Zeus, Jovis, Jupiter
"Zeus is in the Ilias the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea. He and his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, divided the world by lot among them, and the portion which…
From: Unknown To: 1838 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Zeus,” from The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy by Thomas Keightley, 1838.
Chapter VI
The Kronids:—Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia
The Kronids, or children of Kronos and Rhea, were Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter. The four first we shall place here: the two last, as wives of Zeus, will find their more appropriate situation along with their children.
Zeus, Jovis, Jupiter.
Zeus is in the Ilias the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea. He and his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, divided the world by lot among them, and the portion which fell to him was the 'extensive heaven in air and clouds.' All the aerial phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, wind, clouds, snow, and rainbows, are therefore ascribed to him; and he sends them either as signs and warnings, or to punish the transgressions of man, especially the perversions of law and justice, of which he is the fountain.
Zeus is called the 'father of men and gods'; his power over both is represented as supreme, and his will is fate. Earthly monarchs obtain their authority from him; they are but his vicegerents, and are distinguished by epithets derived from his name. In his palace on Olympos Zeus lives after the fashion of a Grecian prince in the midst of his family; altercations and quarrels occur between him and his queen, Hera; and, though in general kind and affectionate to his children, he occasionally menaces or treats them with rigour.
In the Odyssey the character of this god is, agreeably to the more moral tone of that poem, of a higher and more dignified order. No indecent altercations occur; both gods and men submit to his power without a murmur, yet he is anxious to show the equity of his decrees and to ‘justify his ways.’
The Theogony, as we have seen, represents Zeus as the lastborn child of Kronos and Rhea, and according to it the supreme power was freely conferred on him by his brothers, and he thus became the acknowledged head of the Olympian gods, the objects of Grecian worship.
Though Homer names the parents of nearly all the gods who appear in his poems, and it follows thence that they must have been born in some definite places, he never indicates any spot of earth as the natal place of any of his gods. A very ancient tradition, however, (for it occurs in Hesiod)made the isle of Crete the scene of the birth of the monarch of Olympos. According to this tradition Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, retired to a cavern near Lyctos or Cnossos in Crete.
She there brought forth her babe, whom the Melian nymphs received in their arms; Adrasteia rocked him in a golden cradle, he was fed with honey and the milk of the goat Amaltheia, while the Curetes danced about him clashing their arms to prevent his cries from reaching the ears of Kronos. According to another account the infant deity was fed on ambrosia brought by pigeons from the streams of Ocean, and on nectar which an eagle drew each day with his beak from a rock. This legend was gradually pragmatised; Zeus became a mortal king of Crete, and not merely the cave in which he was reared, but the tomb which contained his remains, was shown by the 'lying Cretans.’
The Arcadians, on the other hand, asserted that Zeus first saw the light among their mountains. Rhea, they said, came to Mount Parrhasion, amidst whose thickets she brought forth her divine son. She sought for water to wash the new-born babe, but in vain, for Arcadia was then a land unwatered by streams; the Ladon, the Alpheios, and their kindred floods had not yet appeared. "Dear Earth! do thou too bring forth!' said the goddess, and smiting the mountain with her staff she caused to gush from it a copious flow of water, which she named the Neda, from one of the nymphs who assisted at her labour, and who then conveyed the babe to Cnossos in Crete.
The more general tradition, however, was that the nymph Neda and her sisters, Theisoa and Hagno, reared the infant deity in a cavern of Mount Lycaeon, where there was a place named Cretes, as other spots in Arcadia were designated by names belonging to places in Crete.
All, therefore, that we can collect with safety from these accounts is that the worship of the Dictaaan Zeus in Crete, and of the Lycaean Zeus in Arcadia, was of the most remote antiquity, and that thence, when the Euhemeristic principle began to creep in among the Greeks, each people supposed the deity to have been born among themselves. The Cretan legend must however be regarded as the more ancient, for the Arcadians evidently attempted to transfer the names of places in it to their own country, a practise of which as we proceed we shall meet with other instances.
In the Theogony the celestial progeny of Zeus are enumerated in the following order.
Zeus first espoused Metis (Prudence), who exceeded gods and men in knowledge. But Heaven and Earth having told him that her first child, a maid, would equal himself in strength and counsel, and her second, a son, would be king of gods and men, he cajoled her when she was pregnant, and swallowed her; and after a time the goddess Pallas Athene sprang from his head.
He then married Themis, who bore him the Seasons and Fates. The Oceanis Eurynome next produced him the Graces; Demeter was then by him the mother of Persephone, Mnemosyne of the Muses, and Leto of Apollo and Artemis. His last spouse was Hera, who bore him Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia.
According to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus by Dione. The Theogony further says that Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore him Hermes. A later fable said that Asteria, the sister of Leto, flying the love of Zeus, flung herself from heaven down to the sea and became the isle afterwards named Delos.
Mortal women also bore a numerous progeny to this amorous monarch of the gods, and every species of transmutation and disguise was employed by him to accomplish his object. He assumed the form of her husband Amphitryon to deceive the modesty of Alcmena, who became the mother of Heracles. Leda was beguiled by him in the shape of a beautiful white swan. Under the form of a shower of gold he penetrated the brazen prison in which Danae was inclosed, and became the father of Perseus.
Antiope, the mother of Amphion and Zethos, was forced by him in the guise of a satyr. To seduce the Arcadian nymph Callisto he presumed to take the form of Artemis, the goddess of chastity. A bull was the form in which he carried off Europa, the sister of Cadmos; and a flame of fire or the plumage of an eagle disguised the god from AEgina, the mother of AEacos. By Semele he was the father of Dionysos, who became a god. By Io he had a son named Epaphos. Many other heroes could also boast of being the sons of Zeus by different mothers.
