Zeus
In Greek mythology, Zeus (in Greek: nominative: Ζεύς Zeús, genitive: Διός Díos), also known as Jupiter in Roman mythology, is the highest ranking god among the Olympian gods. He held jurisidiciton over Mount Olympus, as well as the sky and thunder, and, as could be expected his attributes were closely linked to celestial imagery including thunder and the lightning bolt, and the eagle. The son of Cronus and Rhea, Zeus was the youngest of his siblings. He was married to Hera, though he is known for his numerous extramarital conquests which resulted in the births of numerous offspring. Zeus is argubaly the most identifiable characters in all the world's mythology; his image as the well-muscled, white-bearded patriarch has had immense influence upon colloquial understandings of God in the Western world.
Origins
Zeus, poetically referred to in Greek by the vocative Zeu pater ("O, father Zeus"), is a continuation of Dyeus, the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also referred to ask "Sky Father". The god is referred to by this name in Sanskrit as Dyaus or Dyaus Pita. Similarly in Latin the term Jupiter which refers to Zeus is derived from Iuppiter which derived from the Proto-Indo-European dyeu or "to shine" (and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). In Germanic mythology and Norse mythology, the sky god is referred to by Tīwaz from the Old High German language Ziu and the Old Norse Týr), together with Latin deus ("deity, god"), dīvus ("godly") and Dis (a variation of dīves, meaning "wealthy, blessed"), from the related noun deiwos. To the Greeks and Romans, the god of the sky was also the supreme god, whereas this function was filled out by Odin among the Germanic tribes. Accordingly, they did not identify Zeus/Jupiter with either Tyr or Odin, but with Thor, the Norse god of the storm. Altogether, the similarity between Zeus' Greek title and those in Sanskrit, Latin, Old High German and Old Norse provide strong linguistic evidence that the God has a connection to the Proto-Indo-European sky god. Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such an apparent Indo-European etymology. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical Zeus also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter.
Zeus in myth
Birth & Childhood
Cronus sired several children by Rhea: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. However, he swallowed them all as soon as they were born, since he had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own son as he had overthrown his own father. But when Zeus was about to be born, Rhea sought Uranus and Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Cronus would get his retribution for his acts against Uranus and his own children. She covertly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, handing Cronus a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes in place of her newborn child. Cronus promptly swallowed the swaddled rock thinking that it was his son.
With Cronus subdued, Rhea hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. There are various versions of the story following this juncture, including varations where Zeus was then raised by 1) Gaia; 2) by Melissa, who nursed him with goat's-milk; 3) a nymph named Adamanthea who hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth, sea and sky and thus, invisible to his father Cronus ruled over all three jurisdictions 4) a nymph named Cynosura who was later placed her among the stars by Zeus as a sign of his gratitude 5)a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes— soldiers, or smaller gods— danced, shouted and clashed their spears against their shields so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cry.
Zeus becomes king of the gods
After reaching manhood, Zeus overthrew Cronus. First, he disgorged the stone and set it down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, the Omphalos. Next, he extracted his siblings in an order reverse of that in which they had been swallowed. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to vomit up the babies; in others, Zeus cut Cronus' stomach open. With his own brothers and sisters freed, Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Gigantes, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes), from their dungeon in Tartarus, a shadowy underworld region. As a token of their gratitude, the Cyclopes gave Zeus thunder and the thunderbolt, or lightning, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Together, Zeus and his brothers and sisters along with the Gigantes, Hecatonchires, and Cyclopes ousted Cronus and the other Titans in the battle better known as the Titanomachy. The defeated Titans were then cast into Tartarus themselves.
After the battle with the Titans, Zeus shared the world with his elder brothers Poseidon and Hades. Jurisdiction over particular realms was determined by drawing lots. Zeus drew the sky and air, Poseidon the waters, and Hades the world of the underworld. The ancient Earth, Gaia, could not be claimed. Instead she was left to all three gods, who claimed jurisdiction over her various parts according to their capabilities. Thus, Poseidon was the "earth-shaker" (the god of earthquakes) and Hades claimed the humans that died. Gaia resented the way Zeus had treated the Titans, because they were her children. Soon after taking the throne as king of the gods, Zeus had to fight some of Gaia's other children, the monsters Typhon and Echidna. He vanquished Typhon and trapped him under a mountain, but left Echidna and her children alive as challenges for future heroes.
Consorts and Conquests
Hera was sister and consort of Zeus. The only issue of their union was Ares, though Hera produced other offspring of her own. The conquests of Zeus among nymphs and the mythic mortal progenitors of Hellenic dynasties are famous. Olympian mythography even credits him with unions with Demeter, Latona, Dione and Maia. Among the mortals, Zeus is said to have made love to Semele, Io, Europa and Leda. Zeus also undertook a pederastic relationship with Ganymede. Many myths render Hera as jealous of Zeus' philandering, consistently cultivating enmity toward his mistresses and their children which he had sired. For a time, a nymph named Echo was actually assigned the task of distracting Hera from Zeus' affairs by incessantly talking; upon discovering the ruse, Hera cursed Echo to repeat the words of others.
