Zeus (, ) is the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon. He is a sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Eileithyia, Hebe, and Hephaestus.Hard 2004, p. 79. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione,Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Zeus. by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite. According to the Theogony, Zeus's first wife was Metis, by whom he had Athena.Hesiod, Theogony 886900. 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.
He was respected as a sky father who was chief of the godsHomeric Hymns. and assigned roles to the others:Hesiod, Theogony. "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence."Burkert, Greek Religion.See, e.g., Homer, Il., I.503 & 533. 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".Pausanias, 2.24.4. Among his symbols are the thunderbolt and the eagle.Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Zeus. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" (Greek: , ). also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter. In ancient Rome, Zeus was identified with the god Jupiter.
Name The god's name in the nominative is (Zeús). It is inflected as follows: vocative: (); accusative: (); genitive: (); dative: (). Diogenes Laërtius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name . The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek , di-we (dative) and , di-wo (genitive), written in the Linear B syllabic script.
Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Dyēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called ("Sky Father").Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill Publishers, 2009, p. 499. 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 ), deriving from the root *dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Albanian and Messapic are clear equivalents and cognates of Zeus. In the Greek, Albanian, and Messapic forms the original cluster *di̯ underwent affrication to *dz.. Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology.
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"."Plato's Cratylus by Plato, ed. by David Sedley, Cambridge University Press, 6 November 2003, p. 91 This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship.
Diodorus Siculus wrote that Zeus was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was the cause of life (zen). 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.Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.11.1.
Zeus was called by numerous alternative names or surnames, known as epithets. Some epithets are the surviving names of local gods who were consolidated into the myth of Zeus.
Mythology Birth In Hesiod's Theogony ( – 700 BC), Cronus, after castrating his father Uranus,See Gantz, pp. 10–11; Hesiod, Theogony 159–83. 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.Hard 2004, p. 67; Hansen, p. 67; Tripp, s.v. Zeus, p. 605; Caldwell, p. 9, table 12; Hesiod, Theogony 453–8. So too Apollodorus, 1.1.5; Diodorus Siculus, 68.1. 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.Gantz, p. 41; Hard 2004, p. 67–8; Grimal, s.v. Zeus, p. 467; Hesiod, Theogony 459–67. Compare with Apollodorus, 1.1.5, who gives a similar account, and Diodorus Siculus, 70.1–2, who does not mention Cronus's parents, but rather says that it was an oracle who gave the prophecy. This causes Rhea "unceasing grief",Cf. Apollodorus, 1.1.6, who says that Rhea was "enraged". 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.Hard 2004, p. 68; Gantz, p. 41; Smith, s.v. Zeus; Hesiod, Theogony 468–73. Following her parents' instructions, she travels to Lyctus in Crete, where she gives birth to Zeus,Hard 2004, p. 74; Gantz, p. 41; Hesiod, Theogony 474–9. handing the newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon (Aegeum).Hard 2004, p. 74; Hesiod, Theogony 479–84. According to Hard 2004, the "otherwise unknown" Mount Aegaeon can "presumably ... be identified with one of the various mountains near Lyktos". Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it is not his son.Hansen, p. 67; Hard 2004, p. 68; Smith, s.v. Zeus; Gantz, p. 41; Hesiod, Theogony 485–91. For iconographic representations of this scene, see Louvre G 366; Clark, p. 20, figure 2.1 and Metropolitan Museum of Art 06.1021.144; LIMC 15641; Beazley Archive 214648. According to Pausanias, 9.41.6, this event occurs at Petrachus, a "crag" nearby to Chaeronea (see West 1966, p. 301 on line 485).
While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so,West 1966, p. 291 on lines 453–506; Hard 2004, p. 75. 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,Fowler 2013, pp. 35, 50; Eumelus fr. 2 West, pp. 224, 225 [= fr. 10 Fowler, p. 109 = PEG fr. 18 (Bernabé, p. 114) = Lydus, De Mensibus 4.71]. According to West 2003, p. 225 n. 3, in this version he was born "probably on Mt. Sipylos". while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (), in his Hymn to Zeus, says that he was born in Arcadia.Fowler 2013, p. 391; Grimal, s.v. Zeus, p. 467; Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus (1) 4–11 (pp. 36–9). Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he was born in Dicte,Fowler 2013, p. 391; Diodorus Siculus, 70.2, 70.6. and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he was born in a cave in Dicte.Apollodorus, 1.1.6. In the second century AD, Pausanias wrote that it would be impossible to count all the people claiming that Zeus was born or brought up among them.
Infancy
While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly,Hard 2004, p. 68; Gantz, p. 41; Hesiod, Theogony 492–3: "the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly". 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.West 1983, p. 122; Apollodorus, 1.1.6. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea,Hard 2004, p. 612 n. 53 to p. 75; Apollodorus, 1.1.7. while the Kouretes guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying.Hansen, p. 216; Apollodorus, 1.1.7. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes,Diodorus Siculus, 7.70.2; see also 7.65.4. who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea.Diodorus Siculus, 7.70.2–3. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus,Diodorus Siculus, 7.65.4. and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton.Diodorus Siculus, 7.70.4.
Hyginus, the author of the 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.Gantz, p. 42; Hyginus, Fabulae 139. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he is not in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him.Gantz, p. 42; Hard 2004, p. 75; Hyginus, Fabulae 139. 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.Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 191 on line 182; West 1983, p. 133 n. 40; Hyginus, Fabulae 182 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 158).
According to a fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helice and Cynosura 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.Hard 2004, p. 75–6; Gantz, p. 42; Epimenides fr. 23 Diels, p. 193 [= Scholia on Aratus, 46]. Zeus later marks the event by placing the constellations of the Dragon, the Greater Bear and the Lesser Bear in the sky. 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.Gantz, p. 41; Gee, p. 131–2; Frazer, p. 120; Musaeus fr. 8 Diels, pp. 181–2 [= Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 13 (Hard 2015, p. 44; Olivieri, p. 17)]; Musaeus apud Hyginus, De astronomia 2.13.6. According to Eratosthenes, Musaeus considers the she-goat to be a child of Helios, and to be "so terrifying to behold" that the Titans ask for it to be hidden in one of the caves in Crete; hence Earth places it in the care of Amalthea, who nurses Zeus on its milk.
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.Hard 2004, p. 75; Antoninus Liberalis, 19.
Ascension to power