User:Michael Aurel/Zeus

Zeus

To Do

• Infancy

• Other versions
• See Keightly (+ for birth)

• Seven wives

• Cite edition for B scholia 8.39

• Marriage to Hera

• Figure out Iliad Scholia
• Other equivalents to Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 3 (see BNJ)

• Affairs

• Figure out ancient sources for Euripides' Antiope, add note, cite Gantz

• Sources

• Barringer
• Seaford
• Look properly through Cook
• Look through Fowler
• Look through Brill's New Pauly
• re Iconography (Statues)

Structure

Old

• Birth
• Infancy
• "King of the Gods"
• Prometheus and Conflicts with humans
• In the Iliad
• Other myths
• Family
  • Seven wives of Zeus
  • Zeus and Hera
  • Transformation of Zeus
  • Children

New

• Birth
• Infancy
• Ascension to Power
• Challenges to Power
• Seven wives
• Marriage to Hera
• Affairs
• Rule
• Punishments of mortals
• Prometheus and conflicts with humans [eg. Pandora, flood myth, lycaon]
• Trojan war
• Orphism

[Variety of "other myths": Aloadae attempted overthrow, intervention in quarrels and role in mediating disputes, Ganymede, Dioscuri, etc.]

• Name (Etymology?)
• Mythology
• Cult
• Epithets
• Iconography
• Later Representations
• Possible: Origins, identifications with other gods, Functions?

Sources

• Gantz (see index, p. 909)
• Hard (see pp. 749–50)
• Grimal, s.v. Zeus, pp. 466–9
• Tripp, s.v. Zeus, pp. 605–10
• Cook: Vol. 1, index, pp. 850–9; Vol. 2, index, pp. 1333–47; Vol. 3, index, pp. 1257–63
• Fowler 2013 (see index, p. 825)
• Yasumura
• Caldwell (see index, p. 126)
• Morford (see index, I 34)
• Hansen, (see index, p. 393)
• Smith, s.v. Zeus
• March, s.v. Zeus, 790–4
• Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Zeus, pp. 1636–8
• Brill's New Pauly, s.v. Zeus
• Dowden, Zeus
• Lane Fox (see index, p. 465)
• Keightley, pp. 69–75

Birth

Sources

Primary

Apollodorus

1.1.5

[Kronos] wedded his sister Rhea; and since both Earth and Sky foretold him that he would be dethroned by his own son, he used to swallow his offspring at birth. His firstborn Hestia he swallowed, then Demeter and Hera, and after them Pluto and Poseidon.

1.1.6

[6] Enraged at this, Rhea repaired to Crete, when she was big with Zeus, and brought him forth in a cave of Dicte.¹

¹ According to Hesiod, Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and the infant god was hidden in a cave of Mount Aegeum (Hes. Th. 468-480). Diod. 5.70 mentions the legend that Zeus was born at Dicte in Crete, and that the god afterwards founded a city on the site. But according to Diodorus, or his authorities, the child was brought up in a cave on Mount Ida. The ancients were not agreed as to whether the infant god had been reared on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte. Apollodorus declares for Dicte, and he is supported by Verg. G. 4.153, Serv. Verg. A. 3.104, and the Vatican Mythographers (Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 34, 79, First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16). On the other hand the claim of Mount Ida is favoured by Callimachus, Hymn i.51; Ovid Fasti 4.207; and Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.784. The wavering of tradition on this point is indicated by Apollodorus, who, while he calls the mountain Dicte, names one of the god's nurses Ida.

Callimachus

Hymn to Zeus (1)

4–11 (pp. 36–9)

How shall we sing of him – as lord of Dicte or of Lycaeum? My soul is all in doubt, since debated is his birth. O Zeus, some say that thou wert born on the hills of Ida; others, O Zeus, say in Arcadia; did these or those, O Father lie? “Cretans are ever liars.” Yea, a tomb, O Lord, for thee the Cretans builded; but thou didst not die, for thou art for ever.

In Parrhasia it was that Rheia bare thee, where was a hill sheltered with thickest brush.

Diodorus Siculus

68.1

¹ To Cronus and Rhea, we are told, were born Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades.

70.1–2

¹ Regarding the birth of Zeus and the manner in which he came to be king, there is no agreement. ... But others recount a myth, which runs as follows: There was delivered to Cronus an oracle regarding the birth of Zeus which stated that the son who would be born to him would wrest the kingship from him by force. ² Consequently Cronus time and again did away with the children whom he begot; but Rhea, grieved as she was, and yet lacking the power to change her husband's purpose, when she had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Idê, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Cronus, entrusted the rearing of him to the Curetes who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mount Idê.

70.6

And when he [Zeus] had attained to manhood he founded first a city in Dicta, where indeed the myth states that he was born; ...

Eumelus

fr. 2 West, pp. 224, 225

Eumelus of Corinth would have it that Zeus was born in the country that is now Lydia.

[= fr. 10 Fowler, p. 109 = PEG fr. 18 (Bernabé, p. 114) = Lydus, De Mensibus 4.71]

Hesiod

Theogony

453–91  [Evelyn-White – Perseus]

But Rhea was subject in love to Cronos and bore splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera [455] and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. These great Cronos swallowed as each [460] came forth from the womb to his mother's knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. For he learned from Earth and starry Heaven that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, [465] strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeus.2Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children: and unceasing grief seized Rhea. But when she was about to bear Zeus, the father of gods and men, [470] then she besought her own dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Cronos for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down. And they readily heard and obeyed their dear daughter, [475] and told her all that was destined to happen touching Cronos the king and his stout-hearted son. So they sent her to Lyctus, to the rich land of Crete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Him did vast Earth receive from Rhea [480] in wide Crete to nourish and to bring up. To that place came Earth carrying him swiftly through the black night to Lyctus first, and took him in her arms and hid him in a remote cave beneath the secret places of the holy earth on thick-wooded Mount Aegeum; but to the mightily ruling son of Heaven, the earlier king of the gods, [485] she gave a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then he took it in his hands and thrust it down into his belly: wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled, [490] and that he was soon to overcome him by force and might and drive him from his honors, himself to reign over the deathless gods.

Most, pp. 38–41

Caldwell, pp. 53–7

West 1966, pp. 128–30

Pausanias

9.41.6

There is beyond the city a crag called Petrachus. Here they hold that Cronus was deceived, and received from Rhea a stone instead of Zeus, and there is a small image of Zeus on the summit of the mountain.

West 1966, p. 301 on line 485

[Greek]: see on 498–500. Kronos was supposed to have swallowed the stone at Petrachos, a crag above Chaeronea (Paus. 9. 41. 6).

Secondary

Fowler 2013

p. 35

Kouretes: Eumelos (fr. 10) says that Zeus was born in Lydia, and that his guardians were the Kouretes. Lydus, who quotes the fragment, agrees, citing a spot high on Mt Tmolos once called the birthplace of Zeus Hyetios, but which is now called Deusios.

p. 50

There is at least Eumelos (fr. 10), who says that Zeus was born on Mt Tmolos in Lydia and protected by the Kouretes.

p. 391

Omphalos and Omphaleion, and the Cave of Zeus (70.4); the bees (70.5); Dikta (70.6); Athena's birthplace (72.3); Cretan mysteries (n.3). At 70.2 Diodoros appears to say that Rhea gave birth at Ida (MS C says Dikta), but at 70.6 he says Dikta (cf. Agathokles FGrHist 472 F 1); Hesiod (Th. 477) had said Lyktos, Kallimachos in his Hymn to Zeus (10) said Arkadia. Mt Dikta in eastern Crete was the site of ancient worship, as the famous Palaikastro hymn attests, but there was no cave there; the cave where (as Diodoros rightly says) Zeus was reared was on Ida, but often called 'Diktaian', causing predictable confusion.²¹

²¹ West on Hes. Th. 477; Sporn, Heiligtiimer und Kulte Kretas 49-50. For the cave on Ida see J. Larson, Ancient Greek Cults 25; Sporn 218-23. For the hymn, see Furley and Bremer, Greek Hymns 1.65-76, 2.1-20. Diodoros unfortunately does not specify which polis Zeus was supposed to have founded near Dikta; that it was ruined by his day was convenient.

Gantz

p. 41

The sixth and last pairing of Titans is that of Kronos, youngest of the twelve, with his sister Rheia. From their union come six children, and Kronos swallows, or means to swallow, all of them (Th 453-62). What else he may have done since volunteering to castrate his own father we cannot say, for Hesiod has no account of what followed that deed; we do not see the son assume rule or take any other action, although later Hesiod calls him ruler of the earlier generation of gods (Th 491). He does eventually receive a prophecy from his parents to the effect that he is fated to be overthrown by one of his own children, and to forestall this, the first five—Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon—are swallowed as soon as they are born (or, less probably, just the male children).⁴⁹ When the sixth is about to arrive, Rheia appeals to Gaia and Ouranos—who seem now on more amiable terms with each other—for a plan to save him. Following their counsel, she goes to Lyktos on Krete to deliver Zeus, and hands him over to Gaia to rear, while she herself gives Kronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow (Th 463-91).

⁴⁹ See n. 16 above. [n. 16 says: "So too Orphic fr 58 Kern, where only the males are swallowed."]

Grimal

s.v. Zeus, p. 467

Like all the Olympians, Zeus belonged to the second generation of gods. He was the son of the Titan CRONUS and of RHEA, and just as Cronus was the youngest of the line of the Titans, so Zeus was the last-born (Table 38), Cronus was warned by an oracle that one of his children would dethrone him and tried to prevent this threat from coming about by devouring his sons and daughters as Rhea gave birth to them. On the birth of the sixth, Rhea decided to use a trick and save Zeus. She gave birth to him secretly at night and, in the morning, gave Cronus a stone wrapped up in a blanket. Cronus ate this stone which he thought was a child, and Zeus was saved. There were two distinct traditions about the place of Zeus’ birth. The most frequently mentioned place was in Crete, on Mount Aegeon or Mount Ida or Mount Dicte. The other tradition, defended by Callimachus in his Hymn to Zeus, situates it in Arcadia (see NEDA).

Hansen

p. 67

Kronos mated with his sister Rhea, who bore him three daughters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and three sons, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Keeping constant watch, Kronos swallowed each child as it was born, for he had learned that he was destined to be overcome by one of his own sons, and he did not want anyone else to be king among the gods. Rhea was seized with grief and asked her parents, Gaia and Ouranos, how she might bear her next child in secret and punish Kronos. When she was about to bear her last child, Zeus, Gaia and Ouranos told her to bring him to the island of Crete. There Rhea hid her baby in a cave, and she wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Kro- nos, who swallowed it in the belief that it was his son.

Hard

p. 67–8

After his rise to power, Kronos married his sister Rhea, who bore him six splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus; but since he was warned [p. 68] by his parents that he was destined to be overpowered by his own son, he swallowed each of his children at birth, causing endless grief to his wife.²¹ When Zeus was due to be born, Rhea finally consulted Ouranos and Gaia on her own account, asking them to devise a plan to enable her to save her forthcoming child and bring retribution on Kronos. On their advice, she secretly entrusted the new-born Zeus to Gaia in Crete (see further on pp. 74–5) and gave Kronos a large stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes, which he swallowed in the usual manner in place of his child.²²

Hesiod offers little detail on what happened next, ...

²¹ Ibid. [ie. Hes. Theog.] 453–67.

²² Ibid. 468–91.

p. 74–5

Something has already been said about the circumstances of Zeus’ birth in connection with the succession myth (see p. 68), in which Rhea hid him away in Crete to save him from being swallowed by Kronos and tricked her husband by giving him a stone to swallow instead. According to Hesiod, she went to the Cretan town of Lyktos (to the west of Knossos) when she was due to give birth to Zeus, and entrusted him to her mother Gaia to nourish and rear; so Gaia hid him away deep inside herself in a remote cave on Mt Aigaion (otherwise unknown, but presumably to be identified with one of the various mountains near Lyktos that contain Minoan [p. 75] holy caves).⁵⁰ This account is peculiar to the Theogony, for in the subsequent tradition the cave is either located in Mt Ida in the centre of Crete or, less commonly, on Mt Dikte to the east.⁵¹

⁵⁰ Hes. Theog. 477–84.

⁵¹ Dikte and Ida cited as alternative locations, Call. Hymn 1.4–6; Ida the earlier, e.g. Pi. Ol. 5.40–1, Dikte first in Call. l.c., A.R. 1.509 and 1130, Arat. 33 (where erroneously placed near Ida).

Keightley

p. 70

A very ancient tradition, however, (for it occurs in Hesiod) made the isle of Crete the scene of the birth of the monarch of Olympos. According to this tradition Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, retired to a cavern near Lyctos or Cnossos in Crete. She there brought forth her babe, whom the Melian nymphs received in their arms ;

Lane Fox

p. 263

After this act of castration Cronos ruled as King Cronos in place of his neutered father.11 He married his sister Rhea and he too fathered children. He devoured each one, fearing the warning of his parents that one of them would one day rule in his place: ...

p. 264

Eventually [p. 264] Rhea contrived to hide her youngest son, Zeus, and gave Cronos a stone to swallow instead of the child. Cronos vomited the stone, but Zeus grew up in safe keeping at a distance.

Smith

s.v. Zeus

Hesiod (Theog. 116, &c.) also calls Zeus the son of Cronos and Rhea¹, and the brother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Crones swallowed his children immediately after their birth, but when Rhea was near giving birth to Zeus, she applied to Uranus and Ge for advice as to how the child might be saved. Before the hour of birth came, Uranus and Ge sent Rhea to Lyetos in Crete, requesting her to bring up her child there. Rhea accordingly concealed her infant in a cave of Mount Aegaeon, and gave to Cronos a stone wrapped up in cloth, which he swallowed in the belief that it was his son. Other traditions state that Zeus was born and brought up on Mount Dicte or Ida (also the Trojan Ida), Ithome in Messenia, Thebes in Boeotia, Aegion in Achaia, or Olenos in Aetolia. According to the common account, however, Zeus grew up in Crete.

¹ * As Rhea is sometimes identified with Ge, Zeus is also called a son of Ge. (Aeschyl. Suppl. 901.)

Tripp

s.v. Zeus, p. 605

A. Zeus was said by Homer to be the eldest of the sons of Cronus and Rhea. Most later writers accepted the view of Hesiod that he was the youngest, born after his father had swallowed his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, and his sisters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. Rhea or her mother, Ge, tricked Cronus by giving him, instead of the baby Zeus, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which Cronus swallowed.

West 1966

p. 290 on lines 453–506

The Birth of Zeus. The next Titan pair is Kronos and Rhea. The story of how Kronos swallowed his children to avoid being overthrown by one of them, and how Zeus avoided this fate by being smuggled away to Crete, ...

p. 291 on lines 453–506

Immediately after his birth, Zeus is entrusted to Earth and hidden in a cave in Crete until he is grown up. Other classical sources say that he was actually born in the cave, but differ regarding its location: it is usually on Mt. Ida or Mt. Dicte, and only Hesiod puts it near Lyctus.

p. 293 on lines 454–8. This family too is triadic; the three daughters are named before the three sons (cf. on 133), and Zeus is made the last and youngest son with two lines to himself (cf. on 137).

p. 294 on line 456

[Greek]: cf. Il. 9.497.

[Greek]: see on 441. In the Iliad (13.355, 15.166, 182) Poseidon is said to be younger than Zeus.

Text

Old

Cronus sired several children by Rhea: Hestia, 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 overthrown by his son as he had previously overthrown Uranus, his own father, an oracle that Rhea heard and wished to avert.

When Zeus was about to be born, Rhea sought 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.

Infancy

Sources

Primary

Antoninus Liberalis

19

§ 19 THE THIEVES: In Crete there is said to be a sacred cave full of bees. In it, as storytellers say, Rhea gave birth to Zeus; it is a sacred place and no one is to go near it, whether god or mortal. At the appointed time each year a great blaze is seen to come out of the cave. Their story goes on to say that this happens whenever the blood from the birth of Zeus begins to boil up. The sacred bees that were the nurses of Zeus occupy this cave. Laius, Celeus, Cerberus and Aegolius were bold enough to approach the cave to collect a great quantity of honey. With their bodies enclosed all over with bronze, they gathered the bees' honey and gazed on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, Their bronze armour split away from their bodies. Zeus thundered and brandished his thunderbolt, but the Fates and Themis stopped him. It was impious for anyone to die there. So Zeus turned them all into birds. From them is descended the race of birds of omen, blue rock thrushes, woodpeckers, kerberoi and aigolioi owls. Their appearance effectively augurs well, better than other birds, because they have seen the blood of Zeus.

• Hard, p. 75

A curious tale about Zeus’ cave in Crete is recorded by Antoninus Liberalis in his anthology of transformation myths. The cave (of unspecified location) was inhabited by sacred bees that had tended the infant Zeus, but was otherwise forbidden ground to gods and mortals alike. At one time four thieves had entered the cave nonetheless to steal some of the honey, wearing full armour (to protect themselves against the bees, and probably on account of its apotropaic value also). When they saw the swaddling-clothes of Zeus, however, and the blood that had been shed at his birth, their armour fractured and fell from their bodies; and Zeus would have killed them with a thunderbolt as punishment for their sacrilege if the Moirai (Fates) and Themis (as guardian of divine law) had not restrained him by reminding him that no one could be allowed to die in a place of such sanctity. So he transformed them into various birds that bore the same names as themselves (Laios, Kerkeos, Kerberos and Aigolios). The author remarks that the blood inside the cave used to boil up at a particular time every year, presumably on the anniversary of Zeus’ birth, causing a mass of flame to issue from the cave.⁵⁷

⁵⁷ Ant. Lib. 19.

Apollodorus

1.1.6

[6] Enraged at this, Rhea repaired to Crete, when she was big with Zeus, and brought him forth in a cave of Dicte.¹ She gave him to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrastia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse.

¹ According to Hesiod, Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and the infant god was hidden in a cave of Mount Aegeum (Hes. Th. 468-480). Diod. 5.70 mentions the legend that Zeus was born at Dicte in Crete, and that the god afterwards founded a city on the site. But according to Diodorus, or his authorities, the child was brought up in a cave on Mount Ida. The ancients were not agreed as to whether the infant god had been reared on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte. Apollodorus declares for Dicte, and he is supported by Verg. G. 4.153, Serv. Verg. A. 3.104, and the Vatican Mythographers (Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 34, 79, First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16). On the other hand the claim of Mount Ida is favoured by Callimachus, Hymn i.51; Ovid Fasti 4.207; and Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.784. The wavering of tradition on this point is indicated by Apollodorus, who, while he calls the mountain Dicte, names one of the god's nurses Ida.

1.1.7

[7] So these nymphs fed the child on the milk of Amalthea;¹ and the Curetes in arms guarded the babe in the cave, clashing their spears on their shields in order that Cronus might not hear the child's voice.² But Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus to swallow, as if it were the newborn child.³

¹ As to the nurture of Zeus by the nymphs, see Callimachus, Hymn 1.46ff.; Diod. 5.70.2ff.; Ovid, Fasti v.111ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 139; Hyginus, Ast. ii.13; Serv. Verg. A. 3.104; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.784; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 34, 79 (First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16). According to Callimachus, Amalthea was a goat. Aratus also reported, if he did not believe, the story that the supreme god had been suckled by a goat （Strab. 8.7.5）, and this would seem to have been the common opinion （Diod. 5.70.3; Hyginus, Ast. ii.13; Second Vatican Mythographer 16）. According to one account, his nurse Amalthea hung him in his cradle on a tree “in order that he might be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea” （Hyginus, Fab. 139）. Melisseus, the father of his nurses Adrastia and Ida, is said to have been a Cretan king （Hyginus, Ast. ii.13）; but his name is probably due to an attempt to rationalize the story that the infant Zeus was fed by bees. See Virgil, Geo. 1.149ff. with the note of Serv. Verg. G. 1.153; First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16.

² As to the Curetes in their capacity of guardians of the infant Zeus, see Callimachus, Hymn i.52ff.; Strab. 10.3.11; Diod. 5.70, 2-4; Lucretius ii.633-639; Verg. G. 3.150ff.; Ovid, Fasti iv.207ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 139; Serv. Verg. A. 3.104; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.784; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 34, 79 (First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16). The story of the way in which they protected the divine infant from his inhuman parent by clashing their weapons may reflect a real custom, by the observance of which human parents endeavoured to guard their infants against the assaults of demons. See Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, iii.472ff.

³ As to the trick by which Rhea saved Zeus from the maw of his father Cronus, see Hes. Th. 485ff.; Paus. 8.36.3; 9.2.7; 9.41.6; 10.24.6; Ovid, Fasti iv.199-206; Hyginus, Fab. 139; Serv. Verg. A. 3.104; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.784; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 34, 79 (First Vatican Mythographer 104; Second Vatican Mythographer 16). The very stone which Cronus swallowed and afterwards spewed out was shown at Delphi down to the second century of our era; oil was daily poured on it, and on festival days unspun wool was laid on it（Paus. 10.24.6). We read that, on the birth of Zeus's elder brother Poseidon, his mother Rhea saved the baby in like manner by giving his father Cronus a foal to swallow, which the deity seems to have found more digestible than the stone, for he is not said to have spat it out again（Paus. 8.8.2). ...

Apollonius of Rhodes

132–5 (pp. 202, 203)

... Zeus' all-beauteous plaything — the one which his dear nurse Adrasteia made for him, while he still lived a child, with childish ways, in the Idaean cave ...

Callimachus

42–5 (pp. 40, 41)

When the nymph, carrying thee, O Father Zeus, toward Cnosus,ⁱ was leaving Thenaeⁱ — for Thenae was nigh to Cnosus — even then, O God, thynavel fell_a»'ay: hence that plain the Cydonians^j call 'the Plain of the Navel.^k But thee, O Zeus, the companions of the Cyrbantes^l took to their arms, even ...

ⁱ Town in Crete.

^j Cydonia, town in Crete.

^k Schol. Nicand. Alex. 7 [Greek] Diodor. v. 70 tells the story (he says Zeus was carried by the Curetes) and gives the name of the place as Omphalos and of the plain around as Omphaleion.

^l Corybantes.