Offspring
Not only was Zeus a prolific lover, but he also incredibly fecund. Notable offspring include: the Three Fates (by Ananke), The Muses (by Mnemosyne), Persephone (by Demeter), Aphrodite (by Dione), Apollo and Artemis (by Leto), Athena (by Metis), Hermes (by Maia) and even Alexander the Great (by Olympias). Among the multitude of children Zeus spawned, Hercules was often described as his favorite. Indeed, Hercules was often called by various gods and people as "the favorite son of Zeus". Unlike in the TV show "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys"(where Hercules resents both the title and his father for much of the shows run), Zeus and Hercules were very close and in one story, where a tribe of earth-born Giants threatened Olympus and the Oracle at Delphi decreed that only the combined efforts of a lone god and mortal could stop the creature, Zeus chose Hercules to fight by his side. They proceeded to defeat the monsters.
Function and Personality
As king of the Gods, Zeus assumed responsibility for the behavior of humans as well as other deities. Thus, it was Zeus who often meted out punishment for their misdeeds. For instance, Zeus condemned Tantalus to eternal torture in Tartarus for trying to trick the gods into eating the flesh of his butchered son. Some of the punishments he delivered were rather puerile, such as when he killed Salmoneus with a thunderbolt for attempting to impersonate him, riding around in a bronze chariot while imitating thunder. Though Zeus could be petty and malicious, he also had a righteous element, perhaps best exemplified in his aid on behalf of Atreus and his murder of Capaneus for unbridled arrogance. He also served as the beneficent protector of strangers and travelers against those who might seek to victimize them.
Cult of Zeus
Role and epithets
Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon was also reflected in his status as the most supreme cultural artifact of Greece. In some sense, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity, and as such, he was honoured with one of the most popular religious cults.
Numerous epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority:
- Olympios emphasized Zeus's kingship over both the gods and the Panhellenic festival at Olympia.
- A related title was Panhellenios, ('Zeus of all the Hellenes') to whom Aeacus' famous temple on Aegina was dedicated.
Zeus also had alternative epithets based upon his particular functions:
- As Xenios, Zeus was the patron of hospitality and guests, ready to avenge any wrong done to a stranger.
- As Horkios, he was the keeper of oaths. Liars who were exposed were made to dedicate a statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary of Olympia.
- As Agoraios, Zeus watched over business at the agora, and punished dishonest traders.
These epithets illustrate the multifarious character of his wide-ranging authority in both mythical and in religious understanding.
Panhellenic cults of Zeus
The major center at which all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia. The quadrennial festival there featured the famous Games. There was also an altar to Zeus made not of stone, but of ash - from the accumulated remains of many centuries' worth of animals sacrificed there.
Outside of the major inter-polis sanctuaries, there were certain modes of worshipping Zeus that were shared across the Greek world. Most of the above titles, for instance, could be found at any number of Greek temples from Asia Minor to Sicily. Certain modes of ritual were held in common as well: sacrificing a white animal over a raised altar, for instance.
On the other hand, certain cities had Zeus-cults that operated in markedly different ways.
Some local Zeus-cults
In addition to the Panhellenic titles and conceptions listed above, local cults maintained their own idiosyncratic ideas about the king of gods and men. A few examples are listed below.
Cretan Zeus
On Crete, Zeus was worshipped at a number of caves at Knossos, Ida and Palaikastro. The stories of Minos and Epimenides suggest that these caves were once used for incubatory divination by kings and priests. The dramatic setting of Plato's Laws is along the pilgrimage-route to one such site, emphasizing archaic Cretan knowledge. On Crete, Zeus was represented in art as a long-haired youth rather than a mature adult, and hymned as ho megas kouros "the great youth". With the Kouretes, a band of ecstatic armed dancers, he presided over the rigorous military-athletic training and secret rites of the Cretan paideia.
The Hellenistic writer Euhemerus apparently proposed a theory that Zeus had actually been a great king of Crete and that posthumously his glory had slowly turned him into a deity. The works of Euhemerism have not survived, but Christian patristic writers took up the suggestion with enthusiasm.
Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia
The title Lykaios is morphologically connected to lyke "brightness", and yet it looks a lot like lykos "wolf". This semantic ambiguity is reflected in the strange cult of Zeus Lykaios in the backwoods of Arcadia, where the god takes on both lucent and lupine features. On the one hand, he presides over Mount Lykaion ("the bright mountain") the tallest peak in Arcadia, and home to a precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast (Pausanias 8.38). On the other hand, he is connected with Lycaon ("the wolf-man") whose ancient cannibalism was commemorated with bizarre, recurring rites. According to Plato (Republic 565d-e), a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every eight years to Zeus Lykaios, and a single morsel of human entrails would be intermingled with the animal's. Whoever ate the human flesh was said to turn into a wolf, and could only regain human form if he did not eat again of human flesh until the next eight-year cycle had ended.
