Zeus (IPA: /zjuːs/; in Greek: nominative: Ζεύς Zeús /zdeús/, genitive: Διός Diós; Modern Greek /'zefs/) in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" 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 two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.
Zeus was the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort was Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
His Roman counterpart was Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart Tinia. In Hindu mythology his counterpart was Indra with ever common weapon as thunderbolt.
Panhellenic cults of Zeus
The major center where all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia. Their quadrennial festival 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 no modes of worshipping Zeus precisely shared across the Greek world. Most of the titles listed below, 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.
History
Zeus, poetically referred to by the vocative Zeu pater ("O, father Zeus"), is a continuation of *Di̯ēus, the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr ("Sky Father").[2] The god is known under this name in Sanskrit (cf. Dyaus/Dyaus Pita), Latin (cf. Jupiter, from Iuppiter, deriving from the PIE vocative *dyeu-ph2tēr[3]), deriving from the basic form *dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god").[2] And in Germanic and Norse mythology (cf. *Tīwaz > OHG Ziu, ON Týr), together with Latin deus, dīvus and Dis(a variation of dīves[4]), from the related noun *deiwos.[4] 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 (Þórr). Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology.[5]
Role and epithets
Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults. Though the Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity.
Aside from local epithets that simply designated the deity to doing something random at some particular place, the epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority:
- Zeus Olympios emphasized Zeus's kingship over both the gods in addition to his specific presence at the Panhellenic festival at Olympia.
- A related title was Zeus Panhellenios ('Zeus of all the Hellenes'), to whom Aeacus' famous temple on Aegina was dedicated.
- As Zeus Xenios, Zeus was the patron of hospitality and guests, ready to avenge any wrong done to a stranger.
- As Zeus Horkios, he was the keeper of oaths. Exposed liars were made to dedicate a statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary of Olympia.
- As Zeus Agoraeus, Zeus watched over business at the agora and punished dishonest traders.
- As Zeus Aegiduchos or Aegiochos he was the bearer of the Aegis with which he strikes terror into the impious and his enemies.[6][7][8] Others derive this epithet from αίξ ("goat") and οχή and take it as an allusion to the legend of Zeus' suckling at the breast of Amalthea.[9][10]
- As Zeus Meilichios, "Easy-to-be-entreated", he subsumed an archaic chthonic daimon propitiated in Athens, Meilichios.
- As Zeus Tallaios, or "Solar Zeus", he was worshiped in Crete.
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. With the epithet Zeus Aetnaeus he was worshiped on Mount Aetna, where there was a statue of him, and a local festival called the Aetnaea in his honor.[11] Other examples are listed below.
- As Zeus Aeneius or Aenesius, he was worshiped in the island of Cephalenia, where he had a temple on Mount Aenos.[12]
- As Zeus Agamemnon he was worshipped at Sparta.
Cretan Zeus
With one exception, Greeks were unanimous in recognizing the birthplace of Zeus as Crete. Minoan culture contributed many essentials of ancient Greek religion: "by a hundred channels the old civilization emptied itself into the new", Will Durant observed,[13] and Cretan Zeus retained his youthful Minoan features. The local child of the Great Mother, "a small and inferior deity who took the roles of son and consort",[14] whose Minoan name the Greeks Hellenized as Velchanos, was in time asssumed as an epithet by Zeus, as transpired at many other sites, and he came to be venerated in Crete as Zeus Velchanos, the "boy-Zeus", often simply the Kouros.
In Crete, Zeus was worshipped at a number of caves at Knossos, Ida and Palaikastro. In the Hellenistic period a small sanctuary dedicated to Zeus Velchanos was founded at the Aghia Triada site of a long-ruined Minoan palace. Broadly contemporary coins from Phaistos show the form under which he was worshiped: a youth sits among the branches of a tree, with a cockerel on his knees.[15] On other Cretan coins Velchanos is represented as an eagle and in association with a goddess celebrating a mystic marriage.[16] Inscriptions at Gortyn and Lyttos record a Velchania festival, showing that Velchanios was still widely venerated in Hellenistic Crete.[17]
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". Ivory statuettes of the "Divine Boy" were unearthed near the Labyrinth at Knossos]] by Sir Arthur Evans.[18] 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 myth of the death of Cretan Zeus, localised in numerous mountain sites though only mentioned in a comparatively late source, Callimachus,[19] together with the assertion of Antoninus Liberalis that a fire shone forth annually from the birth-cave the infant shared with a mythic swarm of bees, suggests that Velchanos had been an annual vegetative spirit.[20] 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 Euhemerus himself have not survived, but Christian patristic writers took up the suggestion with enthusiasm.
Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia
- For more details on this topic, see Lykaia.
The epithet Lykaios ("wolf-Zeus") is assumed by Zeus only in connection with the archaic festival of the Lykaia on the slopes of Mount Lykaion ("Wolf Mountain"), the tallest peak in rustic Arcadia; Zeus had only a formal connection[21] with the rituals and myths of this primitive rite of passage with an ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of a werewolf transformation for the ephebes who were the participants.[22] Near the ancient ash-heap where the sacrifices took place[23] was a forbidden precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast.[24] According to Plato (Republic 565d-e), a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every nine 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 nine-year cycle had ended. There were games associated with the Lykaia, removed in the fourth century to the first urbanization of Arcadia, Megalopolis; there the major temple was dedicated to Zeus Lykaios.
Apollo, too had an archaic wolf-form, Apollo Lycaeus, worshipped in Athens at the Lykeion, or Lyceum, which was made memorable as the site where Aristotle walked and taught.
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 as snakes or in human form in visual art, or, for emphasis as both together in one image. 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.
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