46–56 (pp. 42, 43)

... the Dictaean Meliae^a and Adrasteia^b laid thee to rest in a cradle of gold, and thou didst suck the rich teat of the she-goat Amaltheia^c and thereto eat the sweet honey-comb. For suddenly on the hills of Ida, which men call Panacra,^d appeared the works of the Panacrian bee. And lustily round thee danced the Curetes^e a war-dance,^f beating their armour, that Cronus might hear with his ears the din of the shield, but not thine infant noise.

Fairly didst thou wax, O heavenly Zeus, and fairly wert thou nurtured, and swiftly thou didst grow to manhood, and speedily came the down upon thy cheek.

^a The ash-tree nymphs, cf. Hesiod, Th. 187.

^b Cf. Apoll. Rh. iii. 132 ff. [Greek]; i.q. Nemesis, sister of the Curetes (schol.).

^c The nymph or she-goat who suckled Zeus; Diodor. v. 70, Apollod. i. 5, schol. Arat. 161, Ovid, Fast. v. 115 ff.

^d Mountains in Crete (Steph. Byz. s.v. [Greek]). Zeus rewarded the bees by making them of a golden bronze colour and rendering them insensible to the rigours of the mountain climate (Diodor. v. 70).

^e Apollodor. i. 4, " The Curetes in full armour, guarding the infant in the cave, beat their shields with their spears that Cronus might not hear the child's voice."

^f [Greek], the Cretan name for the [Greek] (Aristotle fr. 476, schol. Pind. P. ii. 127) or dance in armour (Pollux iv. 96 and 99).

Diodorus Siculus

7.65.4

The Curetes also invented swords and helmets and the war-dance, by means of which they raised a great alarum and deceived Cronus.​24 And we are told that, when Rhea, the mother of Zeus, entrusted him to them unbeknown to Cronus his father, they took him under their care and saw to his nurture; but since we purpose to set forth this affair in detail, we must take up the account at a little earlier point.

7.70.2

... but Rhea, grieved as she was, and yet lacking the power to change her husband's purpose, when she p287 had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Idê, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Cronus, entrusted the rearing of him to the Curetes who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mount Idê. The Curetes bore him off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphs, with the command that they should minister to his every need. 3 And the Nymphs nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia. And many evidences of the birth and upbringing of this god remain to this day on the island. 4 For instance, when he was being carried away, while still an infant, by the Curetes, they say that the umbilical cord (omphalos) fell from him near the river known as Triton, and that this spot has been made sacred and has been called Omphalus after that incident, while in like manner the plain about it is known as Omphaleium. And on Mount Idê, where the god was nurtured, both the cave in which he spent his days has been made sacred to him, and the meadows round about it, which lie upon the ridges of the mountain, have in like manner been consecrated to him. 5 But the most astonishing of all that which the myth relates has to do with the bees, and we should not omit to mention it: The god, they say, wishing to preserve an immortal memorial of his close association with the bees, changed the colour of them, making it like copper with the gleam of gold, and since the region lay at a very great altitude, where fierce winds blew about it and heavy snows fell, he made the bees insensible to such things and unaffected by them, since they must range over the most wintry stretches. 6 To the goat (aeg-) which suckled him p289 Zeus also accorded certain honours, and in particular took from it a surname, being called Aegiochus.​33 And when he had attained to manhood he founded first a city in Dicta, where indeed the myth states that he was born; in later times this city was abandoned, but some stone blocks of its foundations are still preserved.

Epimenides

fr. 23 Diels, p. 193 [= Scholia on Aratus, 46]

• Hard, p. 75–6

Or in another tale of the kind, Kronos set off in search of Zeus and arrived in Crete, but was deceived by his son, who concealed his presence by transforming himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. Zeus later commemorated [p. 76] the incident by placing images of the three animals in the sky as the constellations of the Dragon and the Greater and Lesser Bear (Draco and Ursa Major and Minor).⁵⁹

⁵⁹ Schol. Arat. 46.

• Gantz, p. 42

Returning to the matter of Zeus' infancy, we find in the Epimenidean Theogony that the god turns himself into a snake and his nurses into bears to deceive Kronos, and is nursed together with Aigikeros, who aids him against the Titans (3B23, 24).

Hesiod

492–3

After that, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly, ...

• Caldwell, p. 57

Hyginus

De Astronomica

2.13.5

A certain Olenus, son of Vulcan, had two daughters, the nymphs Aex and Helice, who were nurses of Jove. ... But Parmeniscus say that a certain Melisseus was king in Crete, and to his daughters Jove was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amalthea by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations.

2.13.6

§ 2.13.6 But Musaeus says Jove was nursed by Themis and the nymph Amalthea, to whom he was given by Ops, his mother. Now Amalthea had as a pet a certain goat which is said to have nursed Jove.

Fabulae

139

§ 139 CURETES: After Opis had borne Jove by Saturn, Juno asked her to give him to her, since Saturn and cast Orcus under Tartarus, and Neptune under the sea, because he knew that his son would rob him of the kingdom. When he had asked Opis for what she had borne, in order to devour it, Opis showed him a stone wrapped up like a baby; Saturn devoured it. When he realized what he had done, he started to hunt for Jove throughout the earth. Juno, however, took Jove to the island of Crete, and Amalthea, the child's nurse, hung him in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea. And lest the cries of the baby be heard, she summoned youths and gave them small brazen shields and spears, and bade them go around the tree making a noise. In Greek they are called Curetes; others call them Corybantes; these [in Italy?], however are called Lares.

• Gantz, p. 42

In Hyginus, the account of the noisemaking of Kouretes or Korybantes is prefaced by a story in which Kronos has cast Poseidon into the sea and Hades down to the Underworld, rather than swallowing them; Hera (also not swallowed) then asks her mother to give her the child Zeus when he is born, and Rheia substitutes the stone for Kronos to swallow (Fab 139). Kronos soon discovers the trick but cannot find the child, suspended as he is in a cradle between sky, earth, and sea by Amaltheia.

• Hard, p. 75

Or in a slightly different account, Amaltheia hung the infant in a cradle from a tree so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea, and the Kouretes danced around the tree.⁵⁶

⁵⁶ Hyg. Fab. 139.

182

§ 182 DAUGHTERS OF OCEAN: The daughters of Oceanus are Idothea, Althaea, and Adrasta, but others say they are daughters of Melisseus, and nurses of Jove.

Lactantius

1.21.38–40 (Bowen and Garnsey, p. 112)

38 As for the rites of Cretan Jupiter himself, what else do they reveal except the way in which he was either stolen from his father or fed? There is a nanny goat belonging to the nymph Amalthea, which fed the child from its own udder. Germanicus speaks of the animal in his Aratean poem as follows [165–68]: ‘It is thought to be Jupiter’s nurse; if the infant Jupiter really did suck the trusty teats of a Cretan goat, she can prove her suckling’s gratitude with a bright constellation.’ 39 Musaeus says that ‘Jupiter used this goat’s hide as his shield when fighting against the Titans.’153 Hence the poets’ title for him of ‘goatskin-bearing’.154 Whatever was done in spiriting the child away is done in imitation at the ceremony. 40 But his mother’s rites also operate similarly, as Ovid says in Fasti [4.207–14]: ‘Steep Ida had been resounding a long while with clamourings so that the child could wail in safety from its infant mouth. Some beat shields with sticks and others beat empty helmets: the Curetes had the one task and the Corybantes the other. The deed went unobserved, but a replay of it survives: the goddess’s devotees shake rattles of bronze and leather. Instead of helmets they thump cymbals and instead of shields drums, and a pipe plays Phrygian tunes as it did on the first occasion.’

Musaeus

fr. 8 Diels, pp. 181–2 [= Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 13 (Hard, p. 44; Olivieri, p. 17)]

Within this constellation are depicted the Goat and the Kids. * Musaeus * recounts that after Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted him to Themis, * who passed the infant on in turn to Amaltheia; * and the latter placed him with a she-goat that she owned, so that it became the nurse of Zeus. This goat was a child of Helios, and it was so terrifying to behold that the gods of the age of Cronos, struck with horror at its appearance, had asked Earth to hide it away in one of the caves in Crete; so she hid it there, placing it under the care of Amaltheia, who fed Zeus with its milk.

Ovid

Fasti

5.111–28 (pp. 268, 269)

Begin the work with Jupiter. On the first night is visible the star that tended the cradle of Jupiter^a; the rainy sign of the Olenian^b She-goat rises. She has her place in the sky as a reward for the milk she gave the babe. The Naiad Amalthea, famous on the Cretan Mount Ida, is said to have hidden Jupiter in the woods. She owned a she-goat, conspicuous among the Dictaean flocks, the fair dam of two kids; her airy horns bent over on her back; her udder was such as the nurse of Jove might have. She suckled the god. But she broke a horn on a tree, and was short of half her charm. The nymph picked it up, wrapped it in fresh herds, and carried it, full of fruit, to the lips of Jove. He, when he had gained the kingdom of heaven and sat on his father’s throne, and there was nothing greater than unconquered Jove, made his nurse and her horn of plenty into stars: the horn still keeps its mistress’ name.^c

• Gantz, p. 41

Ovid (like most other authors) returns us to the idea that Amaltheia was the owner of the goat; he adds, however, that the goat broke one of her horns against a tree, and that Amaltheia carried the horn, filled with fruits, to the child Zeus (Fasti 5.111-28).

Secondary

Fowler 2013

p. 35

Kouretes: Eumelos (fr. 10) says that Zeus was born in Lydia, and that his guardians were the Kouretes. Lydus, who quotes the fragment, agrees, citing a spot high on Mt Tmolos once called the birthplace of Zeus Hyetios, but which is now called Deusios.

p. 49

§1.7.5 KOURETES AND KORYBANTES (Eumel. fr. 10; Pher. fr. 48)

Our exploration of the limits of early syncretism continues with the Kouretes and Korybantes. The Kouretes in later tradition are the young, noisy, armed dancers of Crete who conceal the cries of the baby Zeus by banging on their shields with their lances, thus preventing detection by Kronos. In the immediate post-classical period, Kallimachos in his Hymn to Zeus (34-54) has the familiar story (also Arat. Phain. 35).

p. 50

Korinna (PMG 654 i.12-18), if classical, securely attests the myth of their guardianship of Zeus in that period. There is at least Eumelos (fr. 10), who says that Zeus was born on Mt Tmolos in Lydia and protected by the Kouretes. Iohannes Lydus in his gloss gets the cult history wrong; the birthplace of Zeus and the home of the Kouretes was on Sipylos rather than Tmolos.¹⁹¹

Gantz

p. 41

Hesiod adds to this account only that Zeus grew swiftly, but the Eumolpia of “Mousaios” says that he was given to Themis, his aunt, who in turn gave him to Amaltheia, who had a goat nurse him (2B8, apud Katast 13). The account of Ps-Eratosthenes from which this last information is drawn goes on to claim that the goat in question was a child of Helios, with an appearance much feared by the Titans, who requested Gaia to hide her in a cave on Krete. Gaia did so, but also gave her into Amaltheia’s safekeeping. Subsequently, in this same account, Zeus is advised that the skin of that goat will protect him in his battle with the Titans, being invulnerable and much feared by them (it has as well a Gorgoneion on its back). Our epitome of the Katasterismoi goes no further than this, but Hyginus (Astr 2.13.4) provides the clearly intended conclusion that this skin is the aigis, and both Hyginus and the Germanicus scholia make it the source of Zeus' epithet aigiochos. Kallimachos (Hymn 1.47—48) seems the first to assign the name "Amaltheia" to the goat itself; so too Σb Iliad 15.229, which offers much the same information as Ps-Eratosthenes, with the addition that Themis was the source of the advice to use the skin of the goat as protection. Ovid (like most other authors) returns us to the idea that Amaltheia was the owner of the goat; he adds, however, that the goat broke one of her horns against a tree, and that Amaltheia carried the horn, filled with fruits, to the child Zeus (Fasti 5.111-28).

p. 42

Returning to the matter of Zeus' infancy, we find in the Epimenidean Theogony that the god turns himself into a snake and his nurses into bears to deceive Kronos, and is nursed together with Aigikeros, who aids him against the Titans (3B23, 24). Ps-Eratosthenes, our source for the latter point, adds that this Aigikeros was sprung from Aigipan with Aix (or “the goat") as mother, and had horns and the tail of a fish, the latter appropriately since he used a conch shell to frighten the Titans (Katast 27). He was, of course, made into a constellation for his services, Aigikeros to the Greeks, Capricornus to the Romans (Astr 2.28).

Far better known than this figure, however, and probably much more crucial to Zeus' safety, are the Kouretes, the attendants of his mother who supposedly clashed their weapons to drown out his cries. If Korinna could be dated to the Archaic period, she would constitute valuable early evidence for their existence, for she says that they hid the god from Kronos (654 PMG). Otherwise we have nothing at all until the poem of "Epimenides" on the birth of the Kouretes and Korybantes (a poem that may have prefaced the Epimenidean Theogony), and nothing of any substance until Euripides. This last poet's Kretes links the Kouretes with Idaian Zeus, Zagreus, and the "mountain mother" (fr 472 N?) while Bakchai 120-34 may allude to their protective role. For the concrete action of concealing Zeus' infant cries by the clashing noise of their weapons, however, our first source is again Kallimachos (Hymn 1.51-53). Similar stories about the Korybantes (who seem to have been drawn into this myth through their connection with Kybele) will be found in chapter 3. Both Kallimachos (Hymn 1.46) and Apollonios (3.133) speak too of a nurse Adrasteia (another name for Nemesis?⁵⁰), and Apollodoros adds to her Ida, both as daughters of Melisseus (ApB 1.1.6-7; see Appendix A for possible Orphic sources). In Hyginus, the account of the noisemaking of Kouretes or Korybantes is prefaced by a story in which Kronos has cast Poseidon into the sea and Hades down to the Underworld, rather than swallowing them; Hera (also not swallowed) then asks her mother to give her the child Zeus when he is born, and Rheia substitutes the stone for Kronos to swallow (Fab 139). Kronos soon discovers the trick but cannot find the child, suspended as he is in a cradle between sky, earth, and sea by Amaltheia. Rheia' entrusting of the swaddling- wrapped stone to a surprised husband is charmingly depicted on several Red- ...

p. 43

... Figure pots of the later fifth century (Louvre G366; NY 06.1021.144); otherwise these events, in whatever form, have left little trace in art.

p. 148

Both groups are tantalizingly alluded to in Euripides’ Bakchai, where the chorus tells of the cave of the Kouretes in Krete where Zeus was born and where the Korybantes invented the drum that they gave to Rheia (Bkch 120-34); the Greek might or might not intend to equate the two groups here. In any case, their presence together at the birth of Zeus likely results from the frequent identification of Kybele with Rheia. The lost Hypsipyle of Euripides adds to this that the Kouretes of Krete were mortal (12.75—76 GLP). Korinna, whatever her date, also seems aware that the Kouretes hid Zeus away from Kronos (654 i.12-18 PMG), in contrast to the Theogony, which never mentions such a detail, or even the existence of either of these groups. Kouretes as guards of the child also ap- peared in at least one branch of the Orphic tradition (fr 151 Kern). But the generally familiar story that the Kouretes rattled their armor so that Kronos might not hear the infant Zeus' cries survives first in Kallimachos' Hymn to Zeus (1.51-53: cf. ApB 1.1.6-7; DS 5.65); it is not clear whether the Kory- bantes' drum in the Bakchai might have served the same purpose.

Grimal

s.v. Zeus, p. 467

Even Callimachus admits that Zeus’ earliest years were spent in a Cretan hiding place, where his mother had entrusted him to the CURETES and the Nymphs. His nurse was the Nymph (or goat) Amalthea, who suckled him. It was also said that when this goat died, Zeus used its skin for his shield: this was the aegis whose power was first put to the test at the time of the fight against the Titans. The divine child was also nourished on honey: the bees of Mount Ida produced honey especially for him (for the euhemeristic interpretations of this, see MELISSA and MELISSEUS). The Cretans did not merely show the spot where, according to them, Zeus was born; they would also point out a so-called Tomb of Zeus, to the great indignation of mythographers and poets for whom Zeus was the immortal god.

Hansen

p. 216

Kouretes and nymphs worked together to nurture and protect baby Zeus. When Rhea gave birth to her youngest child, Zeus, she hid him in a cave on Crete in order to conceal him from her husband Kronos, who otherwise swallowed each of their children as they were born. She placed her infant in the charge of the Kouretes and certain nymphs. While the nymphs nourished the child with the milk of the goat Amaltheia, the Kouretes guarded him and beat their spears against their shields in order to drown out his voice so that Kronos would not hear him (Apollodoros Library 1.1.6-7; cf. Hyginus 139).

Hard

p. 68

Hesiod offers little detail on what happened next, merely stating that Zeus grew up quickly in his Cretan hiding-place, ...

p. 74

According to Hesiod, she went to the Cretan town of Lyktos (to the west of Knossos) when she was due to give birth to Zeus, and entrusted him to her mother Gaia to nourish and rear; so Gaia hid him away deep inside herself in a remote cave on Mt Aigaion (otherwise unknown, but presumably to be identified with one of the various mountains near Lyktos that contain Minoan ...

p. 75

... holy caves).⁵⁰ This account is peculiar to the Theogony, for in the subsequent tradition the cave is either located in Mt Ida in the centre of Crete or, less commonly, on Mt Dikte to the east.⁵¹

Zeus was reared during his infancy by a local nymph or nymphs. In what was perhaps the most favoured tradition, he was tended by the nymph Amaltheia, who fed him on milk from a she-goat that she owned;⁵² or in another version which first appears in Callimachus, Amaltheia was the name of the goat itself, and the nymph Adrasteia fed Zeus on its milk along with sweet honeycomb; or else his nurses were Adrasteia and Ida, or the Idaian nymphs Helike and Kynosura, or others of their kind.⁵³ There were also various picturesque tales in which he was said to have been fed by bees or suckled by a sow or the like.⁵⁴ To prevent Kronos from being able to hear the infant’s cries, some minor Cretan divinities, the Kouretes (see p. 219), danced a noisy war-dance near the entrance to the cave, clashing their spears against their shields.⁵⁵ Or in a slightly different account, Amaltheia hung the infant in a cradle from a tree so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea, and the Kouretes danced around the tree.⁵⁶ Much of this is connected with ritual, and Cretan ritual at that; excavations have shown that a fair number of cave-sanctuaries in Crete were very ancient holy places dating back to the Minoan period; the dances of the Kouretes can be related to similar dances performed by Cretan youths in initiation rituals and the like (see p. 219); and it seems that a divine child who was born (and probably died) every year was a prominent object of Cretan worship.

A curious tale about Zeus’ cave in Crete is recorded by Antoninus Liberalis in his anthology of transformation myths. The cave (of unspecified location) was inhabited by sacred bees that had tended the infant Zeus, but was otherwise forbidden ground to gods and mortals alike. At one time four thieves had entered the cave nonetheless to steal some of the honey, wearing full armour (to protect themselves against the bees, and probably on account of its apotropaic value also). When they saw the swaddling-clothes of Zeus, however, and the blood that had been shed at his birth, their armour fractured and fell from their bodies; and Zeus would have killed them with a thunderbolt as punishment for their sacrilege if the Moirai (Fates) and Themis (as guardian of divine law) had not restrained him by reminding him that no one could be allowed to die in a place of such sanctity. So he transformed them into various birds that bore the same names as themselves (Laios, Kerkeos, Kerberos and Aigolios). The author remarks that the blood inside the cave used to boil up at a particular time every year, presumably on the anniversary of Zeus’ birth, causing a mass of flame to issue from the cave.⁵⁷

The astronomical literature also provides some odd tales about Zeus’s childhood. In one such story, the nanny-goat that nursed the infant Zeus is said to have been a wondrous child of the sun-god Helios that so alarmed the Titans, apparently because of its radiant brightness, that they asked Earth to conceal it from their view in one of her caves in Crete. When Zeus came of age and was preparing for his war against the Titans, he learned that he would be victorious if he used the hide of the goat as a shield (i.e. as his aigis); and after he duly won his victory, he covered the bones of the goat with another skin, revived it and made it immortal, and placed it in the heavens as Capella (the Goat), a bright star in the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).⁵⁸ Or in another tale of the kind, Kronos set off in search of Zeus and arrived in Crete, but was deceived by his son, who concealed his presence by transforming himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. Zeus later commemorated ...

⁵⁰ Hes. Theog. 477–84.

⁵¹ Dikte and Ida cited as alternative locations, Call. Hymn 1.4–6; Ida the earlier, e.g. Pi. Ol. 5.40–1, Dikte first in Call. l.c., A.R. 1.509 and 1130, Arat. 33 (where erroneously placed near Ida).

⁵² E.g. Musaeus 2B8 DK (from Eratosth. 13), Ov. Fast. 5.111–21, Hyg. Fab. 139.

⁵³ Call. Hymn 1.46–9 (suckled by milk of goat Amaltheia), Apollod. 1.1.6–7 (Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, fed Zeus on milk of Amaltheia), Hyg. Astr. 2.13 (similar, but daughters of Mellisseus not named); cf. A.R. 3.132–6 (Adrasteia nurse of Zeus, made beautiful ball for him), D.S. 5.70.3 (nymphs not named), schol. Od. 5.272 and schol. Arat. 46 (Helike and Kynosura).

⁵⁴ E.g. Athen. 375f, 491a.

⁵⁵ Call. Hymn 1.51–3 (earliest surviving source), D.S. 5.65.4, Apollod. 1.1.7, Lucretius 2.633–9, Ovid Fasti 4.207–10 (here with Corybantes, see p. 219). See also Epimenides 3B22, Eur. fr. 472 Nauck, Corinna 654.12–16.

⁵⁶ Hyg. Fab. 139.

⁵⁷ Ant. Lib. 19.

