Zeus

Greek mythology – Present

King of the Greek gods and lord of the sky, ruler of Mount Olympus, wielder of the thunderbolt, and the final authority over gods and mortals alike.

greek mythologygodolympian

Zeus was the king of the Greek gods, the ruler of the sky, and the head of the divine family that lived on Mount Olympus. According to myth, he was the youngest child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Cronus, fearing a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, swallowed each baby whole, until Rhea hid the infant Zeus and tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead. Grown in secret, Zeus freed his siblings and led the gods in a ten-year war against the Titans. Victorious, the three brothers divided the world by lot: Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the Underworld. As king, Zeus was the god of thunder and lightning; his weapon, the thunderbolt, forged by the Cyclopes, was a symbol of power that could not be resisted. He was also the guardian of oaths, guests, and justice, the enforcer of xenia, the sacred law of hospitality. Yet Zeus was no perfect ruler. Greek myth remembers him as endlessly unfaithful to his wife and sister Hera, fathering many gods and heroes (including Heracles) and triggering some of mythology's most famous quarrels. In the Odyssey, Zeus sits above the action as the final judge. The other gods appeal to him, and it is his decision that at last allows Odysseus to go home. To the Greeks, Zeus embodied the idea that even the mightiest power should answer to law and justice, an ideal his own behavior often failed to meet. How we know. There is no historical king Zeus. We read him in Hesiod’s Theogony, in Homer, and at temples such as Olympia. See the Titanomachy and Odysseus’s return. Continue in the Odyssey journey.

Zeus

Further reading

Zeus

Further reading