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Greek mythology
Zeus
Image ci-contre : Héra et Zeus (détail).
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Zeus was the supreme god of the Greeks (his Greek name gave us the French word “dieu”, meaning god). He was the master of lightening (Zeus – Keraumos) like Thor for the Scandinavians. He was the son of Cronos and Rhea. Cronos was afraid of being overthro wn by one of his sons and, unlike certain kings who kill their heirs, sent them into exile, shut them up in towers, put them into a chest and throw them into the sea or abandonded them on a hill top etc., Cronos chose to devour them all! Thus he ate Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Hades. Rhea was somewhat fed up with this cannibalism and she determined to save her youngest son.
She gave birth in a cave on Crete and presented her husband with a stone tied in a cloth instead of the newborn babe. Little Zeus grew up peacefully on the island. To drown his cries, the islanders danced and made a noise, and he got his milk from the udder of the goat Amalthea. One day, little Zeus played up and pulled one of the goat’s horns off. So that she would forgive him, he gave it back to her and told her that henceforth, any food she desired would come out of the horn. This was the origin of the horn of plenty. Zeus avenged his brothers by making his father, Cronos, vomit them up. He shared the world between his brothers. To Hades he gave the underworld, to Poseidon he gave the sea and he himself took the heavens and the earth.
Zeus had three wives : Metis, Themis and Hera. The first bore him Athena; the second the Muses and the third gave him Ares, Hebe and Ilythia All-powerful Zeus feared only the Moirae who held the key to fate. He was a jovially faithless husband (jovial comes from Jovius the genitive in Latin of Jupiter). However, he had to change his appearance because to look upon a god was fatal to a mortal and also, Hera was extremely jealous. He employed the services of a particularly talkative nymph to divert Hera’s attention during his adventures. However, Hera discovered the trick and punished the nymph by condemning her to repeat for evermore the ends of her sentences. One day when she failed to seduce Narcissus with whom she fell hopelessly in love at first sight, the nymph perished in a cave. All that remained was the sound of her voice eternally repeating the ends of her sentences. That nymph was called Echo.
Callisto was one of Zeus’s lovers. She changed him into a bear to protect him from Hera. She then changed her son into a bear cub. She took both of them by the tail and swung them round before releasing them into the sky (this is why their tails grew big), and Hera ordered Poseidon never to allow these constellations to drop into the ocean. This is the reason why today they are always above the horizon. Zeus had the power to decide the winner of battles. He killed Phaeton, Bellerophon and Esculape by striking them with lightening. He created Pandora to punish men and he also punished Tantale and Lycaon for giving him human meat to eat.
Finally, he sent the deluge to punish the men of the Bronze Age. He took part in the Gigantomachia. He also killed the monster Typhon. The story goes that Typhon did not succumb to the lightening; he won and imprisoned Zeus having cut out his tendons of his legs to prevent him from doing further harm. Hermes or Cadmos gave them back to him. Zeus won the final battle and buried Typhon under Etna. He changed himself into an eagle in order to carry off Ganymede, a young man he was in love with, and imprison him on Mount Olympus. He made him cupbearer to the gods.
Zeus was worshipped especially in Olympia, at Dodoni where he predicted the future with the leaves of an oak tree, and in Sicily at Agrigento. |
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