⁵⁸ Eratosth. 13, Hyg. Astr. 2.13.

p. 76

... the incident by placing images of the three animals in the sky as the constellations of the Dragon and the Greater and Lesser Bear (Draco and Ursa Major and Minor).⁵⁹ Some said that he was removed to the island of Naxos when his father came in search of him, and was raised there from that time onwards.⁶⁰ There were also numerous local traditions in which Zeus was said to have been reared in mainland Greece (especially the Peloponnese) or Asia Minor. According to Arcadian tradition, for instance, Rhea brought him to birth on Mt Lykaion (an important centre for his cult, see p. 538), and three local nymphs, Neda, Theisoa and Hagno, reared him on an area of the mountain that was known as Kretea. Neda was the nymph of the river Neda that rose on Lykaion and flowed westwards into Messenia; it was claimed that Earth had caused it to spring forth at the request of Rhea to enable her to wash the new-born Zeus. And the other two nymphs were eponyms of springs on the mountain.⁶¹ The Messenians claim for their part that the Kouretes had conveyed the infant Zeus to their own territory, where he had been reared by Neda and Ithome (the eponym of the Messenian mountain of that name). In reporting this Messenian tale, Pausanias remarks that it would be impossible, even if one should wish it, to number all the peoples who insisted that Zeus had been born and reared in their land.⁶²

⁵⁹ Schol. Arat. 46.

⁶⁰ Eratosth. 30, Hyg. Astr. 2.16.

⁶¹ Paus. 8.38.2–3, 8.41.2

⁶² Paus. 4.33.1.

p. 219

They were famous in myth as the Cretan daimones who drowned out the cries of the infant Zeus by performing noisy war-dances in front of the cave where he was hidden (see p. 75). Although Callimachus in the Hellenistic era is the first author to make explicit mention of this story, Euripides seems to allude to it in the Bacchae, and it was presumably quite ancient.⁷⁷

⁷⁷ Call. Hymn 1.51–3, Eur. Bacch. 120ff, cf. Apollod. 1.1.6–7, D.S. 5.65.4.

Tripp

s.v. Zeus, p. 605

Quickly discovering his mistake, Cronus looked everywhere for Zeus, but Rhea had hidden him in a cave on Mount Dicte, in Crete, and the Curetes danced about clashing their spears and shields so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cries. Nymphs of Crete and the goat, or nymph, named Amaltheia provided him with nourishment. (These are the general outlines of a story that has numerous variations.)

Text

Old

Varying versions of the story exist:

1. According to Hyginus, Zeus was raised by a nymph named Amalthea. Since Saturn (Cronus) ruled over the Earth, the heavens 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.
2. According to Apollodorus, Zeus was raised by a goat named Amalthea in a cave called Dictaeon Antron (Psychro Cave). A company of soldiers called Kouretes danced, shouted and clashed their spears against their shields so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cry.

New

While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts.

According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amaltheia, while the Kouretes guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amaltheia. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton.

Callimachus, who also says that Zeus grew to manhood quickly, gives Adrasteia and the Meliae as his nurses and says he was fed on Amaltheia's milk and honeycomb, and that the Kouretes beat their armour so that the "din of the shield" would stop Cronus from hearing Zeus's "infant noise". He also presents a similar tale to Diodorus Siculus, in which the umbilical cord is lost when he is being carried by a nymph. Apollonius of Rhodes, who says that Zeus is raised in the "Idaean cave", mentions Adrasteia as his nurse, and speaks of a toy ball which she made for him.

Eratosthenes 13 & 30 and Hyginus De Astronomica

According to Musaeus, after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to Themis. Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus.

Ovid says that Amalthea, who he considers to be a naiad, hides Zeus in a forest, and owning a she-goat, suckles the child on its milk. He says that when one of the goat's horn breaks off, she carries it, full of fruits, to Zeus's lips, becoming the cornucopia.

Hyginus, in his Fabulae, relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus a stone to swallow. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he isn't in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him. Hyginus also says that Ida, Althaea, and Adrasteia, usually considered the children of Oceanus, are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus.

According to a fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears.

Antoninus Liberalis, in his Metamorphoses, says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in a sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Moirai and Themis; he instead transforms them into various species of birds.

Pausanias

Cited by Gantz: Germanicus scholia, Scholia B on Iliad, Corinna, Euripides' Bacchai

Cited by Fowler: Eumelus

Ascension to Power

Sources

Primary

Apollodorus

1.2.1

But when Zeus was full-grown, he took Metis, daughter of Ocean, to help him, and she gave Cronus a drug to swallow, which forced him to disgorge first the stone and then the children whom he had swallowed,¹ and with their aid Zeus waged the war against Cronus and the Titans.² They fought for ten years, and Earth prophesied victory³ to Zeus if he should have as allies those who had been hurled down to Tartarus. So he slew their jailoress Campe, and loosed their bonds. And the Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and a thunderbolt,⁴ and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet and on Poseidon a trident. Armed with these weapons the gods overcame the Titans, shut them up in Tartarus, and appointed the Hundred-handers their guards;⁵ but they themselves cast lots for the sovereignty, and to Zeus was allotted the dominion of the sky, to Poseidon the dominion of the sea, and to Pluto the dominion in Hades.⁶

¹ As to the disgorging of his offspring by Cronus, see Hes. Th. 493ff., who, however, says nothing about the agency of Metis in administering an emetic, but attributes the stratagem to Earth (Gaia).

² As to the war of Zeus on the Titans, see Hes. Th. 617ff.; Hor. Carm. 3.4.42ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 118.

³ The most ancient oracle at Delphi was said to be that of Earth; in her office of prophetess the goddess was there succeeded by Themis, who was afterwards displaced by Apollo. See Aesch. Eum. 1ff.; Paus. 10.5.5ff. It is said that of old there was an oracle of Earth at Olympia, but it no longer existed in the second century of our era. See Paus. 5.14.10. At Aegira in Achaia the oracles of Earth were delivered in a subterranean cave by a priestess, who had previously drunk bull's blood as a means of inspiration. See Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii.147; compare Paus. 7.25.13. In the later days of antiquity the oracle of Earth at Delphi was explained by some philosophers on rationalistic principles: they supposed that the priestess was thrown into the prophetic trance by natural exhalations from the ground, and they explained the decadence of the oracle in their own time by the gradual cessation of the exhalations. The theory is scouted by Cicero. See Plut. De defectu oraculorum 40ff.; Cicero, De divinatione i.19.38, i.36.79, ii.57.117. A similar theory is still held by wizards in Loango, on the west coast of Africa; hence in order to receive the inspiration they descend into an artificial pit or natural hollow and remain there for some time, absorbing the blessed influence, just as the Greek priestesses for a similar purpose descended into the oracular caverns at Aegira and Delphi. See Die Loango Expedition, iii.2, von Dr. E. Pechuel Loesche （Stuttgart, 1907）, p. 441. As to the oracular cavern at Delphi and the inspiring exhalations which were supposed to emanate from it, see Diod. 16.26; Strabo 9.3.5; Paus. 10.5.7; Justin xxiv.6.6-9. That the Pythian priestess descended into the cavern to give the oracles appears from an expression of Plutarch （De defectu oraculorum, 51, κατέβη μὲν εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον）. As to the oracles of Earth in antiquity, see A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité, ii.251ff.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii.8ff.

⁴ Compare Hes. Th. 501-506ff.

⁵ Compare Hes. Th. 717ff.

⁶ Compare Hom. Il. 15.187ff.; Plat. Gorg. 523a.

Hesiod

Theogony

492–506

After that, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly, and as the years rolled on, great Cronos the wily was beguiled by the deep suggestions of Earth, [495] and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son, and he vomited up first [500] the stone which he had swallowed last. And Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men.¹ And he set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father, sons of Heaven whom his father in his foolishness had bound. And they remembered to be grateful to him for his kindness, and gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt [505] and lightning: for before that, huge Earth had hidden these. In them he trusts and rules over mortals and immortals.

¹ Pausanias (x.24.6) saw near the tomb of Neoptolemus “a stone of no great size,” which the Delphians anointed every day with oil, and which he says was supposed to be the stone given to Cronos.

617–53

But when first their father was vexed in his heart with Obriareus and Cottus and Gyes, he bound them in cruel bonds, because he was jealous of their exceeding manhood and comeliness [620] and great size: and he made them live beneath the wide-pathed earth, where they were afflicted, being set to dwell under the ground, at the end of the earth, at its great borders, in bitter anguish for a long time and with great grief at heart. But the son of Cronos and the other deathless gods [625] whom rich-haired Rhea bore from union with Cronos, brought them up again to the light at Earth's advising. For she herself recounted all things to the gods fully, how with these they might gain victory and a glorious cause to vaunt themselves. [630] For the Titan gods and as many as sprang from Cronos had long been fighting together in stubborn war with heart-grieving toil, the lordly Titans from high Othrys, but the gods, givers of good, whom rich-haired Rhea bore in union with Cronos, from Olympus. [635] So they, with bitter wrath, were fighting continually with one another at that time for ten full years, and the hard strife had no close or end for either side, and the issue of the war hung evenly balanced. But when he had provided those three with all things fitting, [640] nectar and ambrosia which the gods themselves eat, and when their proud spirit revived within them all after they had fed on nectar and delicious ambrosia, then it was that the father of men and gods spoke amongst them: “Hear me, bright children of Earth and Heaven, [645] that I may say what my heart within me bids. A long while now have we, who are sprung from Cronos and the Titan gods, fought with each other every day to get victory and to prevail. But show your great might and unconquerable strength, and [650] face the Titans in bitter strife; for remember our friendly kindness, and from what sufferings you are come back to the light from your cruel bondage under misty gloom through our counsels.”

654-86

So he said. And blameless Cottus answered him again: “ [655] Divine one, you speak that which we know well: no, even of ourselves we know that your wisdom and understanding is exceeding, and that you became a defender of the deathless ones from chill doom. And through your devising we have come back again from the murky gloom and from our merciless bonds, [660] enjoying what we looked not for, O lord, son of Cronos. And so now with fixed purpose and deliberate counsel we will aid your power in dreadful strife and will fight against the Titans in hard battle.” So he said: and the gods, givers of good things, applauded when [665] they heard his word, and their spirit longed for war even more than before, and they all, both male and female, stirred up hated battle that day, the Titan gods, and all that were born of Cronos together with those dread, mighty ones of overwhelming strength [670] whom Zeus brought up to the light from Erebus beneath the earth. A hundred arms sprang from the shoulders of all alike, and each had fifty heads growing from his shoulders upon stout limbs. These, then, stood against the Titans in grim strife, [675] holding huge rocks in their strong hands. And on the other part the Titans eagerly strengthened their ranks, and both sides at one time showed the work of their hands and their might. The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and [680] groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, [685] and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry.

687–728

Then Zeus no longer held back his might; but straight his heart was filled with fury and he showed forth all his strength. From Heaven and from Olympus [690] he came immediately, hurling his lightning: the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning, whirling an awesome flame. The life-giving earth crashed around in burning, and the vast wood crackled loud with fire all about. [695] All the land seethed, and Ocean's streams and the unfruitful sea. The hot vapor lapped round the earthborn Titans: flame unspeakable rose to the bright upper air: the flashing glare of the thunderstone and lightning blinded their eyes for all that they were strong. [700] Astounding heat seized Chaos: and to see with eyes and to hear the sound with ears it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together; for such a mighty crash would have arisen if Earth were being hurled to ruin, and Heaven from on high were hurling her down; [705] so great a crash was there while the gods were meeting together in strife. Also the winds brought rumbling earthquake and duststorm, thunder and lightning and the lurid thunderbolt, which are the shafts of great Zeus, and carried the clangor and the warcry into the midst of the two hosts. A horrible uproar [710] of terrible strife arose: mighty deeds were shown and the battle inclined. But until then, they kept at one another and fought continually in cruel war. And amongst the foremost Cottus and Briareos and Gyes insatiate for war [715] raised fierce fighting: three hundred rocks, one upon another, they launched from their strong hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and hurled them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, [720] as far beneath the earth as heaven is above earth; for so far is it from earth to Tartarus. For a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days [725] would reach Tartarus upon the tenth. Round it runs a fence of bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it like a neck-circlet, while above grow the roots of the earth and unfruitful sea.

729–35

There by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods [730] are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it, and a wall runs all round it on every side. There Gyes and Cottus and great-souled Obriareus [735] live, trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis.

Secondary

Gantz

p. 44

Upon coming of age, Zeus sets about to overthrow his father and recover his brothers and sisters. Hesiod is quite circumspect about these events, perhaps because he has compressed a longer account but perhaps, too, because they involve violence by Zeus against a parent; later authors are not much help in filling the gap (though Aischylos, in the lost play from which our Dike frag- ment 281a R comes, apparently treated the matter as a legal question, and someone in the play says that Kronos began the quarrel). Here again the epic Titanomachia might have added much to our knowledge, but as matters stand we must await Apollodoros for anything like a complete account. What Hesiod does say is that Kronos was deceived into disgorging his children by the stra- tagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus (Th 492-500). The stone comes up first, and then, presumably, the children in reverse order, as the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite attests by making Hestia oldest and youngest (HAph 22-23; cf. 1113.354—55 and 15.166, with Zeus older in the first passage and Poseidon older in the second). But what happens after that we do not learn in the Theogony; it is not clear whether Kronos retires from the field gracefully, suffers further violence from Zeus, or escapes to participate in the war between the Olympians and Titans.⁵⁴

In Apollodoros, events are much the same, but we are told that Metis gave Kronos an emetic to swallow (ApB 1.2.1); this may or may not be the version to which Hesiod refers, though it does seem more likely than the Orphic tra- dition in which Kronos is drugged with honey (at the suggestion of Nyx), then bound and castrated (fr 154 Kern; cf. Lyk 761-62). I am likewise dubious about Pausanias’ mention of the two engaging in the first wrestling match at Olympia (5.7.10; 8.2.2). But whatever the Theogony supposed Kronos to endure in the process of his overthrow, the poem clearly puts him in Tartaros with the other Titans (Th 851: the line is formulaic, resembling several in the Iliad where the same situation holds). Art offers several scenes that might represent the strug- gle between father and son, but their identification is highly questionable and would in any case add little to our understanding of the story; they include, for the record, a seated figure (gender not certain) threatened by a standing one in the pediment of the Temple of Artemis on Kerkyra, and a Lakonian cup on which a large figure is seized and pulled forward by a smaller one (Athens 13910).⁵⁵

In Hesiod, Zeus’ first act after recovering the other Olympians is to release the Kyklopes; they remember the favor, and in return give him the thunder- bolt, which Gaia had previously hidden (Th 501-6). Subsequently (after the story of Prometheus, out of sequence as it were), we find the same tale related at greater length of the Hundred-Handers, with the addition that Gaia advised the release so that the Olympians might win victory (Th 617-23).

p. 45

The actual battle is described in only the most general terms, with no names (perhaps not surprising, since there can be no real casualties), but we are told that both males and females participated (Th 687-735). Eventually, if not at the beginning, the Hundred-Handers are fighting, but the battle is not turned until Zeus strides forth from Olympos with his thunderbolt. The heat stuns the Titans, the glare blinds them, and the Hundred-Handers, after pelting them with stones, bind them up and cast them down into Tartaros, as far below earth as heaven is above. There the Hundred-Handers guard them (though Briareos is later married to Poseidon’s daughter Kymopoleia: Th 817-19) by the will of Zeus.

...

Apollodoros would seem acquainted with a more detailed version of some events than that given by Hesiod, for he tells us that Zeus slew a female guard named Kampe in order to release those under the earth (ApB 1.2.1). Hyginus' account offers even more novelty, for he says that Hera, angered at the vast territory of Epaphos, son of Io, called upon the Titans to rise up against Zeus and restore Kronos; Zeus, as elsewhere, throws them down to Tartaros (with the help of Athena, Apollo, and Artemis: Fab 150). Likely enough, Hyginus has here confused stories of Heras summoning of the Gigantes to her aid (as in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo) with the overthrow of the Titans. But such confusion serves to under- line how little we really know about the conflict of Olympians and Titans; apart from Hesiod, no preserved Archaic work describes it, there are no relevant fragments from the Titanomachia,⁵⁶ and as noted above no sure (and certainly no useful) artistic representations.

p. 48

After the Titans have been defeated and cast down into Tartaros, there is in most accounts an allotment of powers among the Olympians. The earliest description is found in the Iliad, when Poseidon displays a small outburst of resentment at being ordered by Zeus to retreat from the battlefield (Il 15.187-95). He describes an apportionment made among just the three sons of Kronos and Rheia, in which he received the sea, Hades the underworld, and Zeus the heavens (so too ApB 1.2.1). The earth, he continues, and Olympos are common to all three. This last suggestion scarcely concurs with Zeus’ opinion of his position or with the balance of power as presented in the Iliad; Poseidon subsequently concedes the point. The notion of a shared earth conjures up as well puzzling images of Hades, who never leaves his realm to enjoy the earth or Olympos, save for the occasion on which he abducts Persephone (and, it seems, one other, when he is wounded by Herakles: see Il 5.395—402). The same three-way division, without details, is mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (HDem 85-86).

Grimal

s.v. Zeus, p. 467

II The Conquest of Power

When Zeus reached adulthood, he wanted to seize power from Cronus. He asked metis (Prudence) for advice, and she gave him a drug which made Cronus vomit up the children which he had swallowed. With the aid of his brothers and sisters now restored to life, Zeus attacked Cronus and the Titans. The struggle lasted ten years. Finally, Zeus and the Olympians were victorious, and the Titans were expelled from Heaven. To win this victory Zeus, on Gaia’s advice, had had to liberate the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires from Tartarus where Cronus had locked them up. To do this, he killed their guardian Campe. The Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning which they had made; they gave Hades a magic helmet which made the wearer of it invisible; Poseidon received a trident, which could shake the sea and the land at a blow. Having won their victory, the gods shared power out among themselves by drawing lots. Zeus obtained Heaven; Poseidon the Sea; Hades the Underworld. In addition Zeus was to preside over the Universe. The victory of Zeus and the Olympians was soon contested. They had to fight against the GIANTS, aroused against them by the Earth who was annoyed at having her sons, the Titans, locked away in Tartarus. Finally, as the last ordeal, Zeus had to overcome Typhon. This was the toughest fight he had to endure. During his long struggle, he was imprisoned and mutilated by the monster, but he was saved by a trick played by Hermes and Pan, and was victorious.

Hard

p. 68

Hesiod offers little detail on what happened next, merely stating that Zeus grew up quickly in his Cretan hiding-place, and then forced Kronos to vomit up his children in accordance with a plan that was suggested to his mother by Gaia. After first spewing up the stone, which Zeus installed at Delphi to be a sign and wonder to mortals (see p. 145), Kronos vomited up the five brothers and sisters of Zeus in the reverse order to that in which he had swallowed them. Zeus also released the Kyklopes, who had apparently remained imprisoned beneath the earth since they had been confined there by their father Ouranos; and they showed their gratitude by arming Zeus with his all-powerful weapon, the thunderbolt.²³

Zeus now joined together with his brothers and sisters to wrest control of the universe from Kronos and the Titans, confronting them in the greatest war ever fought, the Titanomachy (Titanomachia). The Titans chose Mt Othrys in southern Thessaly as their stronghold, while Zeus and his allies fought from Mt Olympos on the northern borders of the province. The battle raged on for ten long years without either side gaining a clear advantage, until Gaia revealed to Zeus and the Olympians that they would be victorious if they recruited the Hundred-Handers as their allies. So Zeus released the monsters from their confinement (for they had remained imprisoned beneath the earth like the Kyklopes), and revived their strength and spirits with nectar and ambrosia. They were then quite happy to respond to Zeus’s appeal for help. The struggle now reached its decisive phase as Zeus unleashed his full fury against the Titans, dazing them with his thunderbolts, while the Hundred-Handers pelted them with huge rocks in successive salvoes. The entire universe resounded to the battle, from the high heavens to murky Tartaros. Kronos and the Titans were finally overpowered by the many-handed monsters, who hurled them down to Tartaros to be imprisoned there for evermore. To ensure that they would be securely detained, Zeus appointed the Hundred-Handers as their warders. After their hard-won victory, Zeus and the younger gods assumed power as the new rulers of the universe in the third generation.²⁴

²³ Ibid. [Hesiod] 492–506.

²⁴ Ibid. 617–735.

p. 69

[Apollodorus' version:] When Zeus came of age, he sought the help of Metis (the personification of cunning wisdom, see p. 77), who tricked Kronos into swallowing an emetic drug to force him to disgorge his swallowed children. With the aid of his brothers and sisters, Zeus fought against Kronos and the Titans for ten years, but was unable to defeat them until Gaia prophesied that he would be able to do so if he enlisted the help of the monsters who had been banished to Tartaros by Kronos. So he killed their warder, a certain Kampe, and set them free. The Kyklopes armed him with his thunderbolt as usual, and also gave Poseidon his trident and provided Hades with a cap of invisibility. With the aid of these devices, and presumably the assistance of the Hundred-Handers too, Zeus and his allies now defeated the Titans and imprisoned them in Tartaros with the Hundred-Handers as their guards.²⁵

Fitting though it may be that Kronos and the Titans, as a race of ‘former gods’, should be banished from the upper world forever, this is not always the case in post-Hesiodic accounts. Pindar states explicitly, for instance, in one of his odes, that the Titans were eventually released by Zeus; and in the Prometheus Unbound, a lost Aeschylean play, they appeared on the stage as the chorus along with Prometheus after he was released from Tartaros (see p. 96), which would imply that they had been set free by Zeus.²⁶ As has already been remarked, some individuals who are named as Titans in Hesiod’s list could not have been removed from the upper world at this early stage in any case. Okeanos could not have deserted his streams (see p. 37), nor Tethys perhaps the sea; Themis and Mnemosyne are said to have engaged in liaisons with Zeus even in the Theogony, and they were permanent forces in the world as the personifications of memory and right order; and Kronos and Rhea were themselves thought to be active in the world in so far as they were honoured in cult.

²⁵ Apollod. 1.1.1–1.2.1.

²⁶ Pi. Pyth. 4.289–91, Aesch. frr. 190–3 Radt

Smith

s.v. Zeus

In the meantime Cronos by a cunning device of Ge or Metis was made to bring up the children he had swallowed, and first of all the stone, which was afterwards set up by Zeus at Delphi. The young god now delivered the Cyclopes from the bonds with which they had been fettered by Cronos, and they in their gratitude provided him with thunder and lightning. On the advice of Ge. Zeus also liberated the hundred-armed Gigantes, Briareos, Cottus, and Gyes, that they might assist him in his fight against the Titans. (Apollod. 1.2. § 1; Hes. Theog. 617, &c.) The Titans were conquered and shut up in Tartarus (Theog. 717), where they were henceforth guarded by the Hecatoncheires.