Of all these mortal loves It is curious to mark the apparent progress of this tale. In the text we have followed Callimachus, who says, alluding to her name, that she came down 'like a star.' This was probably the more ancient version, but it was also said that she took the form of a quail, whence the isle was named Ortygia. This identification of Delos and Ortygia was, however, certainly later than the time of Pindar, who calls them sisters. The whole legend seems to owe its origin to the affinity of sense between the words Asteria and Delos. We shall give a detailed account when we come to speak of the heroes who sprang from them.
The love of Zeus (and in this there lies a moral)was not always a source of happiness to those whom he honoured with it. Io, for example, underwent a dreadful persecution from Hera, as also did Leto. Semele perished in the flames which invested the lord of the thunder and lightning. Danae and her babe were abandoned to the waves of the sea.
We shall presently show that the name Zeus signifies God. When, therefore, we recollect how usual it was in the oriental and early Greek style to represent magnitude or excellence by associating it with the name of the deity, it will not surprise us to meet so many Zeus-sprung heroes in the mythology of Greece. A mere epithet was probably the germ of the mythe; Zeus was then placed at the head of a genealogy; and last came the poets, who detailed the amorous history.
It seems to have been an ancient opinion that the gods used to assume the human form and go among mankind to mark their conduct. To this notion—which carries our minds back to those happy ages commemorated in the Book of Genesis, when angels dwelt and God himself with man'—we are indebted for some interesting legends told by poets, of Zeus taking the human form, and coming down to view more closely the conduct of mankind over whom he ruled. Such was his visit to Lycaon king of Arcadia, whom he punished for his impiety; and that on occasion of which the piety of Hyrieus was rewarded by the birth of Orion. The most pleasing tale is that of Philemon and Baucis, narrated by Ovid in his most agreeable manner, to the following effect.
Zeus and Hermes came one time in the form of men to a town in Phrygia. It was evening; they sought for hospitality, but every door was closed against them. At length they approached a humble cottage where dwelt an aged man, named Philemon, with Baucis his wife, of equal years: by them the wayfarers were gladly received. The poet pleases his imagination amidst the luxury of Rome in describing the furniture of their simple abode, and the homely fare, though their best, which they set before their celestial guests, whose quality was at length revealed by the miracle of the wine-bowl being spontaneously replenished as fast as it was drained.
They told their hosts that it was their intention to destroy the godless town, and desired them to leave their house and ascend the adjacent hill. The aged pair obeyed: ere they reached the summit they turned round to look, and beheld a lake where the town had stood. Their own house remained, and, as they gazed and deplored the fate of their neighbours it became a temple. On being desired by Zeus to express their wishes, they prayed that they might be appointed to officiate in that temple, and that they might be united in death as in life. Their prayer was granted, and as they were one day standing before the temple, they were suddenly changed into an oak and a lime-tree.
It was the habit of the Greeks to appropriate particular plants and animals to the service of their deities. There was generally some reason for this, founded on physical or moral grounds, or on both. Nothing could be more natural than to assign the oak, the monarch of trees, to the celestial king, whose ancient oracle moreover was in the oak-woods of Dodona. In like manner the eagle was evidently the bird best suited to his service.
The celebrated Aegis, the shield which sent forth thunder, lightning, and darkness, and struck terror into mortal hearts, was formed for Zeus by Hephaestos. In Homer we see it sometimes borne by Apollo and by Athena.
The most famous temple of this god was at Olympia in Elis, where every fourth year the Olympian games were celebrated in his honour: he had also a splendid fane in the isle of Ægina. But, though there were few deities less honoured with temples and statues, all the inhabitants of Hellas conspired in the duty of doing homage to the sovereign of the gods. His great oracle was at Dodona, where, even in the Pelasgian period, his priests, the Selli, announced his will and futurity.
Zeus was represented by the artists as the model of dignity and majesty of mien; his countenance grave but mild. He is seated on a throne, and grasping his sceptre and the thunder. The eagle is standing beside the throne.
The epithets of this god in Homer are, 1. Aegis-holding; 2. Cloud-collecting; 3. Black-clouding; 4. Thunder-loving; 5. High-seated; 6. Lightening; 7. Counselling; 8. Wide-seeing or Wide-thundering; and others of similar signification.
The epithets of Zeus derived from his offices, such as Xenios, as protector of strangers, Horkios, the guardian of oaths, were numerous. He was also named like the other gods from the places where he was worshiped, ex. gr. Clarios, Cithaeronios. Toward the end of the month Anthesterion (beginning of March), a festival named the Diasia was held at Athens, in which offerings were made to Zeus, the Mild or Appeased, answering to the sin-offerings of the Mosaic law.
At Argos there was an ancient wooden statue of Zeus, which had a third eye in its forehead. The tradition was that it had been the domestic image of Priamos, and had been brought from Troy by Sthenelos. The three eyes are rightly explained by Pausanias as indicative of the dominion of Zeus (the God)over heaven, earth, (land and water,)and the under-world.
A very simple process will lead us to the true signification of the name of this deity. Its Æolic form is ????, which is almost the same as the deus of the Latin, the affinity of which language to the Æolic Greek is well known. Zeus, ????, and the latter is probably a contraction of the participle ????, living.
Keightley, Thomas. The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. Whittaker, 1838.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
