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Ancient Greek religion

Zeus^[a] (Ζεύς) is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter.^[4] His mythology and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of Indo-European deities such as Jupiter, Perkūnas, Perun, Indra, Dyaus, and Zojz.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Eileithyia, Hebe, and Hephaestus.^[10][11] At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione,^[12] by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite.^[15] According to the Theogony, Zeus' first wife was Metis, by whom he had Athena.^[16] Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses.^[10]

He was respected as an allfather who was chief of the gods^[17] and assigned roles to the others:^[18] "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence."^[19][20] He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men".^[21] Zeus' symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" (Greek: Νεφεληγερέτα, Nephelēgereta)^[22] also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of three poses: standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty. It was very important for the lightning to be exclusively in the god's right hand as the Greeks believed that people who were left-handed were associated with bad luck.

Name

The god's name in the nominative is Ζεύς (Zeús). It is inflected as follows: vocative: Ζεῦ (Zeû); accusative: Δία (Día); genitive: Διός (Diós); dative: Διί (Dií). Diogenes Laërtius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name Ζάς.^[23]

Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph₂tēr ("Sky Father").^[24][25] The god is known under this name in the Rigveda (Vedic Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita), Latin (compare Jupiter, from Iuppiter, deriving from the Proto-Indo-European vocative *dyeu-ph₂tēr),^[26] deriving from the root *dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god").^[24] Albanian Zoj-z is also a cognate of Zeus. In both the Greek and Albanian forms the original cluster *di̯ underwent affrication to *dz.^[9] Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology.^[27]

The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀇𐀸, di-we and 𐀇𐀺, di-wo, written in the Linear B syllabic script.^[28]

Plato, in his Cratylus, gives a folk etymology of Zeus meaning "cause of life always to all things", because of puns between alternate titles of Zeus (Zen and Dia) with the Greek words for life and "because of".^[29] This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship.^[30][31]

Diodorus Siculus wrote that Zeus was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was the cause of life (zen).^[32] While Lactantius wrote that he was called Zeus and Zen, not because he is the giver of life, but because he was the first who lived of the children of Cronus.^[33]

Mythology

Birth

In Hesiod's Theogony (c. 730 – 700 BC), Cronus, after castrating his father Uranus,^[34] becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister Rhea, by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six.^[35] He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received a prophecy from his parents, Gaia and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father.^[36] This causes Rhea "unceasing grief",^[37] and upon becoming pregnant with her sixth child, Zeus, she approaches her parents, Gaia and Uranus, seeking a plan to save her child and bring retribution to Cronus.^[38] Following her parents' instructions, she travels to Lyctus in Crete, where she gives birth to Zeus,^[39] handing the newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon.^[40] Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it isn't his son.^[41]

While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so,^[42] and other authors give different locations. The poet Eumelos of Corinth (8th century BC), according to John the Lydian, considered Zeus to have been born in Lydia,^[43] while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus, says that he was born in Arcadia.^[44] Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he is born in Dicte,^[45] and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he was born in a cave in Dicte.^[46]

Infancy

While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly,^[47] other sources provide more detailed accounts.

According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse.^[48] They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea,^[49] while the Kouretes guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying.^[50] Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes,^[51] who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea.^[52] He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus,^[53] and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton.^[54]

Hyginus, in his Fabulae, relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus a stone to swallow.^[55] Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he isn't in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him.^[56] Hyginus also says that Ida, Althaea, and Adrasteia, usually considered the children of Oceanus, are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus.^[57]

According to a fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears.^[58] According to Musaeus, after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to Themis. Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus.^[59]

Antoninus Liberalis, in his Metamorphoses, says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in a sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Moirai and Themis; he instead transforms them into various species of birds.^[60]

Ascension to Power

According to the Theogony, after Zeus reaches manhood, Cronus is made to disgorge the five children and the stone "by the stratagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus", presumably in reverse order, vomiting out the stone first, then each of the five children in the opposite order to swallowing.^[62] Zeus then sets up the stone at Delphi, so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men".^[63] Zeus next frees the Cyclopes, who, in return, and out of gratitude, give him his thunderbolt, which had previously been hidden by Gaia.^[64] Then begins the Titanomachy, the war between the Olympians, led by Zeus, and the Titans, led by Cronus, for control of the universe, with Zeus and the Olympians fighting from Mount Olympus, and the Titans fighting from Mount Othrys.^[65] The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases the Hundred-Handers, who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface.^[66] He gives them nectar and ambrosia and revives their spirits,^[67] and they agree to aid him in the war.^[68] Zeus then launches his final attack on the Titans, hurling bolts of lightning upon them while the Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning the Hundred-Handers the task of acting as their warders.^[69]

Apollodorus provides a similar account, saying that, when Zeus reaches adulthood, he enlists the help of the Oceanid Metis, who gives Cronus an emetic, forcing to him to disgorge the stone and Zeus's five siblings.^[70] Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe.^[71] The Cyclopes give him his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident and Hades his helmet of invisibility, and the Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards.^[72]