Tripp

s.v. Zeus, p. 605

On growing up, Zeus persuaded the clever Oceanid Metis to administer an emetic to his father. Cronus vomited up his other children, who joined Zeus in a struggle with Cronus and the other Titans for control of Olympus. On the advice of Ge, Zeus released the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handed from Tartarus, where Cronus had imprisoned them. After a ten-year war, Zeus and his allies won out and confined the male Titans, or most of them, in Tartarus, with the Hundred-handed as their guards. The Cyclopes were retained as Zeus's armorers, providing him with his invariable weapon, the thunderbolt.

According to some accounts, the three victorious brothers cast lots for the rule of the universe. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon the sea. Hades the Underworld, with all three having equal rights on earth and Olympus. In fact, however, Zeus was acknowledged as the chief of the gods, and many accounts have it that his brothers and sisters, grateful for their freedom, asked Zeus to be their supreme ruler.

Text

Old

After reaching manhood, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge first the stone (which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, the Omphalos) then his siblings in reverse order of swallowing. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus's stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes, from their dungeon in Tartarus, killing their guard, Campe. As a token of their appreciation, the Cyclopes gave him thunder and the thunderbolt, or lightning, which had previously been hidden by Gaia.

Together, Zeus, his brothers and sisters, 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. Atlas, one of the titans who fought against Zeus, was punished by having to hold up the sky.

New

According to the Theogony, after Zeus reaches manhood, Cronus is made to disgorge the five children and the stone "by the stratagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus", presumably in reverse order, vomiting out the stone first, then each of the five children in the opposite order to swallowing. Zeus then sets up the stone at Delphi, so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men". Zeus next frees the Cyclopes, who, in return, and out of gratitude, give him his thunderbolt, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Then begins the Titanomachy, the war between the Olympians, led by Zeus, and the Titans, led by Cronus, for control of the universe, with Zeus and the Olympians fighting from Mount Olympus, and the Titans fighting from Mount Othrys. The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases the Hundred-Handers, who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface. He gives them nectar and ambrosia and revives their spirits, and they agree to aid him in the war. Zeus then launches his final attack on the Titans, hurling bolts of lightning upon them while the Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning the Hundred-Handers the task of acting as their warders.

Apollodorus provides a similar account, saying that, when Zeus reaches adulthood, he enlists the help of the Oceanid Metis, who gives Cronus an emetic, forcing to him to disgorge the stone and Zeus's five siblings. Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe. The Cyclopes give him his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident and Hades his helmet of invisibility, and the Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards.

According to the Iliad, after the battle with the Titans, Zeus shares the world with his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus receives the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, with the earth and Olympus remaining common ground.

Challenges to Power

Sources

Primary

Apollodorus

1.6.1

Such is the legend of Demeter. But Earth, vexed on account of the Titans, brought forth the giants, whom she had by Sky.¹ These were matchless in the bulk of their bodies and invincible in their might; terrible of aspect did they appear, with long locks drooping from their head and chin, and with the scales of dragons for feet.² They were born, as some say, in Phlegrae, but according to others in Pallene.³ And they darted rocks and burning oaks at the sky. Surpassing all the rest were Porphyrion and Alcyoneus, who was even immortal so long as he fought in the land of his birth. He also drove away the cows of the Sun from Erythia. Now the gods had an oracle that none of the giants could perish at the hand of gods, but that with the help of a mortal they would be made an end of. Learning of this, Earth sought for a simple to prevent the giants from being destroyed even by a mortal. But Zeus forbade the Dawn and the Moon and the Sun to shine, and then, before anybody else could get it, he culled the simple himself, and by means of Athena summoned Hercules to his help. Hercules first shot Alcyoneus with an arrow, but when the giant fell on the ground he somewhat revived. However, at Athena's advice Hercules dragged him outside Pallene, and so the giant died.⁴

1.6.2

[2] But in the battle Porphyrion attacked Hercules and Hera. Nevertheless Zeus inspired him with lust for Hera, and when he tore her robes and would have forced her, she called for help, and Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt, and Hercules shot him dead with an arrow.¹ As for the other giants, Ephialtes was shot by Apollo with an arrow in his left eye and by Hercules in his right; Eurytus was killed by Dionysus with a thyrsus, and Clytius by Hecate with torches, and Mimas by Hephaestus with missiles of red-hot metal.² Enceladus fled, but Athena threw on him in his flight the island of Sicily³; and she flayed Pallas and used his skin to shield her own body in the fight.⁴ Polybotes was chased through the sea by Poseidon and came to Cos; and Poseidon, breaking off that piece of the island which is called Nisyrum, threw it on him.⁵ And Hermes, wearing the helmet of Hades,⁶ slew Hippolytus in the fight, and Artemis slew Gration. And the Fates, fighting with brazer clubs, killed Agrius and Thoas. The other giants Zeus smote and destroyed with thunderbolts and all of them Hercules shot with arrows as they were dying.

¹ Compare Pind. P. 8.12(15)ff., who says that the king of the giants (Porphyrion) was shot by Apollo, not Herakles. Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus (Scholiast on Lycophron 63).

² According to Eur. Ion 215ff., Mimas was killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt; according to Ap. Rhod., Argon. iii.122ff. and Claudian, Gigant. 87ff., he was slain by Ares.

1.6.3

[3] When the gods had overcome the giants, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typhon in Cilicia,¹ a hybrid between man and beast. In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged<sup2:unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals.³ However Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. There, seeing the monster sore wounded, he grappled with him. But Typhon twined about him and gripped him in his coils, and wresting the sickle from him severed the sinews of his hands and feet, and lifting him on his shoulders carried him through the sea to Cilicia and deposited him on arrival in the Corycian cave. Likewise he put away the sinews there also, hidden in a bearskin, and he set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, who was a half-bestial maiden. But Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus.⁴ And having recovered his strength Zeus suddenly from heaven, riding in a chariot of winged horses, pelted Typhon with thunderbolts and pursued him to the mountain called Nysa, where the Fates beguiled the fugitive; for he tasted of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby.⁵ So being again pursued he came to Thrace, and in fighting at Mount Haemus he heaved whole mountains. But when these recoiled on him through the force of the thunderbolt, a stream of blood gushed out on the mountain, and they say that from that circumstance the mountain was called Haemus.⁶ And when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown.⁷ So much for that subject.

⁴ According to Nonnus, Dionys. i.481ff., it was Cadmus who, disguised as a shepherd, wheedled the severed sinews of Zeus out of Typhon by pretending that he wanted them for the strings of a lyre, on which he would play ravishing music to the monster. The barbarous and evidently very ancient story seems to be alluded to by no other Greek writers.

Hesiod

Theogony

183–7

And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Earth received, and as the seasons moved round [185] she bore the strong Erinyes and the great Giants with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands and the Nymphs whom they call Meliae all over the boundless earth.

820–2

[820] But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, ...

836–52

And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it. But he thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around [840] resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, [845] through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. [850] Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamor and the fearful strife.

Secondary

Fontenrose

p. 71

Hesiod (or his interpolator) has the earliest extant narrative of Zeus's combat with Typhon. After Zeus had defeated and cast out the Titans, their mother Gaia bore to Tartaros her youngest child Typhoeus, a monstrous being. He would have taken heaven and ousted the Olympians on that day, if Zeus had not seen him in time and begun battle against him. The god first hurled thunderbolts from heaven, then came to earth and struck the monster from nearby, and burned all his hundred serpent heads. Typhoeus fell aflame in mountain glens and Zeus hurled him down to Tartaros.³

p. 72

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo has information of great significance concerning Typhon, though nothing about his combat with Zeus. The poet, at variance with the Hesiodic tradition, surprises us with a narrative in which Hera is the mother of the monster, when in anger at Zeus's androgenesis of Athena, she decided to counter his performance (p. 14). Going apart from the gods, she struck the earth with the flat of her hand, and called upon Gaia, Uranos, and the Titans to grant her a child mightier than Zeus. Her prayer was granted and she bore Typhaon, mighty enough, yet hardly as admirable as Athena.

p. 73

In the version of the combat found in Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Pindar, Zeus has no great difficulty in overcoming Typhon, formidable though he is: he moves straight to victory without a setback. Most later writers adhere to this simple view of the victory, and such differences as they have concern the preliminaries or the aftermath of the battle.⁸

A more complex story is told by Apollodoros. After the gods had defeated the Gigantes, Ge in anger mated with Tartaros and bore Typhon, a huge monster of mixed form. He attacked heaven, hurling flaming stones and belching fire from his mouth. The gods fled before him to Egypt, where they took animal forms to escape his notice-all except Zeus, who stood against him. At first Zeus pelted him with thunderbolts from a distance. Then he moved in with an adamantine sickle with which he wounded Typhon, who fled to Mount Kasios in Syria. Zeus followed him thither and grappled with him, a move that gave Typhon a chance to entangle Zeus in his coils. Taking Zeus's sickle from him, Typhon severed his sinews and carried the god, thus rendered impotent, over the sea to Cilicia, where he laid him in the Corycian Cave. The sinews he hid in a bearskin and set the dragoness Delphyne to guard them. But Hermes and Aigipan (Goat Pan) recovered the sinews and restored them to Zeus, who renewed battle, mounting his chariot and once more hurling thunderbolts. Typhon fled to Nysa, where the Moirai deceived him ...

p. 74

with ephemeral fruits, telling him that to eat thereof would increase his strength. He fled thence to Thrace, where he made another stand and heaved whole mountains at Zeus. The god's thunderbolts thrust all his missiles back upon him, and he lost much blood from the wounds he received-hence Mount Haimos (Bloody Mountain) in Thrace-and as he fled across the Sicilian Sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna upon him and so pinned him down.9

Gantz

p. 48

At some point very early in Zeus' reign (Hesiod puts it just before his official installation as king), his rule is challenged by the monstrous Typhoeus/ Typhaon (the Theogony gives both forms). In the Theogony itself, this crea- ture is the offspring of Gaia after sexual union with Tartaros (Th 821-22); this is the only time Tartaros appears in such a role, and no reason is given why Gaia, who elsewhere in Hesiod always supports Zeus, should here issue a pre- ...

p. 49

tender to his throne. The arrival of such a challenger does, however, give Zeus a chance to show off his power when the other gods can do nothing, and this is surely intended by Hesiod, if not Gaia. Typhoeus is not fully described, but he has on his shoulders one hundred snake heads that breathe fire (perhaps: 845 is unclear) and imitate every conceivable kind of noise (Th 823-35). The combat itself is short-lived, for Zeus throws his thunderbolt, and Typhoeus crashes down to earth as a fiery mass. Zeus then hurls him into Tartaros, ...

The version of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo covers only Typhoeus’ birth and infancy, with the important difference that here he is a child of Hera alone, born in retaliation for Zeus’ bearing of Athena (HAp 305-55). Hera prays to Gaia for a son stronger than Zeus, slaps the earth with her hand, and becomes impregnated.

As for later Archaic sources, the Etymologicum Magnum tells us that Stesichoros, in contrast to Hesiod, made Hera bear Typhoeus alone because of her anger at Zeus (239 PMG); thus he uses the same version as the author of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The Epimenides Theogony agrees that Typhoeus attempted to take the rule of Zeus, and may have pictured him stealing into the palace while Zeus slept, only to be struck down when the latter awoke (3B8).

p. 50

The same transformation into animals, with still more detail, appears in Apol- lodoros: here Gaia, angered at the death of her children the Gigantes, produces Typhoeus (as in Hesiod) after union with Tartaros (ApB 1.6.3). The monster has (as in Nikandros) snake tails springing from his thighs, and wings, but apparently only one head, from which he breathes fire. On seeing him ap- proach, the gods again flee to Egypt and change into animals, but Zeus attacks with thunderbolt and sickle. At close quarters, however, Typhoeus wrests the sickle away, cuts out the sinews from Zeus’ hands and feet, and thus renders the god helpless. Only when Hermes and Aigipan (a by-form of Pan?) have stolen the sinews back does Zeus recover his strength and take up again the pursuit of Typhoeus with his thunderbolt. Meanwhile, at Mount Nysa, the Moirai deceive Typhoeus into eating fruit that will bring about his downfall, and he is then defeated by Zeus in Thrace and imprisoned under Aitna.

Grimal

s.v. Zeus, p. 467

The victory of Zeus and the Olympians was soon contested. They had to fight against the GIANTS, aroused against them by the Earth who was annoyed at having her sons, the Titans, locked away in Tartarus. Finally, as the last ordeal, Zeus had to overcome Typhon. This was the toughest fight he had to endure. During his long struggle, he was imprisoned and mutilated by the monster, but he was saved by a trick played by Hermes and Pan, and was victorious.

Hard

p. 82

Homer does report, however, that Hera, Athena and Poseidon had once planned to overpower Zeus and tie him up, but were foiled by the prompt action of Thetis, who summoned the hundred-handed Briareos (see p. 67) up from the sea to intimidate them.⁹³

p. 84

Since Apollodorus provides a composite account that includes most of these new elements, it will be convenient to summarize his narrative before considering certain elements in further detail. When Typhon launched an attack against heaven itself, hurling flaming rocks and emitting fearsome hisses and screams, the gods were so terrified that they fled to Egypt, where they concealed themselves by transforming themselves into animals of various kinds. So Zeus was obliged to confront Typhon on his own, first pelting him with thunderbolts from a distance, and then striking at him with an adamantine sickle (harpe¯). After pursuing the wounded monster to Mt Kasion in Syria, he grappled with him face to face; but Typhon enveloped Zeus in his coils, wrested the sickle from him, and used it to cut the tendons from his hands and feet. He then carried him through the sea to Cilicia and deposited him in a cave there (the Corycian cave), hiding the severed tendons inside in a bear’s skin; and he appointed a fellow-monster as guard, the she-dragon Delphyne, who was formed half like a snake and half like a beautiful maiden. Hermes and Aigipan (Goat-Pan) managed to steal tendons, however, and fitted them back into Zeus, who soon recovered his vigour and returned to the fray. Descending from heaven in a chariot, he hurled thunderbolts at Typhon and pursued ...

p. 85

... him to Mt Nysa (of uncertain location, see p. 172), where the Moirai (Fates) deceived him into eating the ‘ephemeral fruits’ (otherwise unknown), which robbed him of some of his strength. When pursued onward to Haimon, a mountain-range in Thrace (or now Bulgaria), he was still strong enough to hurl entire mountains at Zeus; but Zeus hurled them back at him by means of a thunderbolt, causing him to shed so much blood (haima) that the range below was known as Haimon from that time forth. He then fled overseas to Sicily, where Zeus completed his victory by burying him under Mt Etna.¹⁰²

p. 86

... according to the Theogony, they were conceived by Gaia in the very earliest times from drops of blood that fell to the ground from the severed genitals of Ouranos.¹¹⁶

...

Even though the Giants are presented as martial beings, there is no indication in the Theogony that they ever revolted against the gods ...

p. 89

The gods knew from an oracle that none of the Giants could be killed by them unless a mortal ally was present to finish them off; so Athena summoned the aid of the greatest of mortal heroes, Herakles, who was on the island of Cos at the time, having been driven there by storm-winds as he was sailing back from Troy (see p. 276). Now Gaia too was aware of this oracle, and tried to circumvent it by searching for a herb that would prevent her sons from being killed even by this mortal helper; but Zeus spoiled her plan by ordering Dawn and the Sun and Moon not to shine until he had plucked the herb himself. From that moment, the fate of the Giants was sealed.¹²⁴

...

We must now trace the story to its conclusion as recounted in Apollodorus’ version. After the death of Alkyoneus, Porphyrion launched an attack against Herakles and Hera, but Zeus distracted him by inspiring him with a lust for Hera and then struck him with a thunderbolt as he was tearing at the goddess’s robes.

Ogden

p. 42

Apollodorus tells that, when Typhon had stolen Zeus’ sinews, he wrapped them in a bearskin and concealed them in the Corycian cave, setting the drakaina Delphyne as guard over them (which Corycian cave: that in Cilicia or that on Parnassus?).⁹⁶

pp. 72–3

According to the Theogony, Typhon’s birth mother was Earth (with Tartarus the sire), and she produced him in revenge against Zeus for his destruction of Typhons half brothers (born of Uranus), the Titans, whom he had already thrown into Tartarus.²⁰

p. 74

Epimenides, writing c.500 BC, seems to have told the story of the battle in initially more human terms: ‘In Epimenides Typhon came up to attack Zeus’ palace whilst he was asleep. He seized control of the gates and got inside. But Zeus ran to the defence and, seeing the palace seized, is said to have killed him with a thunderbolt.’³⁰

³⁰ Epimenides FGrH 457 F8 = DK 3 B 8.

Smith

s.v. Zeus

Thereupon Tartarus and Ge begot Typhoeus, who began a fearful struggle with Zeus, but was conquered. (Theog. 820, &c.)

Tripp

s.v. Zeus, p. 605–6

Zeus accepted this honor with alacrity, but he was not allowed to enjoy it in peace for long. Ge (Earth) had been at odds with two generations of sky- gods— her husband, Uranus, and their son Cronus— and she was not quick to come to terms with her grandson Zeus. She gave birth to a race of Giants, who soon attacked heaven. The gods, including by now several of Zeus's chil- dren, destroyed these monsters after prolonged warfare. Ge, undaunted, bore the most frightening monster of all, Typhoeus. This terrible creature sent the gods fleeing to Egypt, where they hid in various animal forms, leaving Zeus to [p. 606] dispose of Typhoeus. Some say that even Zeiis hid for a time in the guise of a ram. According to one tale, the monster cut off and hid the sinews of Zeus's hands and feet, and he would have been permanently incapacitated if Hermes and Aegipan had not rescued and refitted the missing parts. Zeus finally beat down Typhoeus with thunderbolts and flung Sicily on top of him.

After Zeus had succeeded in destroying the Titans, the Giants, and Typhoeus, he was no longer troubled by invaders from the earth, except for the minor annoyance of the boisterous child-giants Otus and Ephialtes. He was beset, however, with at least one domestic revolt in heaven. For unexplained reasons, his wife, Hera, his brother Poseidon, and his daughter Athena rebelled against his authority. They would have bound him if the Oceanid Thetis had not called up Briareus from Tartarus to dissuade them.

Text

Old

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, including the Gigantes. It was prophesied that the Gigantes, children of Gaia born from Uranus's blood, could not be killed by the gods alone, but they could be killed with the help of a mortal. Hearing this, Gaia sought for a certain plant (pharmakon) that would protect the Gigantes even from mortals. Before Gaia or anyone else could get it, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine, harvested all of the plant himself and then he had Athena summon the mortal Heracles. Porphyrion, the king of the Gigantes, attacked Heracles and Hera, but Zeus caused Porphyrion to lust after Hera, whom Porphyrion then tried to rape, but Zeus struck Porphyrion with his thunderbolt and Heracles (or Apollo) killed him with an arrow. Zeus, with the help of other Olympians and Heracles, destroyed the Gigantes.

After the Gigantes failed to defeat Zeus, Gaia mated with Tartarus and gave birth to Typhon. The monstrous Typhon challenged the reign of Zeus. Zeus fought against him in a cataclysmic battle and defeated him with his thunderbolt. He then trapped Typhon in Tartarus. According to Pindar, however, Typhon was trapped in Mount Etna. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo states that Hera, angry at Zeus for giving birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans to give her a son stronger than Zeus. Hera then slapped the ground and became pregnant with Typhon.

Zeus' reign was once challenged by Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, who wished to bind Zeus and overthrow him. The Nereid Thetis called the Hecatoncheire Briareus to rescue Zeus. The other Olympians were scared of Briareus, who then freed Zeus.

New

Upon assuming his place as king of the cosmos, Zeus' rule is quickly challenged. The first of these challenges to his power comes from the Giants, who fight the Olympian gods in a battle known as the Gigantomachy. According to Hesiod, the Giants are the offspring of Gaia, born from the drops of blood that fell on the ground when Cronus castrated his father Uranus; there is, however, no mention of a battle between the gods and the Giants in the Theogony. It is Apollodorus who provides the most complete account of the Gigantomachy. He says that Gaia, out of anger at how Zeus had imprisoned her children, the Titans, bore the Giants to Uranus. There comes to the gods a prophecy that the Giants cannot be defeated by a god, but can be defeated only with the help of a mortal; Gaia, upon hearing of this, seeks a special pharmakon (herb) that will prevent the Giants from being killed. Zeus, however, orders Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to stop shining, and harvests all of the herb himself, before getting Athena to summon Heracles. In the conflict, Porphyrion, one of the most powerful of the Giants, launches an attack upon Heracles and Hera; Zeus, however, causes Porphyrion to become lustful for Hera, and when he is just about to violate her, he strikes him with his thunderbolt, before Heracles deals the fatal blow with an arrow.

In the Theogony, after Zeus defeats the Titans and banishes them to Tartarus, his rule is challenged by the monster Typhon, a giant serpentine creature who battles Zeus for control of the cosmos. According to Hesiod, Typhon is the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, described as having a hundred snaky fire-breathing heads. Hesiod says he "would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had it not been for Zeus noticing the monster and dispatching with him quickly: the two of them meet in a cataclysmic battle, before Zeus defeats him easily with his thunderbolt, and the creature is hurled down to Tartarus. Epimenides presents a somewhat different version, in which Typhon makes his way into Zeus's palace while he is sleeping, only for Zeus to wake and kill the monster with a thunderbolt. Aeschylus and Pindar give somewhat similar accounts to Hesiod, in that Zeus overcomes Typhon with relative ease, defeating him with his thunderbolt. Apollodorus, in contrast, provides a more complex narrative. Typhon is, similarly to in Hesiod, the child of Gaia and Tartarus, produced out of anger at Zeus's defeat of the Giants. The monster attacks heaven, and all of the gods, out of fear, transform into animals and flee to Egypt, except for Zeus, who attacks the monster with his thunderbolt and sickle. Typhon is wounded and retreats to Mount Kasios in Syria, where Zeus grapples with him, giving the monster a chance to wrap him in his coils, and rip out the sinews from his hands and feet. Disabled, Zeus is taken by Typhon to the Corycian Cave in Cilicia, where he is guarded by the "she-dragon" Delphyne. Hermes and Aegipan, however, steal back Zeus's sinews, and refit them, reviving him and allowing him to return to the battle, pursuing Typhon, who flees to Mount Nysa; there, Typhon is given "ephemeral fruits" by the Moirai, which reduce his strength. The monster then flees to Thrace, where he hurls mountains at Zeus, which are sent back at him by the god's thunderbolts, before, while fleeing to Sicily, Zeus launches Mount Etna upon him, finally ending him. Nonnus, who gives the most longest and most detailed account, presents a narrative similar to Apollodorus, with differences such as that it is instead Cadmus and Pan who recovers Zeus's sinews, by luring Typhon with music and then tricking him.

