him proceed those
universal laws which regulate the course of all animate things. Zeus he knows and
sees all, envisions everything, all the future and all the past. In this omniscient status
and state, all revelations comes in their first instance directly from him. At times he
himself announces to mortals his hidden counsels by means of manifold signs, of
thunder and lightning and other portents in the sky, by birds, especially the eagle,
which was sacred to him, by prophetic voices, and special oracles. (e.g. Dodona and
Ammon).
At times he makes use of other deities for this purpose, chiefly of his son Apollo,
through whose mouth he speaks at Delphi in particular, guiding and counseling all of
humanity. Delphi –incidentally –is where he enshrined the “Omphalos”, which was
the stone Cronos has swallowed in Zeus’s place. When Cronos threw up this great
stone, Chronos split open, making Delphi the center of Zeus’s power (Omphalos
literally means the). “belly button” of the cosmos).
Thus the course of the world originates from Zeus and is ordained by him; he is the
author and preserver of all order in the life of men. In concertand conjunction with
Themis, Dike, and Nemesis, he watches over justice and truth, and with these, over
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the foundations of human society. In particular, he is the special god who guards the
sanctity of the oath, and how humans become bound in words to one another. He is
also the avenger of deceit and perjury, the keeper of boundaries and of property, the
defender of the laws of hospitality and the rights of the suppliant.
Backed up by his brother Hades, Zeus therefore punishes and condemns wrongdoers. But nevertheless he also has the power to forgive who has offended against
the laws of human civilization and society. Zeus, as the supreme god of atonement,
offers the power of expiating , guilt by rites of purification, if that human criminal
oaths and dedicates himself to Zeus to him the rest of his life. (There is a connection
here to the foundation of Rome by outcasts, exiles, and criminals, and how their oath
of dedication to Romulus and the Roman Way gave them their citizenship and
Romanitas).
As Zeus presides over the family and community of the gods, so also he is the chief
patron of the human family and of all communal life. In the former relation he was
especially worshipped in all branches of the family as protector of house and home,
and defender of the domestic hearth (with his sister Olympian Hesta, or Vesta). In the
latter, communal life, Zeus stands as the shield of the State, as director of the popular
assembly and of political councils. He presides as the god of covenants; as the source
of kingship, whose, symbol, the sceptre, was traced back to him. From him also
proceed both national and personal freedom.
Zeus is to the Greeks--as Jupiter, who in his principal characteristics exactly
corresponds to him, is to the Romans,--the essence of all divine power. No deity
received such wide-spread worship; all the others were in the popular belief,
subordinated to him at a greater or less distance. The active operations of most of the
gods appear only as an outcome of his being, particularly those of his children, among
whom the nearest to him are Athene and Apollo, his favorites, who often seem to be
joined with their father in the highest union. The eagle and the oak were sacred to
Zeus; the eagle, together with the sceptre and the lightning, is also one of his
customary attributes. The most famous statue of Zeus in antiquity was that executed
by Phidias in gold and ivory for the temple at Olympia. It represented the enthroned
Olympian god, with a divine expression of the highest dignity, and at the same time
with the benevolent mildness of the deity who graciously listens to prayer. The figure
of the seated god was about forty feet high; and since the base was as high as twelve
feet, the statue almost touched with its crown the roof of the temple, so as to call forth
in the spectator the feeling that no earthly dwelling would be adequate for such a
divinity. The bearded head was ornamented with a wreath of olive leaves, the victor's
prize at Olympia. The upper part of the body, made of ivory, was naked, the lower
part was wrapped in a golden mantle falling from the hips to the feet, which, adorned
with golden sandals, rested on a footstool. Beside this lay golden lions. The right hand
bore the goddess of victory, the left the sceptre, surmounted by an eagle. Like the
base, and the whole space around, the seat of the throne was decorated with various
works of art. It was supported by figures of the goddess of victory; and on the back of
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the throne, which rose above the head of the god, were represented the hovering
forms of the Hours and the Graces [Pausanias, v 11; Strabo, p. 353]. This statue was
the model for most of the later representatives of Zeus. Among those that are extant
the well-known bust of Zeus (fig. 1) found at Otricoli (the ancient Ocriculum in
Umbria) and now in the Vatican Museum, is supposed (as well as some others) to be
an imitation of the great work of Phidias. In the most direct relation to the latter stand
the figures of Zeus on the coins of Elis (fig. 2). Among the standing statues of Zeus the
most famous was the bronze colossus, forty cubits (or sixty feet) high, by Lysippus at
Tarentum [Pliny, N. H. xxxiv 40].