Information AboutZeus |
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about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving.]] Zeus ( of the Sky and Thunder in Greek Mythology . Jupiter in the Roman Mythology . Cult of Zeus ]] Prehistory
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 is envisaged by Greek artists especially in two poses: standing, striding forward a thunderbolt levelled in his raised right hand and seated in majesty. Role and epithets Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympic pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and heroines (see list at bottom of article) and was featured in many of their stories. Though the Homeric "cloud gatherer" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near Eastern cognates, he was also the most supreme Cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek Religious beliefs and the Archetypal Greek deity. The Epithet s or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority:
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 animal victims immolated 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 Temple s 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 BC onward, centered around a sacred oak. When the Odyssey was composed (circa 750 BC ), 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 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 (from Jovis Pater or "Father '''Jove'''") 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 . Zeus in myth Birth , Demeter , Hera , Hades , and Poseidon , but 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— an oracle that Zeus was to hear and avert. 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. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete , handing Cronus a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed. Childhood Rhea hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. According to varying versions of the story: # He was then raised by Gaia . # He was raised by 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. (See Cornucopia .) # He was raised by a Nymph named Adamanthea . Since Cronus ruled over the Earth , the Heaven s and the Sea , she 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. # He was raised by a Nymph named Cynosura . In gratitude, Zeus Placed Her Among The Stars . # He was raised by Melissa , who nursed him with Goat s-milk Zeus becomes king of the gods After reaching manhood, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge the other children in reverse order of swallowing: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, the Omphalos , then the rest. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an Emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus' Stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Gigantes , the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes , from their dungeon in Tartarus (The Titans ; he killed their guard, Campe . As gratitude, the Cyclopes gave him 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 overthrew Cronus and the other Titans, in the combat called the Titanomachy . The defeated Titans were then cast into a shadowy underworld region known as Tartarus. After the battle with the Titans, Zeus shared the world with his elder brothers, ) 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 Monster s Typhon and Echidna . He vanquished Typhon and trapped him under a mountain, but left Echidna and her children alive as challenges for future Hero es. Zeus and Hera Zeus was brother and consort of , Eileithyia , Hebe . The conquests of Zeus among Nymph s 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: Semele , Io , Europa and Leda . (For more details, see below). Mythic anecdote renders Hera as jealous of his amorous conquests and a consistent enemy of Zeus' mistresses and their children by him. For a time, a Nymph named Echo had the job of distracting Hera from his affairs by incessantly talking: when Hera discovered the deception, she cursed Echo to repeat the words of others. Consorts and children Deific mother Mortal/nymph/other mother Zeus miscellany
The Twelve Olympians Zeus in Neopaganism Far from the role Zeus held in Ancient Mythology, and apart from Hellenic Neopagans ( Hellenismos ) modern Neopagans typically view Zeus as a governing figurehead and little more. Most neopagans reject ancient myths about Zeus. Zeus has relatively few worshippers in modern neopaganism, and (unlike his roles in Mythology) is seen as a god of governance and authority. Though many see Zeus as the ''King'' or ''Figurehead'' as ruler over the Olympians, they often consider him of lesser importance than the Gaia and other popular Titan gods who are not believed to be bound to Tartarus . The power and influence of Zeus is thought to pale in importance to Hades and other gods more directly related to the afterlife. It is thought by many Neopagans, for example, that Hades holds far greater power than Zeus, and that his decisions and authority, particularly over the fate of mortals, often overshadows Zeus. Those sects that do include worship of Zeus often do so in passing, including him with other gods simply because of his relation in mythology. There is little relevance between actual mythology and modern perceptions of Zeus by most Neopagans. It could be argued that, by and large, modern Neopagan perceptions of Zeus are New Age and not founded in any actual history or mythology. Worship of Zeus sometimes includes the burning of oils, or more often a passing utterance of him as an authority of Olympus or husband of Hera (a more popular deity in modern neopaganism). Modern, pagan worshippers of Zeus usually carry as necklace the Labrys /Pelekys, the double-headed axe with which Zeus throws to bring storm. The Labrys is the Greek thundergod's lightning weapon. Spoken-word myths - audio files References
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