Seven wives

Sources

Primary

Apollodorus

1.3.6

[6] Zeus had intercourse with Metis, who turned into many shapes in order to avoid his embraces. When she was with child, Zeus, taking time by the forelock, swallowed her, because Earth said that, after giving birth to the maiden who was then in her womb, Metis would bear a son who should be the lord of heaven. From fear of that Zeus swallowed her.¹

¹ See Hes. Th. 886-900, Hes. Th. 929g-929p; Scholiast on Plat. Tim. 23d. Hesiod says that Zeus acted on the advice or warning of Earth and Sky. The Scholiast on Hesiod, quoted by Goettling and Paley in their commentaries, says that Metis had the power of turning herself into any shape she pleased.

Hesiod

Theogony

886–900

[885] Now Zeus, king of the gods, made Metis his wife first, and she was wisest among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to bring forth the goddess bright-eyed Athena, Zeus craftily deceived her [890] with cunning words and put her in his own belly, as Earth and starry Heaven advised. For they advised him so, to the end that no other should hold royal sway over the eternal gods in place of Zeus; for very wise children were destined to be born of her, [895] first the maiden bright-eyed Tritogeneia, equal to her father in strength and in wise understanding; but afterwards she was to bear a son of overbearing spirit king of gods and men. But Zeus put her into his own belly first, [900] that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil.

901–921

Next he married bright Themis who bore the Horae (Hours), and Eunomia (Order), Dikë (Justice), and blooming Eirene (Peace), who mind the works of mortal men, and the Moerae (Fates） to whom wise Zeus gave the greatest honor, [905] Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos who give mortal men evil and good to have. And Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, beautiful in form, bore him three fair-cheeked Charites (Graces), Aglaea, and Euphrosyne, and lovely Thaleia, [910] from whose eyes as they glanced flowed love that unnerves the limbs: and beautiful is their glance beneath their brows. Also he came to the bed of all-nourishing Demeter, and she bore white-armed Persephone whom Aidoneus carried off from her mother; but wise Zeus gave her to him. [915] And again, he loved Mnemosyne with the beautiful hair: and of her the nine gold-crowned Muses were born who delight in feasts and the pleasures of song. And Leto was joined in love with Zeus who holds the aegis, [920] and bore Apollo and Artemis delighting in arrows, children lovely above all the sons of Heaven. Lastly, he made Hera his blooming wife: ...

Fragments

fr. 294 Most, pp. 390–3

Out of this strife she¹ bore an illustrious son, by her devices, without aegis-holding Zeus: Hephaestus, expert with his skilled hands beyond all of Sky’s descendants. But he² bedded beside the daughter of Ocean and beautiful-haired Tethys, apart from beautiful-cheeked Hera, deceiving Metis, shrewd though she is. Grabbing her with his hands he put her down into his belly, fearing lest she bear something else stronger than the thunderbolt; for this reason Cronus’ high-throned son, who dwells in the aether, suddenly swallowed her down. At once she became pregnant with Pallas Athena: her the father of men and of gods bore by his head on the banks of the river Triton. Metis then was sitting concealed down in Zeus’ entrails, Athena’s mother, builder of what is just, who of the gods and mortal human beings knows the most. †Then the goddess Themis bedded beside him†. With her skilled hands she was expert beyond all the immortals who have their mansions on Olympus; she made the aegis, Athena’s army-frightening breastplate: together with that he bore her, wearing her warlike armor.

¹ Hera.

² Zeus.

[= fr. 343 Merkelbach-West, p. 171 = Chrysippus fr. 908 Arnim, p. 257 = Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 3.8.11–4 (p. 226)]

Homeric Hymn to Apollo (3)

89–123

Now when Leto had sworn and ended her oath, [90] Delos was very glad at the birth of the far-shooting lord. But Leto was racked nine days and nine nights with pangs beyond wont. [95] And there were with her all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione and Rhea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite and the other deathless goddesses save white-armed Hera, who sat in the halls of cloud-gathering Zeus. Only Eilithyia, goddess of sore travail, had not heard of Leto's trouble, for she sat on the top of Olympus beneath golden clouds by white-armed Hera's [100] contriving, who kept her close through envy, because Leto with the lovely tresses was soon to bear a son faultless and strong.

But the goddesses sent out Iris from the well-set isle to bring Eilithyia, promising her a great necklace strung with golden threads, nine cubits long. [105] And they bade Iris call her aside from white-armed Hera, lest she might afterwards turn her from coming with her words. When swift Iris, fleet of foot as the wind, had heard all this, she set to run; and quickly finishing all the distance she came to the home of the gods, sheer Olympus, [110] and forthwith called Eilithyia out from the hall to the door and spoke winged words to her, telling her all as the goddesses who dwell on Olympus had bidden her. So she moved the heart of Eilithyia in her dear breast; and they went their way, like shy wild-doves in their going.

[115] And as soon as Eilithyia the goddess of sore travail set foot on Delos, the pains of birth seized Leto, and she longed to bring forth; so she cast her arms about a palm tree and kneeled on the soft meadow while the earth laughed for joy beneath. Then the child leaped forth to the light, and all the goddesses raised a cry. [120] Straightway, great Phoebus, the goddesses washed you purely and cleanly with sweet water, and swathed you in a white garment of fine texture, new-woven, and fastened a golden band about you.

Pindar

fr. 30 Race, pp. 236, 237

“Pindar right away introduces Zeus Savior’s marriage to Themis, calling him a just, savior king in these words”:

First did the Fates bring wise-counseling, heavenly Themis on golden horses from the springs of Oceanus along a shining roadto the hallowed stair of Olympus to be the primordial wife of Zeus Savior; and she bore the golden-filleted bearers of splendid fruit, the ever-true Horae.⁵

⁵ According to Hes. Th. 901–904 Themis bore both the Horae and the Fates to Zeus.

[= Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.14.137.1]

Scholia on Homer's Iliad

8.39 (Yasumura, p. 89)   [bT Scholia]

Zeus, wishing to keep her by himself, swallowed Metis, daughter of Oceanus, who changed into various shapes, and who was pregnant by the Cyclops Brontes.

Secondary

Gantz

p. 51

From Zeus' conquests we move, with Hesiod, to his initial amatory affairs. As a first wife, we are told, he takes Metis (presumably the daughter of Okeanos and Tethys), who knows most of men and gods (Th 886—900). When she is about to bear Athena, however, he deceives her with soft words and swallows her, on the advice of Gaia and Ouranos, lest she bear not only Athena, with strength and wisdom equal to her father’s, but also a son to be king over men and gods. In this way Metis counsels him as to good and evil, and in time Athena (but not the son) is born from his head. An alternate version of these lines quoted by Chrysippos and probably from the Hesiodic Corpus retains the conceiving of Athena by Metis and the swallowing, and the fear of a child greater than his father, but not the specific prediction (Hes fr 343 MW). Moreover, in this account Zeus turns to Metis in anger after Hera has produced Hephaistos all by herself (a reversal from the situation in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where Hera bears Typhoeus in anger because Zeus produced Athena). Of course, Zeus does not thereby create a child unilaterally—he still needs the help of a woman—but at least he gives it birth. Unique to the Iliad scholia is the version in which Metis is already pregnant with Athena by the Kyklops Brontes when Zeus swallows her ([sigma]bT Il 8.39). Ignoring this last, we probably have a conflation of several different stories: one in which Zeus produces Athena from his head spontaneously, one in which he swallows Metis to gain her wisdom, and one in which he swallows her to prevent the birth of a rival. The second and third tales were then seen as a way of rationalizing the more unlikely elements in the first, and a somewhat unwieldy compound was created.

p. 52

Second of Zeus' unions with other goddesses is that with Themis, one of the two daughters of Ouranos and Gaia who have not previously mated (Th 901—11). ... In Hesiod, Themis becomes mother of both the Horai and the Moirai, although these last were earlier in the same poem the children of Nyx. ... A fragment of Pindar adds a bit of elegance to their union: Themis is brought by the Moirai (here not her daughters) from the springs of Okeanos to Olympos to be the first wife of Zeus, and the Horai are born (fr 30 SM).

p. 54

Third to mate with Zeus is Eurynome, another daughter of Okeanos, who bears the Charites, by name Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia (Th 906-11). ...

Hansen

p. 68

Zeus then took to wife Themis, who bore him the three Hours and the three Fates. Next he mated with the Oceanid Eurynomé, begetting the three lovely Graces. His fourth wife was Demeter, who bore him Persephoné, whom Hades subsequently seized to be his wife. Zeus then mated with Mnemosyné (Memory), and she gave birth to the nine Muses, goddesses who delight in feasts and song. After that Zeus mated with Leto, who bore him the beautiful children Apollon and Artemis, both of them archers.

Hard

pp. 77–9

Zeus took the Okeanid Metis, the personification of cunning wisdom, as his first wife, but this was a dangerous union because she was fated to bear two exceptional children, first a daughter, Athena, who would be almost as wise and strong as her father, and then a son who would displace him as ruler of gods and mortals. On being alerted of this peril by Gaia and Ouranos, he swallowed Metis in accordance with their advice while she was pregnant with the first child. So Athena was born in due time from his own body, emerging from his head (see further on p. 181), and the threatening son was never conceived.⁶⁵ Or in a rather different version from another poem in the Hesiodic corpus (possibly the Melampodeia), Zeus was so angry when Hera brought Hephaistos to birth as a fatherless child (see p. 79) that he set out to perform an equivalent action, and succeeded in some sense at least by having intercourse with Metis and then swallowing her so as to bring their child to birth from within himself.⁶⁶

The various elements in this myth can be disentangled without any great difficulty. The savage motif of the swallowing was evidently recycled from the succession myth. Knowing that he was in danger of being displaced by one of his children (just as he had displaced his own father), Kronos swallowed his children at birth, but was foiled because Zeus was saved from being swallowed; since the cycle of displacement came to an end with Zeus, what could be more natural than to imagine a story in which Zeus came to know likewise that a son of his would displace him, but removed the danger by a similar ruse to that attempted by his father? In this case, of course, he swallows the prospective mother of the child rather than the child itself. In the second place, the swallowing of Metis can be seen [p. 78] as a sort of allegory; for by ingesting her, Zeus takes possession of the cunning wisdom that she represents, as is fitting for the chief god. In all probability, the story of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus originated in very ancient times as an independent myth; but it could be drawn into the present story with good effect. For Athena bears an obvious affinity to Metis as a goddess who is noted for her practical wisdom (metis) and presides over all manner of crafts; and if it is assumed that Metis was pregnant with this appropriate child at the time when she was swallowed, it can be explained how Zeus himself came to be ‘pregnant’ with Athena.

After swallowing his first wife, Zeus married the Titan Themis, who represents another aspect of his rule as the personification of law and right order. She bore him two sets of children who contributed in their different ways to the ordering of the world, the Horai (Seasons, see further on p. 208), and the Moirai or Fates, whom we have encountered already as daughters of Night along with other sinister powers (see p. 27), but are now reclassified in so far as they apportion good and ill to mortals in accordance with the authority of Zeus.⁶⁷

A fragment from Pindar describes Themis as the first wife of Zeus, saying that she was brought up to Olympos by the Moirai to become his bride and bore the Horai to him; the Moirai are clearly not children of hers in this account.⁶⁸

...

Zeus’ third wife, Eurynome, was an Okeanid like his first; she bore him a single set of daughters, the Charites or Graces (see further on p. 208).⁷² Rather more important was his next union with the corn-goddess Demeter, which led to the birth of Kore (the Maiden), otherwise known as Persephone (see pp. 125ff).⁷³ His next consort after Demeter was the Titan Mnemosyne, the personification of Memory, who bore him a set of nine daughters, the Muses, who will be considered in Chapter 6 (see pp. 204ff).⁷⁴ Since the Muses were originally goddesses of music and poetry above all, Mnemosyne was an obvious mother for them, not only because poetry preserves the memory of the past but also because the poet himself had to place special reliance on memory before the invention of writing. The sixth and last of these preliminary wives of Zeus was his cousin Leto, a daughter of the Titans Koios and Phoibe. She bore two great Olympian gods to him, Artemis and Apollo.⁷⁵ Since most subsequent accounts of their birth present their mother as a victim of the jealousy of Hera (see p. 188), it was more commonly assumed that Zeus was already married to Hera at the time of their conception. The divine twins were born on the holy island of Delos.

As his seventh and last wife in Hesiod’s account, or as his only wife in the usual tradition, Zeus married his sister Hera.⁷⁶

⁶⁵ Hes. Theog. 886–900, cf. Apollod. 1.3.6.

⁶⁶ Hes. fr. 343.

⁶⁷ Hes. Theog. 901–6.

⁶⁸ Pi. fr. 30 SM.

⁷² Hes. Theog. 907–11.

⁷³ Ibid. 912–14.

⁷⁴ Ibid. 915–17.

⁷⁵ Ibid. 918–20.

⁷⁶ Ibid. 921–3.

Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti

p. 18

For instance, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the children of Leto are born into a world in which the couple Zeus–Hera already has an established union.

Smith

s.v. Metis

She was the first love and wife of Zeus, from whom she had at first endeavoured to withdraw by metamorphosing herself in various ways. She prophesied to him that she would give birth first to a girl and afterwards to a boy, to whom the rule of the world was destined by fate. For this reason Zeus devoured her, when she was pregnant with Athena, and afterwards he himself gave birth to a daughter, who issued from his head (Apollod. 1.3.6; Hes. Th. 886).

... according to Hesiod, Zeus devoured Metis on the advice of Uranus and Ge, who also revealed to him the destiny of his son. (Comp. Welcker, Die Aeschyl. Tril. p. 278.)

Yasumura

p. 89–90

According to a scholion (bT ad Il. 8.39) of unknown data and origin, Metis is already pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes when Zeus swallows her:

[Greek]

Zeus, wishing to keep her by himself, swallowed Metis, daughter of Oceanus, who changed into various shapes, and who was pregnant by the Cyclops Brontes. (schol. bT ad Il. 8.39)

...

If we link this account with verse 8 of the variant cited by Chrysippus, a remarkable analogy between Thetis and Metis becomes overt, and clarifies the ambiguous accounts of Hesiod about Metis. Verse 8 states,

[Greek]

fearing that she might give birth to something stronger than the thunderbolt (Hes. fr. 294 Most [343 M-W], 8)

Zeus fears that Metis will give birth to someone mightier than the thunderbolt. So, Metis, as well as Thetis, has the potential to bear a son mightier than his father.

... But in Metis' case, her impregnator is a Cyclops who provided Zeus with his strongest weapon, the thunderbolt. Once Metis gives birth to a son who is mightier than his father (that is, mightier than the thunderbolt), Zeus will surely be defeated. Therefore he must swallow Metis, and thereby swallow the thunderbolt, too, with which his supremacy might otherwise have been challenged. This explains the ambiguities in the Hesiodic account of Metis. First, [p. 90] the father of the unnamed son of Metis is not apparent in Hesiod. Although Hesiod seems to imply (at Theogony 897-8) that the father is Zeus, a more subtle reading which draws on variants in the mythic corpus, could imply that Brontes – Thunder – is the father of this unnamed son. Second, it is unclear in Hesiod how mighty the son is. Hesiod says that the son is to have an overwhelming spirit ([Greek], 898), and he is to be a king of gods and men (897). Is he to be mightier than Zeus?

Hesiod's primary concern is his intention to emphasise the birth of Athena and the importance of the relationship between Athena and Zeus. That is, if he had mentioned that Brontes was the father of the unnamed mighty son, this would weaken the link between Athena and Zeus.

...

The swallowing of Metis, and her advice from inside Zeus, justifies Zeus' epithet [Greek]: Zeus is, quite literally, filled with metis. As Caldwell writes,⁵² we are aware of Hesiod's progressive endeavour to elevate Zeus from god of brute force to a deity of wisdom. ... Metis, we see, is likewise meaningful on various levels: in the apparently crude myth of the swallowing of Metis-the-mother, we see Zeus acquiring metis-intelligence.⁵³

⁵² Caldwell (1989) 179.

⁵³ Cf. Solmsen (1949) 67, who writes that the tale of Metis is the vehicle for a profound idea, inasmuch as Metis stands for wisdom.

Text

Old

According to Hesiod, Zeus had seven wives. His first wife was the Oceanid Metis, whom he swallowed on the advice of Gaia and Uranus, so that no son of his by Metis would overthrow him, as had been foretold. Later, their daughter Athena would be born from the forehead of Zeus.

Zeus's next marriage was to his aunt and advisor Themis, who bore the Horae (Seasons) and the Moirai (Fates). Zeus then married the Oceanid Eurynome, who bore the three Charites (Graces).

Zeus's fourth wife was his sister, Demeter, who bore Persephone. The fifth wife of Zeus was his aunt, the Titan Mnemosyne, whom he seduced in the form of a mortal shepherd. Zeus and Mnemosyne had the nine Muses. His sixth wife was the Titan Leto, who gave birth to Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos.

Zeus's seventh and final wife was his older sister Hera.

Marriage to Hera

Sources

Primary

Apollodorus

1.3.1

Now Zeus wedded Hera and begat Hebe, Ilithyia, and Ares,¹ ...

¹ As to the offspring of Zeus and Hera, see Hom. Il. 5.889ff. (Ares), Hom. Il. 11.270ff. (Ilithyia), Hom. Od. 11.603ff. (Hebe); Hes. Th. 921ff. According to Hesiod, Hera was the last consort whom Zeus took to himself; his first wife was Metis, and his second Themis (Hes. Th. 886; Hes. Th. 901; Hes. Th. 921).

1.3.5

... but according to Homer he was one of her children by Zeus.²

² Compare Hom. Il. 1.571ff., Hom. Il. 1.577ff. In these lines Hephaestus plainly recognizes Hera as his mother, but it is not equally clear that he recognizes Zeus as his father; the epithet “father” which he applies to him may refer to the god's general paternity in relation to gods and men.

2.5.11

They [the Apples of the Hesperides] were presented < by Earth> to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, ...

Callimachus

fr. 48 Harder, pp. 152, 153

The sons of Cronus and Rhea were Zeus and Poseidon and Hades, the daughters were Hestia, Demeter and Hera. And in the dominion of Cronus they say that these made love ... Zeus and Hera for three hundred years, as Callimachus says in Book 2 of the Aetia,

how Zeus loved [Hera] for three hundred years

[= Scholia on Homer's Iliad, 1.609 (Dindorf 1875a, p. 69)]   [AD Scholia]

fr. 75 Clayman, pp. 208–17 [= P. Oxy. 1011 fr. 1 (Grenfell and Hunt, pp. 24–6)]

Already the bride was in bed with the boy, as custom demanded that the bride sleep on the night before the wedding with a boy whose two parents were both alive.¹ For they say that once upon a time Hera—dog, dog, hold back, impertinent [5] soul! You will sing even what is not lawful to tell!² ...

¹ This was apparently a fertility rite. On the relevance of this passage to Callimachus’ patron, Berenice II, see Clayman 2014, 92–93.

² An allusion to the hieros gamos, the sacred union of Zeus and Hera, which they kept secret from their parents (Il. 14.292–96), a passage also used to justify the brother/sister marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II (Theoc. Id. 17.131–34).

Diodorus Siculus

5.72.4

Men say also that the marriage of Zeus and Hera was held in the territory of the Cnosians, at a place near the river Theren, where now a temple stands in which the natives of the place annually offer holy sacrifices and imitate the ceremony of the marriage, in the manner in which with tradition tells it was originally performed.

Eratosthenes

Catasterismi 3 (Hard 2015, p. 12; Olivieri, pp. 3–4)

For according to Pherecydes, when Hera married Zeus, the gods brought gifts for her, and Earth came with golden apples; on seeing them, Hera was filled with admiration, and asked that they should be planted in the garden of the gods, which lies near Atlas; and because the daughters of Atlas constantly stole the fruit, she stationed this enormous snake there as a guard.

[= Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.3.1]

Pherecydes says that when Jupiter wed Juno, Terra came, bearing branches with golden applies, and Juno, in admiration, asked Terra to plant them in her gardens near distant Mount Atlas. When Atlas' daughters kept picking the apples from the trees, Juno is said to have placed this guardian there.

[= FGrHist 3 F16c]

For Pherekydes says that when Hera married Zeus and the gods were bringing gifts to her, Ge came bearing golden apples <with its branches>. When Hera saw them, she marveled and said that they were to be planted in the garden of the gods that was next to Atlas. She set a serpent of enormous size as a guard to keep the apples from continually being snatched away by that man’s daughters.

Hesiod

Theogony

921–9

Lastly, he made Hera his blooming wife: and she was joined in love with the king of gods and men, and brought forth Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia. But Zeus himself gave birth from his own head to bright-eyed Tritogeneia,¹ [925] the awful, the strife-stirring, the host-leader, the unwearying, the queen, who delights in tumults and wars and battles. But Hera without union with Zeus—for she was very angry and quarrelled with her mate—bare famous Hephaestus, who is skilled in crafts more than all the sons of Heaven.

¹ I.e. Athena, who was born “on the banks of the river Trito” (cp. l. 929l).

Homer

Iliad

4.440–1

... and Discord that rageth incessantly, sister and comrade of man-slaying Ares; ...

1.577–9

And I give counsel to my mother, wise though she be herself, to do pleasure to our dear father Zeus, that the father upbraid her not again, and bring confusion upon our feast.

