A classical dictionary of Greek and Roman biography, mythology and geography / based on the larger dictionaries by Sir William Smith ; revised throughout and in part rewritten by G.E. Marindin.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A classical dictionary of Greek and Roman biography, mythology and geography / based on the larger dictionaries by Sir William Smith ; revised throughout and in part rewritten by G.E. Marindin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1028/1036 page 1016
    101(5 ZEUS waa further the original source of all prophetic ; power, from whom all prophetic signs and Bounds proceeded (■iravoix<patos). Everything, good as well as bad, comes from Zeus; accord- ing to his own choice he assigns good or evil to mortals ; and fate itself was subordinate to him. He is armed with thunder and lightning (the original attributes of the god of the skyj, and the shaking of his aegis produces storm and tempest; epithets of Zeus in the Homeric poems describe him as Tepiriicepavvos, epl- ySouTTos, v^ifipefifrris, the thunderer, ;/£(|)6AT]'y€- pfrrjs, the gatherer of clouds, and in later ■writers ofifipios or v4tios, the sender of rain. Hence Zeiij MEiA.i'xior (the placable) was wor- shipped at the Attic Diasia, that he might give favourable weather for the spring crops, and Zeus MaijuttKxrjj at the approach of winter, that he might not send heavy storms. Hesiod has adopted the myth which belonged to Crete and to Asia Minor and has in literature superseded the purer conception of Zeus. In this story also Zeus is the son of Cronos and Rhea, and the brother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Cronos swallowed his children im- mediately after their birth, but when Rhea was pregnant ■with Zeus, she applied to Uranus and Ge to save the life of the child. Uranus and Head ol the Olympian Zeus. (From a bust in the Vatican.) Ge therefore sent Rhea to Lyctos in Crete, requesting her to bring up her child there. Rhea accordingly concealed Zeus in a cave of Mount Aegaeon, and gave to Cronos a stone wrapped in cloth, which he swallowed in the belief that it was his son. Cronos, by a cun- ning device of Ge or Metis, was made to vomit up the children he had swallowed, and first of all the stone, which was afterwards set up by Zeus at Delphi (Hes. Th. 468-500; cf. Pans. X. 24, 5). The infant Zeus wd.s brought up in Crete, nursed by Amalthea, and guarded by the Curetes, who clashed their cymbals that his cries might not be heard by his father [Amalthea; Cuuetes]. Coming to manhood Zeus 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 Gi- gantes, Briareus, Cottus and Gyes, that they might assist him in his fight against the Titans. The Titans were conquered and shut up in Tartarus, where they were lienceforth guarded by the Hecatoncheires. Thereupon Tartarus and Ge begot Typhoeus, who began a fearful struggle with Zeus, but was conquered. [Cy- clopes ; ^GlOANTEK ; TiTANES ; TVPHOEIIB.] Zeus now reigned supreme, and chose Metis for his wife. When she was pregnant with Athene, he took the child out of her body and concealed it in his head, on the advice of Uranus and Ge, who told him that thereby he would retain the supremacy of the world. For if Metis had given birth to a son, this son (so fate had ordained it) would ha<?e acquired the sovereignty. [Athene, p. 138, a.] His position as supreme lawgiver is represented in myth by his second marriage, with Themis (Justice or Law), from which sprang the Fates and the Seasons [Hoivae ; Moerae]. But his marriage with Hera was the ' sacred marriage,' the type of all marriages [see Heba, p. 393, b]. Twelve great Olympian gods were recognised : or rather six pairs of deities (cf. Hymn, ad Merc. 128). It is likely that the list in Liv. xxii. 10, which mentions the twelve deities worshipped in Greek fashion at lectisternia, represents the twelve to whom the altar at Athens was erected (Thuc. vi. 54). These were Zeus (the head of them all), Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Athene, Artemis and Aphrodite. The altars to twelve gods were common in Greece, but not always to the same twelve, including sometimes deities not usu- ally regarded as belonging to the Olympian ' dynasty.' The altar at Olympia was to the following six pairs: Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athene, Hermes and Apollo, Dionysus and the Charites, Artemis and Alpheus, Cronus and Rhea (Schol. ad Pind. 01. v. 5). In the preva- lent Greek mythology, though Zeus was always recognised as supreme god, the minister and announcer of his will was Apollo.—Such is the representation of Zeus in literature, but it must not be forgotten that this account, and many other legends about him are the outcome of a combination of mythologies. The change of dynasties from Uranus to Cronus and from Cronus to Zeus represents in reality the par- tial acceptance of a theology belonging to older inhabitants of Greek lands whose supreme gods are retained as predecessors of the Greek Zeus. Moreover, as has been pointed out above, the older Greek Zeus (the Zeus of the so-called ' Pelasgians') was the god of the bright sky [cf. Jupiteb], worshipped on moun- tains such as Olympus (more than one), Ithome, Parnes, Cithaeron, Laphystion, Ida and Samo- thrace. Many, no doubt, of the myths about him refer to the phenomena of the sky: the fight with Typhoeus, for instance, is probably a myth from the strife of the elements, and the story of the Cyclopes supplying him with thunderbolts obviously refers to thunderstorrns; but it is an error to apply this interpretation as universally as some have done. The many transformations of Zeus in his amours have been rightly explained as no sky-phenomena, but as additions gradually made to the story of Zeus from the common habit of tracing the descent of noble families from the god. Thus a number of separate local genealogies of this kind gathering round the name of Zeus, from whom these local families traced their descent, necessitated the belief in a number of unions between Zeus and local nymphs or mortal wo- men ; and, further, those primitive tribes who had totemistic symbols had traditions whicli are preserved in the stories of Zeus taking an animal form. It is likely enough that the true explanation of Zeus as a bull or Zeus as a swan is given by those who say that the descent in such tribes became a descent from ^ieuB -
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