Ch. 5, The Twelve Olympians

Sources

Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, 8th c. BCE
Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite (# 5), to Ares (# 8), to Hera (# 12), to Hephaestus (# 20), to the Supreme Son of Cronus (# 23), to the Muses and Apollo (# 25),, and to Hestia (# 24 & 29), 8th to 3rd c. BCE.

The following 14 deities are the major Greek gods; all, but the italicized Hades and Hestia, are Olympians (i.e. they have their HQ on Mt. Olympus in Greece).

Note that the Roman gods are not the exact equivalent of the Greek gods; when the Romans came in contact with the Greeks, they tried to match their gods to the Greek deities as best they could. In some cases, they lacked an equivalent god (e.g. they had no god of culture [they were at the time a society of farmers, with no literature], and so simply adopted Apollo).

Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Fire

Hestia is an unusual deity for the Greeks; there are very few stories about her, and very few images. She represents the power of fire as center of family and community. Remember that in the oldest times, before there were civilizations, fire was revered for its great power, to cook food and prepare metal for bending or molding. Families would gather about the fire for warmth, and protection; there, they would tell stories as well. Hestia represents that magical attractive and saving power of fire. For the Romans, the Temple of Vesta (a circular temple in the Forum), tended by the Vestal Virgins, was a symbolic center of the city, and consequently, of the Roman world. The fire in the Temple of Vesta was never allowed to go out. According to one story, Hestia was originally an Olympian god, but gave up her position to Dionysus, as she saw her place at people's hearths, immediate, not distant.

The Diverse Character of Zeus

One of the most difficult aspects of Zeus for a modern audience to accept is his apparent randiness. At one time, Greece would have been inhabited by lots of different groups. Each group would have some story of how their local deity was a child of the supreme god and a local nymph or mortal woman. As Greek mythology came together, all of those liaisons were attributed to Zeus, with the result that you have a supreme god who can't keep it in his chiton. It doesn't help Zeus' reputation that poets and tellers, ever interested in romance and the follies of love (just think how many stories and movies are devoted to this -- a whole literary genre [romance]), spent a lot of time on these stories. The poets' aim, in most cases, is to demonstrate the power of love, but it does make Zeus sometimes seem silly.

Zeus is also a god of near total power (he seems to need allies to defeat certain enemies, and so, is not omnipotent) and near total knowledge (again, he doesn't know everything, though he seems to be wiser in later literature). Sometimes he's portrayed as a tyrant; at other times, he is seen as a wise ruler, who carefully monitors human affairs to make sure that all runs in accord with Fate. This may be due to increasing desire among the thinkers and artists of Greece for a god who represents all the finest qualities. Several philosophers felt that a god who was a bed-hopping clown was not something to be worshipped or admired. They suggested that the real Zeus was beyond tales, something vaster and more mysterious.

Hera

Hera gets a bum rap -- her mother, Rhea, and grandmother, Gaia, are female deities of great power, much of it connected to the fertility of the earth. The earth goddess attributes become associated with Demeter, so that Hera's chief sphere of influence becomes marriage. In stories, then, because of all the stories devoted to Zeus' infidelities, she gets demoted to a shrewish harpy, and a jealous wife. There were towns (Argos, for instance) that worshipped her as their patron, and she must have been seen, in worship, as having more power and worth than she seems to in much of the literature.

The Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia

There is an excellent site on this site developed by Rebecca Furer. You can check out this site by clicking here. You may also want to look at the links on the Morford and Lenardon site. Click here.

The statue of Zeus, made by Phidias, for this temple, made of ivory and gold, was immense (you might think of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial for something of equivalent size). It was considered one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World. The metopes (sculptural scenes similar in appearance to the Stations of the Cross in a Catholic church) depicted the 12 Labors of Hercules, and the pediments (sculptural group in the triangular areas above the East and West entrances) depicted the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs (West Pediment), and the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaüs, the event that was seen as the birth of the Olympic Games (East Pediment).

The Olympic Games began in 776 BCE. They were Panhellenic contests; while the games were going, and for weeks before and after, there was a truce between any warring Greek peoples, to allow for attendance at the games. These were not the only Panhellenic games, but they were the most famous. The Greeks used the Olympic Games as their universal dating mark. Thus, 770 BCE would be "in the 3rd year of the 2nd Olympiad."

Children of Zeus and Hera

Hebe and Ganymede. Hebe, daughter of Hera and Zeus, is goddess of youth; she served as waitress to the gods; got fired for clumsiness, but married Hercules. Her replacement, Ganymede, was a pretty Trojan shepherd boy, who was promoted upstairs (quite literally). Read the selection from Homeric Hymn # 5, where the story is cited as evidence of Aphrodite's power, even over Zeus, and read Goethe's "Ganymede," on the Morford and Lenardon website by clicking here. For the Romantics, the seizure of Ganymede represented a much desired personal connection to the gods.

Hephaestus. In some accounts, he is the child of Hera alone. Like Gaea's later births, he is not entirely normal, and she rejects him. In other accounts, Hephaestus becomes lame because of a hard landing, after being thrown off Olympus by Zeus. I see him, in some ways, as a Bill Gates type of god. He's very clever in his area of influence, and probably was often overlooked by the other gods (he's not handsome like the other gods, and he's lame). In the two excerpts we have here, one from the Iliad, the other from the Odyssey, Hephaestus is someone the other gods laugh at, the child who wants his parents to stop fighting, the husband, whose wife cheats on him. He may be able to catch his wife, but he's still the god the others overlook.

Ares. Ares is generally shown in literature as a bully. He is war personified (more of a warmonger), and is often brutal and selfish. He looks handsome though, and so is often an object of affection for Aphrodite. He is associated with Thrace, an area north of Greece that was viewed by the Greeks as somewhat barbaric.

Muses

The Muses are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne ("Memory"). They began as the spirits that inspired bards to sing their songs. Remember that Greek poetry existed for centuries before it was written down; memory is key to a performing poet -- he can't afford to lose the train of thought, or the metrical pattern ("the beat") of a song. To see how difficult it is to compose on the spot, watch Whose Line is it Anyways on ABC (7 p.m. Thursdays) or visit ComedySportz in the City Market area some evening. It became the custom of poets to invoke the Muses at the beginning of their work, though for authors composing in writing, memory is not quite the issue it is for bards. The first Museum (Greek Musaion), in Alexandria, Egypt, was built as a scholarly center -- a home for the Muses. The great Library at Alexandria was part of the Museum. The division of tasks for the 9 Muses is later than Homer and Hesiod.

Fates

That the Fates are the children of Zeus and Themis ("Right"), suggests that things turn out as they are supposed to. The three Fates are Clotho ("the spinner"), Lachesis ("the measurer") and Atropos ("the inflexible one"), and are viewed in literature and art as three crones spinning out the lifespan for each person, measuring it, and cutting it. Fate (singuglar) in Greek literature is interesting to observe. Zeus is sometimes equated with Fate (Moira -- lit. "apportionment"), sometimes its agent, and at other times, at odds with Fate, but unable to triumph over it. It's interesting to see what happens when the supreme deity is not all-knowing or all-powerful, but has limits too.

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