14.293–6

And when he beheld her, then love encompassed his wise heart about, [295] even as when at the first they had gone to the couch and had dalliance together in love, their dear parents knowing naught thereof.

14.338

... that thy dear son Hephaestus fashioned for thee, ...

Odyssey

8.312

Yet for this is none other to blame but my two parents ...

Pausanias

2.17.4

The presence of a cuckoo seated on the sceptre they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet.

2.36.1

... and another mountain, called in old days Thornax; but they say that the name was changed because, according to legend, it was here that the transformation of Zeus into a cuckoo took place.

9.3.1–2

Hera, they say, was for some reason or other angry with Zeus, and had retreated to Euboea. Zeus, failing to make her change her mind, visited Cithaeron, at that time despot in Plataea, who surpassed all men for his cleverness. So he ordered Zeus to make an image of wood, and to carry it, wrapped up, in a bullock wagon, and to say that he was celebrating his marriage with Plataea, the daughter of Asopus. [2] So Zeus followed the advice of Cithaeron. Hera heard the news at once, and at once appeared on the scene. But when she came near the wagon and tore away the dress from the image, she was pleased at the deceit, on finding it a wooden image and not a bride, and was reconciled to Zeus.

Pherecydes

FGrHist 3 F16a

... Pherekydes in Book Two says that when Hera was married, Ge produced apple trees bearing golden fruit. And he says that the nymphs of Zeus and Themis dwelling in a cave around the Eridanos River (F 74) advised Herakles, when he was at a loss as to how to get information from Nereus about how he might take the golden apples; he took him by force. At first (Nereus) was turning himself into water and fire, then he says that he settled down and revealed himself in his original appearance.

[= Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica 4.1396–9b (Wendel, pp. 315–6)]

FGrHist 3 F16b

Pherekydes says in Book Two that Ge produced on the shore of Okeanos golden apples as gifts to Zeus when he married Hera. The serpent, an offspring of Typhon and Echidna, having a hundred heads and cries of all sorts, guarded them.

[= Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica 2.992 (Wendel, p. 317)]

Plutarch

Moralia

657 E (pp. 268–71)

... Hera’s one [nurse] (Euboea), ...

Fragments

fr. 157 Sandbach, pp. 286–9

3. Now this symbolical aspect occurs more often in stories and mythology. For example, they record that when Hera was still a girl, being brought up in Euboea, she was kidnapped by Zeus, transported to these parts and here concealed, Cithaeron^a providing them with a shaded nook to form a natural marriage-chamber. Macris (she was Hera’s nurse^b) came to look for her; but when she wanted to make a search of the place Cithaeron prevented her from interfering or approaching the spot by a tale that Zeus was sleeping and dallying with Leto there, Macris went away and thus Hera escaped discovery; later, to record her gratitude to Leto, she shared her altar and her temple with her. That is why preliminary sacrifice is made to “Leto of the Nook” (mychios), although some say “of the Night” (nychios). Either name, however, signifies the clandestine preservation of secrecy. But there are some who say that Hera herself was given the name of “Leto of the Night” as she there lay with Zeus secretly and undetected; but when their marriage became public and their association was brought to light—which first happened here on Cithaeron and at Plataea—she was named “Hera of Consummation” and “Hera of Wedlock.”^c

^a Either a personification of the mountain or a mythical king of Thebes (Pausanias, ix. 1. 2).

^b At Moralia 657 e Hera’s nurse is called Euboea, for which Macris was another name, Callimachus, Hymn iv. 20 etc.

^c Farnell, Cults, i, pp. 195, 244–246.

[= FGrHist 388 F1]

They say that Hera, while still a maiden, and being brought up in Euboia, was stolen away by Zeus, brought across, and hidden here, and that Kithairon provided them with a shaded dell which served as a natural bridal chamber. When Makris—Hera’s nurse—came looking for her and wanted to look inside, Kithairon did not allow her to look too closely, indeed he did not even take her near the place, claiming that Zeus was tarrying and dallying there with Leto. Makris went away, and so Hera escaped her on that occasion, and later in memory of the favour she shared her altar and temple with Leto, so that there is a preliminary sacrifice to Leto Mychia (‘of the dell’); but some call her Nychia (‘of the night’); in each of the two names the concealment and deception are commemorated. But some say that Hera herself, because she lay there with Zeus in secret, is for this reason named Leto Nychia (Leto of the Night). When the marriage was revealed, and because their cohabitation had first been uncovered here at Kithairon and Plataiai, Hera was named both Teleia (‘adult’) and Gamelios (‘of marriage’).

[= Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 3.1.3 (Gifford 1903a, pp. 112–3; Gifford 1903b, p. 92)]

fr. 157 Sandbach, pp. 292, 293

6. There is a more foolish story, and perhaps it should be told. It is that when Hera fell out with Zeus and would no longer consort with him but hid herself, he wandered around at his wits’ end; in this state he fell in with Alalcomeneus the aboriginal,a who instructed him that he must trick Hera by a pretence of marrying someone else. Alalcomeneus assisted him in secretly felling a lovely straight-grained oak-tree, which they shaped and dressed like a bride, giving it the name of Daidalê. Then, these preparations made, the wedding-song rang out, and the Nymphs of the river Tritonb brought the water for the bridal bath, and Boeotia provided pipes and revelry. As all this went forward, Hera could stand it no longer, but came down from Cithaeron, with a retinue of women from Plataea, and ran in anger and jealousy to confront Zeus. The counterfeit being exposed, she was reconciled to him and herself led the bridal procession with joy and laughter; she gave honour to the wooden image, by naming the festival Daidala, but for all that she burnt it up, lifeless though it was, in her jealousy.

[= FGrHist 388 F1]

(6) I ought perhaps also to tell a less sophisticated version of the story. For it is said that Hera was angry with Zeus and no longer willing to come to him, but instead hid herself away; Zeus did not know what to do and wandered about aimlessly until he met Alalkomeneus the autochthon (i.e., native), and was told by him that he should trick Hera by pretending to marry another woman. With the assistance of Alalkomeneus, they secretly cut down a straight-grained fine oak tree, sculpted it, and dressed it up like a bride, calling it Daidale; then they began to sing the wedding hymn, the Tritonid nymphs brought bathing water, and Boiotia provided auloi and dances. While this was going on, Hera, unable to endure it, came down from Kithairon accompanied by the women of Plataiai, and in a fit of jealous rage she ran down toward Zeus; and when the pretence had been revealed, she was reconciled with joy and laughter, and she herself led the wedding procession; she gave honour to the wooden image, and called the festival Daidala; but even so, she burned it up, although it was a lifeless thing, out of jealousy ... so says Plutarch.

[= Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 3.1.6 (Gifford 1903a, pp. 114–5; Gifford 1903b, p. 93)]

Ptolemy Hephaestion

apud Photius, Bibliotheca 190.47 (Rene, pp. 68–9; English translation)

§ 190.47 The author speaks of the earthborn Achilles and of all the Achilleses who have been celebrated since the Trojan events; it is this son of the earth who, when Hera fled from the union with Zeus, received her in his cave and persuaded her to marry Zeus, and it is said that this was the first marriage of Zeus and Hero, and Zeus promised Achilles that he would make famous all who bore his name.

Scholia on Homer's Iliad

14.296   [bT scholia]

Gantz, p. 57

The second tale (bT) relates that, after Kronos had been sent down to Tartaros, Hera was betrothed (as a presumed virgin) to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys but promptly gave birth to Hephaistos, having anticipated her marriage by lying with Zeus in secret on the island of Samos; to cover the deed she claimed that the birth was without benefit of intercourse (cf. ZA II 1.609).

Gantz, p. 74

We saw at the beginning of this chapter the tale of the Iliad scholia, that Hera conceived Hephaistos (by Zeus) before her marriage, then pretended there was no father so as to conceal the deed (bT Il 14.296).

1.609 (Dindorf 1875a, p. 69)   [A scholia] Perseus scaife

[πρὸς ὃν λέχος] ὅτι Ζηνόδοτος χωρὶς τοῦ ν, πρὸς ὃ λέχος. οὐ νοῶν ὅτι κοινόν ἐστι τὸ ὅν ἀρσενικοῦ καὶ οὐδετέρου.

Κρόνου καὶ Ῥέας ἐγένοντο υἱοὶ ἄρρενες τρεῖς, Ζεὺς Ποσειδῶν καὶ Ἅιθης, θυγατέρες δὲ τρεῖς, Ἑστία Δημήτηρ Ἥρα. τούτων, φασὶν, ἐπὶ τῆς Κρόνου δυναστείας ἠράσθησαν. τὸν δὲ Δία καὶ Ἥραν ἐπὶ ἐνιαυτοὺς τριακοσίους, ὡς φησι Καλλίμαχος ἐν δευτέρῳ αἰτίων “ὥς τε Ζεὺς ἐράτιζε τριηκοσίους ἐνιαυτούς.” λάθρα δὲ τῶν γονέων ἀλλή- λοις συνερχόμενοι ἔσχον υἱὸν Ἥφαιστον οὐχ ὁλόκληρον, ἑκατέρους δὲ τοὺς πόδας χωλὸν, ὥς φησιν αὐτὸν ἀμφιγυήεντα ὁ ποιητής. ὅτι δὲ λάθρα τῶν γονέων συνήρχοντο ἀλλήλοις μαρτυρεῖ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς λέγων “εἰς εὐνὴν φοιτῶντε φίλους λήθοντο τοκῆας” (ΙΙ. 14, 296). μετὰ δὲ τὴν τῶν Τιτάνων ὑπὸ Διὸς καθαίρεσιν καταταρταρωθέντος Κρόνου Ζεὺς καὶ Ἥρα διαδεξάμενοι τὴν ἐν οὐρανῷ βασιλείαν μέχρι τοῦ νῦν θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων βασιλεύουσιν, ἀλλήλοις ἡρμοσμένοι, τῆς Ἥρας τελείας καὶ συζυγίας προσαγορενομένης, παῤ ὅσον ἀδελφὴ μόνη ἀνδρὸς ἔτυχε τοιούτου. ἔσχε δὲ Ἥβην θυγατέρα, ἣν οἰνοχόον θεῶν παρίστησιν ὁ ποιητής.

βραχὺ διασταλτέον ἐπὶ τὸ ἀστεροπητής· τὸ γὰρ ἐπιφερόμενον ἔνθα τόπον σημαίνει. ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑξῆς στιγμὴν τελείαν θετέον ἐπὶ τὸ ἱκάνοι· πρεπωδέστερον γὰρ ἐκεῖ ἐκ τοῦ ἔνθα τὸ ἐνταῦθα σημαί- νεσθαι.

14.295–6   Euphorion fr. 99 Powell, p. 48

Scholia on Theocritus

15.64 (Wendel, pp. 311–2) [= FGrHist 33 F3]   [Other English translation]

[Women are aware of everything, even of how Zeus married Hera]

... Homer (Il.14.296): ‘going to bed they escaped detection by their parents’. Aristokles in his On the Cults of Hermione produces an unusual story on the marriage of Zeus and Hera: Zeus, according to the legend, planned to have intercourse with Hera, once he saw the goddess separated from the other gods. In his desire to be invisible and avoid being seen by her, he transformed his appearance into that of a cuckoo and perched on a mountain which was initially called Thornax, and now Kokkyx (cuckoo). Zeus produced a terrible storm that day, and Hera, travelling alone, arrived at the mountain and sat down where the temple of Hera Teleia is now to be found. The cuckoo, freezing and shivering because of the weather, saw her, flew down and sat on her lap. Hera took pity at the sight and threw her cloak around him, whereupon Zeus immediately changed his appearance and laid hold of Hera. When she declined intercourse because of their mother, he promised to make her his wife. In Argos, where the people honour the goddess more than any other Greeks, there is a seated statue of Hera in the temple on a throne holding a sceptre, and on the sceptre itself there is a cuckoo.

Stephanus of Byzantium

s.v. Hermion (II pp. 160, 161)

... because Zeus and Hera, coming from Crete, anchored there ...

Secondary

BNJ

commentary on 33 F3

... and of Zeus on the Kokkygion, which gained its name from the metamorphosis of Zeus into a cuckoo (2.36.1-2). The Chthonia are also the subject of verses attributed to (our?) Aristokles by Aelian, NA 11.4 (see Biographical Essay). Zeus’ metamorphosis is mentioned again at 2.17.4, where Pausanias is describing Polykleitos’ renowned statue in the Heraion (A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Hera (3)’, LIMC 4 (Zurich 1988), 662); he tells us that when Zeus was in love with Hera, he turned into the cuckoo, and she caught him as a ‘pet’ (παίγνιον).

Fowler 2013

p. 292

According to Pherekydes, then (in Book 2), the Golden Apples were produced by Earth as a gift for Hera's wedding. Fr. 16b says they were produced near Okeanos' shore; fr.16c says she brought them, boughs and all,¹⁰² to the wedding, whereupon the amazed Hera had them planted 'in the gods' garden, near Atlas'.¹⁰³

¹⁰² For the text of fr. 16c see now Pamias' edition; MS Q has in fact [Greek].

¹⁰³ Compare how the nymphs' wonderful grove in Hymn, Hom. Aphr. 267-8 is called [Greek]. The trees there are not immortal, but like their coeval nymphs very long-lived; these nymphs are neither gods nor mortals, but on the border, like (geographically) the Hesperides (for those gardens, and trees, see Hes. 7h. 215-16, 274-5, Ap, Rhod. 4,1422-30).

Gantz

p. 57

The closing section of Hesiod’s Theogony brings Zeus, after his previous dalliances, to his own sister Hera, who will become his actual wife, thus heralding the beginning of a more stable career as ruler of the gods (Th 921-23). As we saw in the preceding chapter, the Iliad offers one very odd reference to this union of brother and sister: in Book 14, when Zeus sees Hera coming toward him with the himas (love charm) of Aphrodite, he says that he desires her as he did when they first went to bed together, unknown to their parents (Il 14.295—96). If indeed Kronos did swallow his daughters as well as his sons in the Theogony, the young couple could not have comported themselves thus before Zeus seized power from his father (and forced the disgorging of his sister), at which point Kronos’ knowledge or ignorance of his children’s sexual activities would seem rather irrelevant. Possibly, then, Homer alludes rather to an account in which Kronos swallows only his sons (as we saw in Orphic fr 58 Kern) or otherwise imprisons them (as in Fab 139), for then the grown Zeus will be free to emerge from hiding and mate with his sister before his father becomes aware of his existence. But even in this version Zeus will remain unknown to his father, and his union with his sister will be the least of Kronos’ eventual worries.

...

The second tale (bT) relates that, after Kronos had been sent down to Tartaros, Hera was betrothed (as a presumed virgin) to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys but promptly gave birth to Hephaistos, having anticipated her marriage by lying with Zeus in secret on the island of Samos; to cover the deed she claimed that the birth was without benefit of intercourse (cf. ZA II 1.609).

p. 58

Whatever the truth of the matter, the idea of a secret tryst between the two gods reappears in Kallimachos, who hints that some such event is the aition for a Naxian prenuptial ritual (fr 75.4—5 Pf). Adding further uncertainty is the remark by Theokritos that all women know how Zeus married Hera, together with the scholiast’s explanation (citing Aristotle) that Zeus transformed himself into a cuckoo so as to effect contact with her (X Theok 15.64; so too Paus 2.17.4, 2.36.2). ...

For any other information about the early passions of Zeus and Hera, the closest we come in Archaic literature is Pherekydes, where (as we found in chapter 1) the wedding at least is well publicized, and all the gods bring gifts to the new bride (in particular, Gaia brings a tree bearing golden apples: 3F16). Of that event too, however, nothing else survives. As regards offspring of the marriage, Zeus begets by his wife in all accounts three children—Ares, Hebe, and Eileithuia—and frequently a fourth, Hephaistos (in Hesiod and some other authors the blacksmith god is the child of Hera alone; see below under “Hephaistos").

p. 74

By his own wife Hera he begets three or four children, depending on whom we read. The doubt occurs, as we have already seen, in the case of Hephaistos, who is clearly Heras child but may or may not have a father. In Iliad 1 the blacksmith god does call Hera mother and Zeus father, but there lurks a possibility that this last could be a general title (I! 1.577—79). Similarly, in Iliad 14, Zeus calls him son, but he could well mean Heras son (II 14.338). In Odyssey 8, however, Hephaistos clearly reproaches his "two parents,” and these, it would seem, can only be Zeus and Hera (Od 8.312). For the story that Hera alone conceived him we must turn to the Theogony, where his birth without a father is described immediately after a reference to Athena's birth (Th 927-29). ... We saw at the beginning of this chapter the tale of the Iliad scholia, that Hera conceived Hephaistos (by Zeus) before her marriage, then pretended there was no father so as to conceal the deed (bT Il 14.296).

Hard

p. 78

As his seventh and last wife in Hesiod’s account, or as his only wife in the usual tradition, Zeus married his sister Hera.⁷⁶ It is indicated plainly enough in the Iliad that she was his first choice rather than his last, and it is even implied in one passage that the pair first made love before the banishment of Kronos.⁷⁷

⁷⁶ Ibid. 921–3.

⁷⁷ Hom. Il. 14.293–6.

p. 79

Hera bore three children to Zeus as the offspring of their marriage, namely Hebe, Ares and Eileithuia; and as a counter-miracle to the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, she brought forth Hephaistos as a son of her very own without prior intercourse with her husband.⁷⁸ Such is the account in the Theogony at least; but in other sources, including the Homeric epics, Hephaistos is often regarded as an ordinary child of Zeus and Hera.⁷⁹

⁷⁸ Hes. Theog. 922–9.

⁷⁹ Hom. Od. 8.312 (Hephaistos indicates that he has two parents) with Il. 1.577–9, 14.338.

p. 136

According to a Cretan legend, Zeus wedded Hera with due ceremony on the island near the river Theren in the territory of Knossos. Diodorus reports that a temple stood on the very spot in his own day, and that the local people would offer annual sacrifices there ‘and imitate the wedding-ceremony, just as tradition presents it as having been originally performed’.¹⁸⁵ ... The whole of nature is brought into play in the famous scene in the Iliad in which Zeus encloses Hera in a cloud to make love with her on Mt Ida:

then the son of Kronos clasped his wife in his arms, and beneath them the holy earth caused fresh-grown grass to spring forth, and dewy clover and meadow-saffron, and hyacinth thick and soft, that raised them off the ground; there the two of them lay down together, and were covered all around with a beautiful golden cloud, from which there fell glistening drops of dew.¹⁸⁶

...

Most of the local legends and rites that are recorded in connection with the divine union refer to the first prenuptial intercourse between Zeus and Hera rather than to their wedding. It was claimed, indeed, on Samos that the pair had first slept together on that island in utter secrecy for three hundred years.¹⁹⁰ The Iliad already mentions that they first went to bed together without their parents knowing, but says nothing about the circumstances or place of the encounter.¹⁹¹ It seems that Naxos also claimed to be the place of this prenuptial union, since the behaviour of [p. 137]

¹⁸⁵ D.S. 5.72.4.

¹⁸⁶ Hom. Il. 14.346–41.

¹⁹⁰ Schol. Il. 1.609

¹⁹¹ Hom. Il. 14.295–6.

p. 137–8

Zeus and Hera was cited in explanation of a local marriage-custom in which the bride would share her bed with a young boy on the night before her wedding.¹⁹² Since Euboea was sacred to Hera and local tradition asserted that she had been reared there by a nymph called Makris,¹⁹³ it is no surprise that similar claims should have been put forward on that island too. No less than three places were pointed out as the actual site where the union had been consummated, two caves on the island itself and one on an islet nearby.¹⁹⁴

Another local tradition located the first union at the south-eastern tip of the Argolid near the coastal town of Hermione. On seeing Hera there on her own before the time of her marriage, Zeus set out to seduce her. He assumed the form of a cuckoo and settled on the mountain that was known thenceforth as Cuckoo Mountain (Kokkyx or Kokkygion); and after stirring up a violent thunderstorm, he flew over to Hera as she was sitting on the mountain of Pron (the Headland) opposite, and alighted on her lap. Feeling pity for the wet and bedraggled bird, she sheltered it under her robe, at which point Zeus returned to his original form and proceeded to make love to her. Although she resisted him at first because they were children of the same mother, she yielded to him as soon as he promised to make her his wife. A temple of Hera Teleia (the Fulfilled, i.e. as wife) could be seen at the supposed site of the incident, and there was a temple of Zeus on the summit of Cuckoo Mountain nearby.¹⁹⁵ The great effigy of Hera at the Argive Heraion showed her holding a sceptre surmounted by a cuckoo, evidently in reference to the preceding legend, as Pausanias remarks;¹⁹⁶ ...

A Boeotian legend placed the prenuptial union on Mt Kithairon on the southern borders of the province. After Hera had been brought up on the island of Euboea, Zeus abducted her to Boeotia on the mainland opposite, and they took refuge on Kithairon, which, in the words of Plutarch, ‘provided them with a shady cave, forming a natural bridal-chamber’. When Makris, the Euboean nymph who had reared Hera, came to look for her missing ward, she was warned off by Kithairon (i.e. the tutelary deity of the mountain), who assured her that Zeus was taking his pleasure there with Leto.¹⁹⁷

... The cultic legend that was offered to account for the festival ran as follows. When Hera had once quarrelled with Zeus, as she so often did, she had withdrawn to her childhood home of Euboea and had refused every attempt at reconciliation. So Zeus sought the advice of the wisest man on earth, Kithairon, the eponym of [p. 138] the mountain (rather than the god of it as in the story above), who ruled at Plataia below in the very earliest times. Kithairon advised him to make a wooden image of a woman, to veil it in the manner of a bride, and then to have it drawn along in an ox-cart after spreading the rumour that he was planning to marry Plataia, a daughter of the river-god Asopos. When Hera rushed to the scene and tore away the veils, she was so relieved to find a wooden effigy rather than the expected bride that she at last consented to be reconciled with Zeus.¹⁹⁹ Or in another version of the story, Zeus sought advice on his marital problem from Alalkomeneus, the earth-born first man of Alalkomenai in western Boeotia, who helped him to cut and adorn the wooden effigy, which was known as Daidale (the Cunningly Wrought); Hera hurried down from Kithairon, where she had hidden herself, with all the women of Plataia at her heels; but as soon as she discovered the trick, the whole affair ended in laughter and good humour. .... ²⁰⁰

¹⁹² Call. fr. 75.4–5, schol. Il. 14.296.