Subterranean Zeus
Although etymology indicates that Zeus was originally a sky god, many Greek cities honored a local Zeus, who lived underground. Athenians and Sicilians honored Zeus Meilichios ("kindly" or "honeyed") while other cities had Zeus Chthonios ("earthy"), Katachthonios ("under-the-earth) and Plousios ("wealth-bringing"). These deities might be represented indifferently as snakes or men in visual art. They also received offerings of black animal victims sacrificed into sunken pits, as did chthonic deities like Persephone and Demeter, and also the heroes at their tombs. Olympian gods, by contrast, usually received white victims sacrificed upon raised altars.
In some cases, cities were not entirely sure whether the daimon to whom they sacrificed was a hero or an underground Zeus. Thus the shrine at Lebadaea in Boeotia might belong to the hero Trophonius or to Zeus Trephonius ("the nurturing"), depending on whether you believe Pausanias or Strabo. The hero Amphiaraus was honored as Zeus Amphiaraus at Oropus outside of Thebes, and the Spartans even had a shrine to Zeus Agamemnon.
Oracles of Zeus
Although most oracle sites were usually dedicated to Apollo, the heroes, or various goddesses like Themis, a few oracular sites were dedicated to Zeus.
The Oracle at Dodona
The cult of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus, where there is evidence of religious activity from the 2nd millennium B.C.E. onward, centered around a sacred oak. When the Odyssey was composed (circa 750 B.C.E.), divination was done there by barefoot priests called Selloi, who lay on the ground and observed the rustling of the leaves and branches (Odyssey 14.326-7). By the time Herodotus wrote about Dodona, female priestesses called peleiades ("doves") had replaced the male priests.
Zeus' consort at Dodona was not Hera, but the goddess Dione — whose name is a feminine form of "Zeus". Her status as a titaness suggests to some that she may have been a more powerful pre-Hellenic deity, and perhaps the original occupant of the oracle.
The Oracle at Siwa
The oracle of Ammon at the oasis of Siwa in the Western Desert of Egypt did not lie within the bounds of the Greek world before Alexander's day, but it already loomed large in the Greek mind during the archaic era: Herodotus mentions consultations with Zeus Ammon in his account of the Persian War. Zeus Ammon was especially favored at Sparta, where a temple to him existed by the time of the Peloponnesian War (Pausanias 3.18).
After Alexander made a trek into the desert to consult the oracle at Siwa, the figure arose of a Libyan Sibyl.
Other oracles of Zeus
The chthonic Zeuses (or heroes) Trophonius and Amphiaraus were both said to give oracles at the cult-sites.
Zeus and foreign gods
Zeus was equivalent to the Roman god Jupiter and associated in the syncretic classical imagination (see interpretatio graeca) with various other deities, such as the Egyptian Ammon and the Etruscan Tinia. He (along with Dionysus) absorbed the role of the chief Phrygian god Sabazios in the syncretic deity known in Rome as Sabazius.
Significance
Zeus is of great importance not only as the ruler of the Greek pantheon, but more generally as one of (if not the) most identifiable and influential representations of God in the world. His depiction as the white-bearded, overwatching sky god has often been the archetypal image of God in the Western world, including the Christian tradition in some instances. Also, images of the old bearded God have been prevalent in popular culture references to the supreme divine. Further, the idea that God is a tempermental, monarchical figure no doubt derive in part from Zeus. This conception of God as what Brian Wren calls the KINGAFAP (the King, God, Almighty, Father. All Powerful Protector) is basically an extension upon depictions and descriptions of Zeus. Thus, Zeus' presence in the collective religious consciousness of much of humanity is unquestionably immense.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Burkert, Walter, (1977) 1985. Greek Religion, especially section III.ii.1 (Harvard University Press)
- Cook, Arthur Bernard, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, (3 volume set), (1914-1925). New York, Bibilo & Tannen: 1964.
- Volume 1: Zeus, God of the Bright Sky, Biblo-Moser, June 1, 1964, ISBN 0-8196-0148-9 (reprint)
- Volume 2: Zeus, God of the Dark Sky (Thunder and Lightning), Biblo-Moser, June 1, 1964, ISBN 0-8196-0156-X
- Volume 3: Zeus, God of the Dark Sky (earthquakes, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorites)
- Druon, Maurice, The Memoirs of Zeus, 1964, Charles Scribner's and Sons. (tr. Humphrey Hare)
- Farnell, Lewis Richard, Cults of the Greek States 5 vols. Oxford; Clarendon 1896-1909. Still the standard reference.
- Farnell, Lewis Richard, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality, 1921.
- Mitford,William, The History of Greece, 1784. Cf. v.1, Chapter II, Religion of the Early Greeks
- Moore, Clifford H., The Religious Thought of the Greeks, 1916.
- Nilsson, Martin P., Greek Popular Religion, 1940. [1]
- Nilsson, Martin P., History of Greek Religion, 1949.
- Wren, Brian. What Language Shall I Borrow? God-talk in Worship: A Male Response to Feminist Theology. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
- Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1925.
- Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, [2], article on Zeus [3]
External links
- Greek Mythology Link, Zeus stories of Zeus in myth
- Theoi Project, Zeus summary, stories, classical art
- Theoi Project, Cult Of Zeus cult and statues
- Pictures of the Altar of Zeus and its meaning in Scripture
- The myths of Zeus and Ganymede; and Zeus and Tantalus
Template:Greek myth (Olympian)2
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