¹⁹³ Euboea sacred to Hera, schol. A.R. 4.1138; reared there by Makris, schol. Il. 2.535.

¹⁹⁴ Steph. Byz. s.v. Karystos, Dirphys and Elymnia.

¹⁹⁵ Schol. Theoc. 15.64, Paus. 2.36.2.

¹⁹⁶ Paus. 2.17.4.

¹⁹⁷ Plut. In Euseb. 3.1.6 (= On the Plataian Daidalia fr. 3; see Loeb Plutarch vol. 7 p.44).

¹⁹⁹ Paus. 9.3.1–2.

²⁰⁰ Plut l.c.

Parada

p. 72 GB Snippet

Eris

...

•b) Zeus ∞ Hera

...

•b) Hom. Il. 4.440

Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti

p. 18

Other accounts take a different view of Zeus’s marriage to Hera, either claiming that they had actually been a couple from the very beginning²⁷ ...

²⁷ Cf. Hom. Il. 14.293–6, and schol. AD Hom. Il. 1.609 Dindorf (I, p. 69; van Thiel, p. 80). See below, pp. 24–5.

p. 20

A scholion to the Iliad gives a clear summary of the situation: the ancient commentator first mentions the youthful passion of Zeus and Hera and then states that ‘when once the Titans had been defeated and Kronos imprisoned in Tartaros, Zeus and Hera received the sovereignty in heaven, and tied to each other as they are, they still today reign over gods and men’ (Ζεὺς καὶ Ἥρα διαδεξάμενοι τὴν ἐν οὐρανῷ βασιλείαν, μέχρι τοῦ νῦν θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων βασιλεύουσιν, ἀλλήλοις ἡρμοσμένοι). As far as Hera is concerned, the scholiast continues, ‘she, alone, of all her sisters is called Teleia or Syzygos, because only she has such a grand husband’ (τῆς Ἥρας τελείας καὶ συζύγου προσαγορευομένης, παρ’ ὅσον ἀδελφὴ μόνη ἀνδρὸς ἔτυχεν τοιούτου).³³

³³ Schol. AD Hom. Il. 1.609 Dindorf (I, p. 69; van Thiel, p. 80).

p. 24

In contrast to the version of the story we find in Hesiod, in which Hera is the very last wife, in the Iliad Homer alludes to the fact that they have formed a couple since their adolescence, when they came together without their parents’ knowledge.⁴⁴ This tradition about the youthful liaison between Zeus and Hera was already known in the archaic period, and it was developed locally in a series of variants referring to the places where Hera was supposed to have been raised and/or the places where she and Zeus were supposed to have made love for the first time together.⁴⁵

⁴⁴ Hom. Il. 14.293–6.

⁴⁵ Argolis: Paus. 2.17.1 (childhood), 2.17.4 (reference to the union); Aristocl. 33 F 3 Jacoby = schol. Theoc. 15.64 (prenuptial union on Mount Thornax); Steph. Byz. 277.16, s.v. Ἑρμιών (at Hermione, union of the couple coming from Crete). Euboea: Plut. 388 F 1 Jacoby = Euseb. Praep. evang. 3.1.3–4 (upbringing); schol. Ar. Pax 1126a (union). Samos: Paus. 7.4.4 (birth); schol. Ap. Rhod. 1.187 (childhood); Euphor. fr. 99 Powell = schol. Hom. Il. 14.295 Erbse (III, p. 635); Varro, quoted by Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.17.8 (union). Crete: Etym. Magn. 434.49 (childhood); Diod. Sic. 5.72.4 (union). On the ritual cycle to which these local traditions refer, see Chapter 2.

p. 99

Hera is angry and has withdrawn to Euboea. When Zeus consults the king Kithairon (eponym of the mountain) about what to do to resolve the dispute with his wife, he is told that he should pretend to enter into a new marriage. This stratagem succeeds so well in rousing the jealousy of Hera that she rushes back to Kithairon and stops the marriage procession by placing herself firmly in its way. She then discovers that the purported ‘bride’, Plataia, is nothing but a decoy in the form of a wooden statue – a daidalon – over which a bridal veil was draped.³² She is immediately reconciled with her husband.

³² Paus. 9.2.7, 9.3.2.

p. 100

The second of Plutarch’s stories preserved by Eusebius³⁶ also makes reference to the spat between Zeus and Hera, but this time the goddess is said to withdraw to Kithairon. In this version it is an inhabitant of the region named Alalkomenes – whose name is taken from that of a place near Plataia – ³⁷ who advises Zeus to fool his wife by cutting the stem of a fine oak tree, hewing it roughly and then dressing it as a bride. The trick works in the same way as in the other version, where it was King Kithairon who suggested it: Hera cannot resist this provocation. She ‘comes down from Kithairon, escorted by the women of Plataia; urged on by anger and jealousy, she runs up to Zeus’. The whole thing ends again in peals of laughter and a reconciliation.³⁸

³⁶ Plut. 388 F 1 Jacoby = Euseb. Praep. evang. 3.1.6.

³⁷ Cf. Paus. 9.33.5, where the eponymous figure would have been Athena’s foster-father.

³⁸ Ibid.

Sandbach

p. 289, note b to fr. 157

At Moralia 657 e Hera’s nurse is called Euboea, for which Macris was another name, Callimachus, Hymn iv. 20 etc.

Sistakou

p. 377

Another striking example concerns the debate about the marriage between Zeus and Hera. Homer alludes to this prohibited subject twice in the Iliad (1.609–611 and 14.294–296) and the Homeric scholia provide the necessary mythological background for both passages.⁴⁷ In the comment on the latter the scholiast attributes a prenuptial ritual of Naxos to the ἱερὸς γάμος, an aition treated by Callimachus in the story of Acontius and Cydippe (fr. 75.1–5 Harder):

ἤδη καὶ κούρῳ παρθένος εὐνάσατο, τέθμιον ὡς ἐκέλευε προνύμφιον ὕπνον ἰαῦσαι ἄρσενι τὴν τᾶλιν παιδὶ σὺν ἀμφιθαλεῖ. ῞Ηρην γάρ κοτέ φασι—κύον, κύον, ἴσχεο, λαιδρέ θυμέ, σύ γ ̓ ἀείσῃ καὶ τά περ οὐχ ὁσίη...

...And already the girl had slept with a boy, as there was a rule that ordered the bride to sleep the night before the wedding with a male child with both parents living. For they say that Hera once‒dog, dog, contain yourself, impudent soul, you will sing even what is against divine law... [Transl. A. Harder]

Though it is not expressly stated, Callimachus must have been the source of the Homeric scholiast (Sch. Il. 14.296a): τεκοῦσαν γοῦν ῞Ηφαιστον [sc. τὴν Ἥραν] προσποιεῖσθαι δί χα μί ξεως κυεῖν ...διὸ καὶ μέχρι νῦν ὑπόμνημα φυλάσσεσθαι παρὰ Ναξίοις καὶ τὸν ἀμφιθαλῆ τῇ τάλι συγκατατίθεσθαι. Not only is Callimachus alluding to the Homeric text (probably through φασι) and the philological exegesis accompanying it (by reference to the aition), but with his recusation he also hints at the debate about the appropriateness of this Homeric narrative.⁴⁸

⁴⁷ It is no coincidence that the scholiast employs a verse from the Aetia to substantiate his story (Sch. Il. 1.609 τούτων φασὶν ἐπὶ τῆς Κρόνου δυναστείας ἠράσθησαν. τὸν δὲ Δία καὶ ῞Ηραν ἐπὶἐνιαυτοὺς τριακοσίους, ὥς φησι Καλλίμαχος ἐν β αἰ τιῶν· ὥστε Ζεὺς ἐράτιζε τριηκοσίους ἐνιαυ-τούς = fr. 48 Harder).

⁴⁸ Already Plato (Rep. 390b) considered the subject ‘immoral’ and hence unsuited to Homeric poetry. For the rich background of the ‘immorality’ debate in scholarship and literature, see Harder 2012, 2.584–588.

Text

Old

Zeus was the brother and consort of Hera. According to Pausanias, Zeus had turned himself into a cuckoo to woo Hera. By Hera, Zeus sired Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia and Hephaestus, though some accounts say that Hera produced these offspring alone. Some also include Eris, Enyo and Angelos as their daughters. In the section of the Iliad known to scholars as the Deception of Zeus, the two of them are described as having begun their sexual relationship without their parents knowing about it.

According to a scholion on Theocritus' Idylls, when Hera was heading toward Mount Thornax alone, Zeus created a terrible storm and transformed himself into a cuckoo bird who flew down and sat on her lap. When Hera saw the cuckoo, she felt pity for him and covered him with her cloak. Zeus then transformed back and took hold of her; because she was refusing to sleep with him due to their mother, he promised to marry her. In one account Hera refused to marry Zeus and hid in a cave to avoid him; an earthborn man named Achilles convinced her to give him a chance, and thus the two had their first sexual intercourse. Zeus then promised Achilles that every person who bore his name shall become famous.

A variation goes that Hera had been reared by a nymph named Macris on the island of Euboea, but Zeus stole her away, where Mt. Cithaeron, in the words of Plutarch, "afforded them a shady recess". When Macris came to look for her ward, the mountain-god Cithaeron drove her away, saying that Zeus was taking his pleasure there with Leto.

According to Callimachus, their wedding feast lasted three thousand years. The Apples of the Hesperides that Heracles was tasked by Eurystheus to take were a wedding gift by Gaia to the couple.

Affairs

Sources

Primary

Aeschylus

Suppliants

291–313 (pp. 324–9)

Chorus: They say that once upon a time a certain Io was keyholder⁵⁷ of the temple of Hera in this land of Argos.

Pelasgus: She certainly was; that is the general and dominant tradition.

Chorus: Is there perhaps also a story about Zeus making love to a mortal?

Pelasgus: Yes, and their embraces did not remain concealed from Hera.

Chorus: <Two of my arrows have already hit the mark.>⁵⁸

Pelasgus: How, then, did this quarrel between the royal pair⁵⁹ end?

Chorus: The Argive goddess turned the woman into a cow.

Pelasgus: So did Zeus couple again with this cow with the beautiful horns?

Chorus: They say he did, mounting her in the shape and likeness of a bull.

Pelasgus: And what did the powerful consort of Zeus do in response to that?

Chorus: She set over the cow a watchman who could see everything.⁶⁰

Pelasgus: Who is this all-seeing lone cowherd you speak of?

Chorus: Argus, child of Earth, whom Hermes slew.

Pelasgus: What else, then, did she contrive against the unfortunate cow?

Chorus: <She sent a winged> cattle-driver.

Pelasgus: <Do you mean> the gadfly⁶⁰ that forces <cattle> to keep moving?

Chorus: Those who dwell near the Nile call it oistros.⁶²

Pelasgus: This too that you have said matches my information perfectly.

Chorus: And in fact she came to Canobus and Memphis.⁶³

Pelasgus: Is that where it drove her to, in her long flight from this land?

Chorus: Yes, and Zeus the Toucher begot a child for her by the touch of his hand.

⁵⁷ i.e. priestess.

⁵⁸ This renders West’s tentative supplement, for which see Studies 139–140.

⁵⁹ Zeus and Hera.

⁶⁰ Because he had eyes all over his body (as often portrayed in contemporary art).

⁶¹ Greek μύωψ.

⁶² οἶστρος is a Greek, not an Egyptian word; cf. on 119 and 220.

⁶⁰ Canobus was a town at one of the mouths of the Nile, just east of what was to become the site of Alexandria; in Prom. 846–9 it is prophesied that Io’s wanderings will end there. Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, was further inland, a little south of modern Cairo.

Amphis

apud Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.1.2

But as Amphis, writer of comedies, says, Jupiter, assuming the form of Diana, followed the girl as if to aid her in hunting, and embraced her when out of sight of the rest.

Apollodorus

2.1.3

Zeus seduced her while she held the priesthood of Hera, but being detected by Hera he by a touch turned Io into a white cow³ and swore that he had not known her; wherefore Hesiod remarks that lover's oaths do not draw down the anger of the gods. But Hera requested the cow from Zeus for herself and set Argus the All-seeing to guard it. ... He tethered her to the olive tree which was in the grove of the Mycenaeans. But Zeus ordered Hermes to steal the cow, and as Hermes could not do it secretly because Hierax had blabbed, he killed Argus by the cast of a stone;⁶ whence he was called Argiphontes.⁷ Hera next sent a gadfly to infest the cow,⁸ and the animal came first to what is called after her the Ionian gulf. Then she journeyed through Illyria and having traversed Mount Haemus she crossed what was then called the Thracian Straits but is now called after her the Bosphorus.⁹ And having gone away to Scythia and the Cimmerian land she wandered over great tracts of land and swam wide stretches of sea both in Europe and Asia until at last she came to Egypt, where she recovered her original form and gave birth to a son Epaphus beside the river Nile.¹⁰

³ Compare Aesch. Supp. 291ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 2.103 （who cites the present passage of Apollodorus）; Ov. Met. 1.588ff.

⁶ Compare Scholiast on Aesch. Prom. 561; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.103.

⁷ That is, slayer of Argus.

⁸ For the wanderings of Io, goaded by the gadfly, see Aesch. Supp. 540ff., Aesch. PB 786(805)ff.; Ov. Met. 1.724ff.

⁹ Bosphoros, ”Cow's strait” or ” Oxford.”

¹⁰ Compare Aesch. PB 846(865)ff.; Hdt. 2.153 Hdt. 3.27; Ov. Met. 1.748ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 145.

2.4.1

... but some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae's lap.

3.8.2

Now Zeus loved her and, having assumed the likeness, as some say, of Artemis, or, as others say, of Apollo, he shared her bed against her will, ...

Cypria

fr. 10, pp. 88–91

The author of the epic Cypria, whether he is one Cyprias or Stasinus, or whatever he likes to be called, has Nemesis chased by Zeus and turning herself into a fish in these verses:

Third after them she (he?) gave birth to Helen, a wonder to mortals; whom lovely-haired Nemesis once bore, united in love to Zeus the king of the gods, under harsh compulsion. For she ran away, not wanting to unite in love with father Zeus the son of Kronos, tormented by inhibition and misgiving: across land and the dark, barren water she ran, and Zeus pursued, eager to catch her; sometimes in the noisy sea’s wave, where she had the form of a fish, as he stirred up the mighty deep; sometimes along Ocean’s stream and the ends of the earth; sometimes on the loamrich land; and she kept changing into all the fearsome creatures that the land nurtures, so as to escape him.

[= Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 8.334b–d]

Diodorus Siculus

4.14.4

A peculiar thing also came to pass in connection with the birth of this god. The first mortal woman, for instance, with whom Zeus lay was Niobê, the daughter of Phoroneus, and the last was Alcmenê, who, as the writers of myths state in their genealogies, was the sixteenth lineal descendant from Niobê. It appears, then, that Zeus began to beget human beings with the ancestors of Alcmenê and ceased with her; that is, he stopped with her his intercourse with mortal women since he had no hope that he would beget in after times one who would be worthy of his former children and was unwilling to have the better followed by the worse.

Euripides

Helen

16–21 (pp. 14, 15)

As for me, glorious Sparta is my homeland, Tyndareus is my father (though there is a story that Zeus flew to my mother Leda in the shape of a swan [who was fleeing from an eagle and had his way with her by treachery, if that story is reliable]), ...

Fragments

fr. 178 Nauck, pp. 410–2

Nonnus

Dionysiaca

7.122 (pp. 252, 253)

"The sixth shall bring the King of heaven an eagle to Aigina."

7.210–4 (pp. 260, 261)

Father Zeus now deceitfully changed his form, and in his love, before the due season, he flew above River Asopos, the father of a daughter, as an eagle with eye sharp-shining like the bird, as he were now presaging the winged bridal of Aigina.^c

^c He approached her (cf. cote on 117 ff.) in the form of an eagle.

Ovid

Metamorphoses

2.409–530

... This said, the god transformed himself and took

Diana's form—assumed Diana's dress

and imitating her awoke the maid, ...

6.113

... to Aegine like a flame, ...

Pherecydes

FGrHist 3 F10

But Zeus desired the girl and rained with gold from closeby through through [sic] the roof. And since Zeus had made himself manifest and mated with the girl, she became pregnant.

[= Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, 4.1091 (Wendel, p. 305)]

FGrHist 3 F13b

On this night, Zeus came to the house of Amphitryon in the likeness of Amphitryon having a karchesion, and Alkmene, thinking that her own [text missing] bridal chamber, inquired about what happened concerning the Teleboai, had he killed them. And Zeus told her all that happened and gave her the karchesion, saying that he had got it as a prize of valor from the soldiers, and she took it with pleasure. Then Zeus, having slept with her, departed, and when Amphitryon arrived, he slept with her on that same night. And Alkmene bore Herakles from Zeus, but Iphiklos from Amphitryon. The story is from Pherekydes.

[= Scholia on Homer's Odyssey, 11.266]

FGrHist 3 F13c

On that same night Zeus desired her, appeared in the likeness of Amphitryon, mated with her, and produced a son; likewise, Amphitryon too slept with her that same night. And forthwith, in the fullness of ten months of her having intercourse, Herakles was born from Zeus, and Iphiklos from Amphitryon. They say that while he was sleeping with Alkmene Zeus persuaded Helios not to rise for three nights; whence for three nights Zeus slept with her and on the third night he created Herakles. The story is from Pherekydes.

[= Scholia on Homer's Iliad, 14.323 (Dindorf 1875b, p. 62)]   [Ab scholia]

Pindar

Pythian

12.17–8

... Perseus, the son of Danae, who they say was conceived in a spontaneous shower of gold.

Scholia on Homer's Iliad

12.292 (Dindorf 1875a, pp. 427–8)   [Ab scholia]   Dindorf Vol. 3, p. 506

[= Bacchylides fr. 10 Campbell, pp. 262, 263]

Schol. AB Hom. Il. 12. 292 (i 427, iii 506 Dindorf)

Zeus caught sight of Europa, daughter of Phoenix, gathering flowers with young girls in a meadow, and fell in love; coming down, he changed himself into a bull and breathed the scent of saffron from his mouth. Tricking Europa by these means he took her on his back, carried her over the sea to Crete and had intercourse with her there. Then he gave her in marriage to Asterion, king of Crete; but she was pregnant and gave birth to three sons, Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys. The story is in Hesiod¹ and Bacchylides.²

¹ Fr. 141 M.-W.

² Cf. 17.29 ff.

[= Hesiod fr. 89 Most, pp. 172–5]

(140 MW) Schol. D in Hom. Il. 12.397 (p. 418 van Thiel2); cf. Schol. T in Hom. Il. 12.292 (III p. 359.49 Erbse cum apparatu)

Zeus saw Phoenix’s daughter Europa plucking flowers together with maidens in a meadow, and he was seized by desire for her. He came down and changed himself into a bull whose breath was saffron scented. Deceiving Europa in this way he let her mount him, and carrying her across the sea to Crete he mingled with her. Then he gave her as wife to Asterion, the king of the Cretans. She became pregnant and bore three children, Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthys. The story is in Hesiod and Bacchylides.

[= Merkelbach-West fr. 140, p. 68]

Secondary

Gantz

p. 61

Otherwise her primary role in Greek myths is as jealous wife, harassing the unwilling lovers (or offspring) of Zeus, in particular Io, Semele, and Herakles; in many other cases, however, she is not heard from at all (e.g., Dia- Peirithoos, Danae-Perseus, Europa-Minos, Aigina-Aiakos [but in this last case see Met 7.523-24 and Fab 52]).

p. 199

Her tale was clearly included in the Ehoiai, as we would expect, and Apollodoros appears to draw primarily from it in his retelling. In his version, Zeus seduces Io (a priestess of Hera), and is caught red-handed by Hera while embracing the girl. He therefore changes her into a white cow and swears to Hera that he has not lain with her (the relationship between these two actions is not very clear). ... There follows the death of Argos (as another source confirms for the Ehoiai: Hes fr 126 MW), the sending of the gadfly, Io's wanderings, and the birth of her son Epaphos in Egypt, where she recovers her original form (ApB 2.1.3).

pp. 199–200

The interrogation offers the most direct evidence: Io held the keys to Hera’s shrine in Argos, Zeus mated with her, and Hera, discovering the [p. 200] affair, turned Io into a cow, presumably to discourage her husband (A: Hik 291—324). Zeus, however, continued to mate with Jo by turning himself into a bull, and therefore Hera sent Argos to guard the cow. Hermes slew Argos, and Hera then sent the gadfly, who drove Io all the way to Egypt.

p. 210

Whoever her father, all sources agree that Europa was kidnapped by Zeus. The Iliad says only that she bore to him Minos and Rhadamanthys (II 14.321-22), but a fragment of the Ehoiai (mostly holes) confirms some details of the abduction, and a scholion to a passage in Iliad 12 relates a version that it claims is drawn from Hesiod and Bakchylides. In this latter account, Zeus sees Europa in a meadow with other girls gathering flowers and desires her; he therefore changes himself into a bull, lures Europa away, and mates with her once they have arrived on Krete (ZAb 1| 12.292 = Hes fr 140 MW = Bak fr 10 SM). The children are Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon; ...

p. 220

Nonnos has Zeus become an eagle to snatch up Aigina, much as we will see in the case of Ganymedes (7.122, 210-14). Of Ovid's notion (mentioned in passing) that Zeus approached her in the form of fire there seems no other trace (Met 6.113).

p. 300

This version of the beginning of the story is accepted in its general lines by later writers and becomes the standard account; indeed already in Pindar’s Pythian 12.17-18 we find reference to the shower of gold by which Zeus came to Danae. ... Apollodoros offers the same information without naming Pindar, and again as a variant on the usual tale of Zeus and the shower of gold, suggesting that he too thought Perseus might in some accounts be Proitos’ child (ApB 2.4.1).

p. 319

As we saw in discussing Nemesis in chapter 1, our source for this twelve-line citation is Athenaios, whose sole purpose in offering it is to establish that Nemesis turned herself into a fish (Athen 8.334b-d). The quote begins by saying that after these (something mas- culine, presumably the Dioskouroi) Zeus begat thirdly Helen, whom Nemesis bore in union with the ruler of the gods under compulsion.‘ These last words refer to the fact that, for reasons that are not made clear, Nemesis does not wish to mate with Zeus; when simple flight does not avail her she takes the form of a fish and swims through the sea and Okeanos, then travels over dry land while becoming various beasts.

pp. 320–1

Our earliest actual reference of any sort to Zeus becoming a swan to engage Leda’s attention is Euripides’ Helen: the title character in speaking the prologue calls herself a daughter of Tyndareos, but then relates the report of men that Zeus as a swan sought shelter with Leda when pursued by an eagle, and thus won her affection (Hel 16-21). Shortly after, the same play asserts that Leda did indeed produce from this union an egg from [p. 321] which Helen was born (Hel 257—59).¹¹

¹¹ These lines have been bracketed by Murray and others; they are defended by A. M. Dale in her edition of the play (Dale 1967.83).

p. 374

Zeus’ affair with Alkmene is one of those he mentions to Hera in Iliad 14, with Herakles born in Thebes as a result (Il 14.323—24). Agamemnon in Iliad 19 improves upon this by telling the tale of Zeus' deception by Hera at the time of the birth: after Zeus has sworn that whoever is born that day will rule all those around him, Hera delays the birth of Herakles and accelerates that of Eurystheus, son of Sthenelos of Argos (Il 19.95-125).

p. 375

The first, Athenaios, says that according to Pherekydes and Herodoros, when Zeus lay with Alkmene, he gave her a cup as a gift in exchange for their union (11.474f = 3F13a, 31F16). The second, a scholion to Odyssey 11, has Zeus in the guise of Amphitryon present the cup to Alkmene as a war prize and proof that he has slain the Teleboans (= Od 11.266 = 3F13b). Perhaps this is what Athenaios means too, but his words certainly sound as if Pherekydes had Zeus in his own form win Alkmene’ affections with the gift. The scholiast's story, though it must come from somewhere, is also a trifle odd, for the cup is not much proof, and what will the real Amphitryon think when he sees it? The scholiast himself seems to realize the awkwardness of this last point, for he tells us that Alkmene “put the cup away.”

p. 476

In Ovid, as we noted, Hera initiates the catastrophe in the guise of Semele’s Epidaurian nurse Beroe (Met 3.256-315). Thus concealed, she causes Semele to doubt that her lover really is Zeus, and encourages her to seek proof. Semele extorts from Zeus an oath to grant her an unnamed request, much as Phaethon does from Helios, then makes the same wish as in Diodoros. Zeus brings his very lightest, tamest bolts, but the effect is still too much for the expectant mother. Apollodoros gives the same general account, but limits himself to noting that Semele was deceived by Hera into making her request, and died of fright when seeing the lightning and thunderbolts being hurled (ApB 3.4.3).

p. 485

One other detail, supplied by the sixth-century A.D. Byzantine writer John Malalas, is that in this drama Zeus took the form of a Satyros to rape Antiope (pp. 410—11 N²).¹⁹

¹⁹ Probably also on Athens 11798, a "Megarian" relief bowl with a representation of a Satyros and woman in a cave, as well as two other scenes that may be part of Euripides' play (or at least the story): see Sinn 1979.109 (MB 51) and pl. 21.1, 2.

p. 486

The scholia to Apollonios, which offer an account similar to that of Hyginus, also know that Zeus takes the form of a Satyros to rape Antiope (cf. Nonnos 7.123), and that Nykteus, who is grieved/annoyed, then dies (X AR 4.1090).

p. 726

Ovid too relates Zeus' disguise as Artemis, although with a bit more verisimilitude: Kallisto realizes the identity (or at least the gender) of her seducer, if to no avail, and thus does not implicate Artemis (Met 2.409—530).

Grimal

s.v. Hera, p. 192

She is portrayed as jealous, violent, and vindictive, often angry with Zeus, whose infidelities she regarded as insults. She visited her hatred not only on Zeus’ mistresses, but on the children he sired upon them. Among these, Heracles was the greatest victim of Hera’s wrath. The idea of the Twelve Labours was commonly attributed to the goddess. Furthermore, she persecuted him incessantly until his final apotheosis.

s.v. Zeus, p. 468

Such were Zeus’ unions with goddesses but his intrigues with mortals were countless.

Hard 2004

p. 80

There is one consort of Zeus, possibly the oldest of all, who is not to be found in Hesiod’s list, namely DIONE. Although she is mentioned twice in the Theogony, first among the deities who are praised in the processional songs of the Muses (which would imply that she was a goddess of some eminence), and then among the daughters of Okeanos,⁸³ it is nowhere suggested that she has any special connection with Zeus. But Homer refers to her as the mother of Aphrodite, who is indubitably a daughter of Zeus in his poems, and he must therefore have known of the union between Zeus and Dione; she comforts and consoles Aphrodite in the Iliad when she arrives on Olympos after being wounded in battle by Diomedes (see p. 461).⁸⁴ There are various indications that suggest than she was once of greater importance than might be inferred from the scant mention of her in the works of the main poets. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo includes her, for instance, among the foremost goddesses who attended Leto’s childbearing;⁸⁵ and it is itself significant that her name seems to be no more than a feminine equivalent of that of Zeus (which takes the form of Dios in the genitive).

⁸³ Hes. Theog. 353, 17.

⁸⁴ Hom. Il. 5.370–4.

⁸⁵ Hom. Hymn. Apollo 93.

p. 138

Although Hera was highly revered as a cultic deity, it was perhaps inevitable in view of Zeus’ countless infidelities that she should have been condemned to an undignified role in many of her myths, which frequently present her as a wronged and vindictive wife who is constantly wrangling with her husband and persecuting his mistresses and their children.

pp. 170–1

In Greek myth, however, she is fully mortal, as one of the four daughters of Kadmos, king of Thebes (see p. 298). Zeus fell in love with her and used to visit her in secret at night, exciting the jealousy of Hera, who plotted her rival’s destruction. Appearing to her in the form of her aged nurse Beroe, Hera congratulated her [p. 171] on the exalted rank of her lover, but advised her to impose a test on him to prove on the exalted rank of her lover, but advised her to impose a test on him to prove that he was Zeus and truly loved her: let him appear to her in all the splendour of his divinity, just as he would appear to his lawful divine consort.¹⁴¹ Or in another version, Hera suggested that this was the only way in which she could come to experience the full pleasure of intercourse with a god.¹⁴² So Semele persuaded Zeus to promise her any favour she chose (or took advantage of a promise that he had already made to that effect) and demanded that he should come to her just as he came to Hera. He reluctantly agreed, and swept into her bedroom in a chariot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning; but her human frailty could not endure his Olympian glory, and she died of fright and was burned to ashes. Before her body was fully consumed, however, Zeus snatched her sixth- or seventh-month child from her womb, and sewed it into his own thigh, from where it was subsequently brought to birth at the fulfilment of the normal time of gestation. ... ¹⁴³

¹⁴¹ Ov. Met. 3.259–298, cf. D.S. 3.64.3–4, Apollod. 3.4.3 (similar though less detailed); but in D.S. 4.2.1–3 Semele makes the fateful request on her own initiative. From the earlier tradition, see Eur. Bacch. 1–9 (Hera to blame for Semele’s fate, no details).

¹⁴² Hyg. Fab. 167, 179.

¹⁴³ Hom. Il. 14.325 (Semele bore Dionysos to Zeus), Hes. Theog. 941–3 (likewise, and that mother and child divinized), Hom. Hymn 1 to Dionysos (Zeus brought him to birth, but account lost; the epithet eiraphiotes as applied to Dionysos in lines 2, 17 and 20 is significant in this regard if it means ‘insewn’); Pi. Ol. 2.25–6 (first states that Semele killed by thunderbolt), cf. Eur. Bacch. 6ff; full story of birth of D., D.S. 3.64.3–5 (cf. 4.2.3), Apollod. 3.4.3, Ov. Met. 3.298–315.

p. 231

On finding that Hermes had foiled her plan to confine the cow in one place, Hera sent a gadfly against it to ensure that it would now be constantly on the move without a moment’s rest. In the final form of the myth, Io wandered all the way to Egypt before finding any relief. ... By the classical period, a more extravagant version had established itself in which the transformed Io went all the way to Egypt, where Zeus restored her to her original form and so enabled her to give birth to her child. ... ²⁸

Apollod. 2.1.3, cf. Aesch. Suppl. 540–73; etymology for Ionian Gulf, Apollod. l.c., Aesch. Prom. Bound 840–1.

p. 238

His precautions achieved nothing, however, since Zeus fell in love with Danae and slipped down through the roof into her lap in the form of a shower of gold, causing her to conceive a mighty son, PERSEUS.⁸⁵

⁸⁵ First Pi. Pyth. 12.17–18, Pher. 3F10, Soph. Antig. 944–50; possibly in Hes. fr. 135, but the papyrus is too poorly preserved for it to be possible to tell whether the ‘golden’ in line 5 has anything to do with a shower of gold.

p. 247

As soon as the spoils had been gathered together, Amphitryon set sail for Boeotia, eager to prove his success to his beloved and win his way into her bed. Shortly before he arrived, however, Zeus forestalled him by assuming his guise to seduce Alkmene. On being assured that vengeance had been executed against the Teleboans as she had demanded, and receiving a magnificent cup from the spoils by way of proof, Alkmene welcomed the disguised god into her arms; and he extended the time of their love-making by lengthening the night to three times its usual length. ... ⁶

⁶ Hes. Shield 27–56, D.S. 4.9.1–3, Apollod. 2.4.8, Hyg. Fab. 29. Cup and lengthening of night first in Pher. 3F13

p. 303

This version of the story was ultimately derived from the lost Antiope of Euripides; in that play, Zeus was said to have approached the unfortunate Antiope in the form of a Satyr.⁶⁰

⁶⁰ Apollod. 3.5.5, Hyg. Fab. 8 (ascribed to Antiope of Euripides), schol. A.R. 4.1090 (Zeus raped Antiope in form of Satyr).

p. 337

In the earliest surviving account of the abduction of EUROPA, as ascribed to Hesiod (i.e. the author of the Catalogue) and Bacchylides, Zeus fell in love with her when he saw her gathering flowers with her attendant maidens in a meadow in Phoenicia, and turned himself into a bull to carry her away. After beguiling her by breathing a crocus from his mouth, he took her on to his back and carried her through the sea to Crete, where he reverted to his proper form and took her as his mistress.² ... Some authors followed the early Argive mythographer Acusilaus in regarding it as an ordinary bull that was sent by Zeus or the gods; ... ³

² Schol. Il. 12.92 citing Hesiod (= fr. 171) and Bacchylides (= fr.105).

³ Moschus 2, Ov. Met. 2.836–75; genuine bull, Acus. 2F29, D.S. 5.78.1.

p. 439

According to Euripides, Zeus assumed the form of a swan in order to put a seduction-ruse into action; for he caused an eagle to chase him through the air while he was in that form, and then sought shelter in Leda’s lap⁹ ...

⁹ Eur. Helen 16–22; cf. Hyg. Astr. 2.8, Zeus adopts similar ruse to seduce Nemesis.

p. 541

As an easily accessible example of such a version, we may first turn to Ovid’s narrative in the Metamorphoses. When Zeus once happened to catch sight of Kallisto lying on her own in the grass, he assumed the form of Artemis to approach her and then proceeded to rape her in spite of her determined resistance. ... ¹⁶³

¹⁶³ Ov. Met. 2.401–530; although Ovid does not name the constellations here, he does so in the Fasti in connection with the rising of Bootes, 2.189–92.

Tripp

s.v. Hera, p. 274

Failing in this, she [Hera] pursued him [Heracles] throughout his life, causing him endless hardships and destructive madness.

Text

Old

Zeus mated with several nymphs and was seen as the father of many mythical mortal progenitors of Hellenic dynasties. Aside from his seven wives, relationships with immortals included Dione and Maia. Among mortals were Semele, Io, Europa and Leda (for more details, see below) and the young Ganymede (although he was mortal, Zeus granted him eternal youth and immortality).

Many myths render Hera as jealous of his affairs 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 talking incessantly, and when Hera discovered the deception, she cursed Echo to repeat the words of others.

Zeus slept with his great-granddaughter, Alcmene, disguised as her husband Amphitryon. This resulted in the birth of Heracles, who would be tormented by Zeus's wife Hera for the rest of his life. After his death, Heracles's mortal parts were incinerated and he joined the gods on Olympus. He married Zeus and Hera's daughter, Hebe, and had two sons with her, Alexiares and Anicetus.

According to Diodorus Siculus, Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, was the very last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with; following the birth of Heracles, he ceased to beget humans altogether, and fathered no more children.

Zeus fell in love with Semele, the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and started an affair with her. Hera discovered his affair when Semele later became pregnant, and persuaded Semele to sleep with Zeus in his true form. When Zeus showed his true form to Semele, his lightning and thunderbolts burned her to death. Zeus saved the fetus by stitching it into his thigh, and the fetus would be born as Dionysus.

New

After his marriage to Hera, different authors describe Zeus's numerous affairs with various mortal women. In many of these affairs, Zeus transforms himself into an animal, someone else, or some other form to seduce, abduct, or sleep with the woman in question. According to a scholion on the Iliad (citing Hesiod and Bacchylides), when Europa is picking flowers with her female companions in a meadow in Phoenicia, Zeus transforms himself into a bull, lures her from the others, and then carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where he resumes his usual form to sleep with her. In Euripides' Helen, Zeus taking the form of a swan, and after being chased by an eagle, finds shelter in the lap of Leda, subsequently seducing her, while in Euripides' lost play Antiope Zeus apparently took the form of a satyr to sleep with Antiope. Various authors speak of Zeus raping Callisto, one of the companions of Artemis, doing so in the form of Artemis herself according to Ovid (or, as mentioned by Apollodorus, in the form of Apollo), and Pherecydes relates that Zeus sleeps with Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, in the form of her own husband. Several accounts state that Zeus approached the Argive princess Danae in the form of a shower of gold, while in Ovid's account he abducts Aegina in the form of a flame.

(Transformations: Animals: Europa; Leda; Someone else: Callisto; Alcmene, Antiope; Other form: Danae, Aegina)

In accounts of Zeus's affairs, Hera is often depicted as a jealous wife, and there are various stories of her persecuting either the women with whom Zeus sleeps, or their children by him. Several authors relate that Zeus slept with Io, a priestess of Hera, who was subsequently turned into a cow, and suffered at Hera's hands; according to Apollodorus, she sent a gadfly to sting the cow, driving it all the way to Egypt, where Zeus finally transformed Io back into human form. In later accounts of Zeus's affair with Semele, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, Hera tricks her into persuading Zeus to grant her any promise. Semele asks him to come to her as he comes to his own wife Hera, and when Zeus upholds his promise, she dies out of fright and is reduced to ashes. According to Callimachus, after Zeus sleeps with Callisto, Hera turns her into a bear, and instructs Artemis to shoot her. In addition, Zeus's son by Alcmene, the hero Heracles, is persecuted continuously throughout his mortal life by Hera, up until his apotheosis.

(Hera: Io, Semele, Alcmene, Callisto, Lamia?, Dionysus?)

There also exist several stories of Zeus lusting after other goddesses, who attempt to escape his embraces. According to

Goddesses: Nemesis, Asteria, Aphrodite, Thetis

Male lovers: Ganymede, Chrysippus? (in a note maybe)

Children

Sources

Primary

Hesiod

Theogony

938–44

And Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore to Zeus glorious Hermes, the herald of the deathless gods, for she went up into his holy bed. [940] And Semele, daughter of Cadmus was joined with him in love and bore him a splendid son, joyous Dionysus,—a mortal woman an immortal son. And now they both are gods. And Alcmena was joined in love with Zeus who drives the clouds and bore mighty Heracles.

Homer

Iliad

14.323–5

... nor of Semele, nor of Alcmene in Thebes, and she brought forth Heracles, her son stout of heart, [325] and Semele bare Dionysus, the joy of mortals; ...

Secondary

Gantz

p. 11

... while Aphrodite is throughout the poem clearly the daughter of Zeus (by the Okeanid Dione, Il 5.370—71).

p. 12

The second difference between Homer and Hesiod here, that of the oth- erwise unpretentious Dione (Homer says nothing about her parents either) as Aphrodite’s mother, is at least in keeping with the Iliad’s general tendency to avoid the magical and fantastic, at any rate in comparison with lost epics.!? Yet we have no basis on which to insist that Homer invented rather than selected a version. The beginning of the Theogony lists a Dione (together with Hebe) among those divinities whom the poem will celebrate (Th 17), as if Hesiod involuntarily recognized the Homeric version (or a line was interpolated here); later on in the poem a Dione will appear as one of the Okeanides (Th 353). Apollodoros follows Homer, but with Dione given the rank of a thirteenth Titan offspring of Ouranos and Gaia (ApB 1.1.3). This is probably an attempt to elevate her status after the fact, since later in the same work a Dione is one of the Nereides (ApB 1.2.7), but we cannot be certain that Apollodoros did not find it in early sources." The usual interpretation of Dione’s name as a feminine form of Zeus, if correct, may also indicate a greater early importance than Hesiod allows.

p. 105–6

Of Hermes, the god of thieves, trade, messages, and mischief, the birth is recorded in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, as well as in Homeric Hymn 18 and, of course, the Theogony (Th 938-39). The latter describes the blessed event in just two lines, noting that Maia, daughter of Atlas, went into the bed of Zeus, and bore Hermes, herald of the gods (a phrase—kéryx atha- natón—not found in Homer of either Hermes or Iris, though Zeus in Od 5.29 calls Hermes “messenger” [angelos] as one of his many roles). The two Hymns on the other hand say—in almost the same words—that Zeus went to the cave [p. 106] of Maia, who lives apart from the other gods, in the dead of night, and lay with her unbeknownst to Hera (HHerm 1-9; HomH 18.1—9). No reason is offered in either poem for this odd isolation of Maia.

p. 112

Last of the major Olympians is Dionysos, the only such god to be born of a mortal woman. Both the Iliad and the end of the Theogony acknowledge him as the child of Zeus and Semele, daughter of Kadmos (II 14.323-25; Th 940-42); their affair and her ultimate fate will be treated among the stories of the children of Kadmos.

p. 319

Dissenting, however, is one scholiast (on Pindars Nem 10) who says that in “Hesiod” Helen is born from Zeus and an Okeanid (Hes fr 24 MW); ... (see rest of page)

p. 472

Kadmos' most famous daughter Semele, like her sister Ino, is already known to Homer, for Zeus in Iliad 14 reminds us that she is the mother of his son Dionysos (Il 14.323—25). To be fair, Zeus does not actually call her a daughter of Kadmos, but he does place her with Alkmene in Thebes, and the inference as to her father is very likely. The end of the Theogony gives us the first explicit statement of her origins, as we saw above, and also recognizes the unusual circumstances attending the child she conceives: although mortal she gave birth to Dionysos, an immortal, and subsequently obtained divine status herself (Th 940—42).

p. 726

The fourth-century comic poet Amphis offers more detail on the seduction: Zeus here takes the form of Artemis herself to deceive Kallisto, and when Artemis later demands the iden- tity of the guilty party the seducee can only name the goddess (fr 47 Kock); ...

...

Ovid too relates Zeus' disguise as Artemis, although with a bit more veri- similitude: Kallisto realizes the identity (or at least the gender) of her seducer, if to no avail, and thus does not implicate Artemis (Met 2.409—530).

p. 727

Turning to Apollodoros, we find a somewhat different account; after his discussion of the varied genealogies for Kallisto he proceeds (without naming a source) to relate that Zeus approached her in the guise of Artemis or perhaps Apollo, and then, wishing to conceal the matter from Hera, himself turned her into a bear (ApB 3.8.2).

Hard 2004

p. 519

An exceptional destiny was reserved for MAIA, who became the mother of an Olympian god. She lived a secluded life in a cave on Mt Kyllene in Arcadia, where Zeus visited her secretly at night and fathered the god Hermes by her. Since Hermes was a precocious infant who set off to steal the cattle of Apollo on the first day of his life and left home forever on the second, Maia had little opportunity to devote any motherly care to him.10 ... The Odyssey mentions her as the mother of Hermes without saying anything about her origin.11

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In addition to his children by Hera and his earlier wives, Zeus is the father to a large number of other children by various goddesses and mortal women. Different authors describe his numerous affairs with mortal women, some of whom are subsequently persecuted by Hera (or their children with Zeus are). In many of his affairs, Zeus transforms himself into an animal, someone else, or some other form to sleep with the woman.

According to both Hesiod and Homer, Zeus is the father of Hermes by Maia, the daughter of Atlas, of Dionysus by the mortal woman Semele, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and of the hero Heracles by Alcmene, the husband of Amphitryon. In the Iliad, Aphrodite is considered the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione, whose name appears to be the feminine version of Zeus's name.

Apollodorus

Offspring	Mother
Asopus	Eurynome
Pan	Hybris
Persephone	Styx
Aeacus	Aegina
Dardanus	Electra
Epaphus		Io
Argus, Pelasgus	Niobe
Aethlius	Protogeneia?
Iasion or Eetion,	Electra

Harmonia Nysean, Ersa, Manes, Opus

Roman sources

Offspring	Mother
Charites (Aglaea, Euphrosyne, Thalia)	Euanthe or Eurydome or Eurymedusa
Coria (Athene)	Coryphe
Korybantes	Calliope
Aegipan	Aega, Aix or Boetis
Meliteus	Othreis
Palici	Thalia
Tityos	Elara
Pirithous	Dia
Achaeus	Phthia
Heracles	Lysithoe
Orion	No mother
Colaxes	Hora
Aetolus,	Protogeneia
Phasis, Geraestus, Taenarus	unknown mothers

Dionysus, (SElene)

Calabrus, Cyprian Centaurs Emathion,

Castor and Pollux: see Castor and Pollux#Birth

|- |Persephone |Rhea

Eunomia Eubuleus,