Zeus

The child Cronus could not swallow

Before Zeus became king of the gods, he was a child marked for death.

His father Cronus had been warned that one of his sons would overthrow him, in the same way that Cronus had overthrown his own father. So Cronus swallowed each child at birth. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon all went the same way.

When Zeus was born, his mother Rhea would not lose another child. She wrapped a stone in cloth and put it into Cronus’s hands. He swallowed it without looking closely. By then the baby was on his way to the island of Crete.

The ancient writers agree on Crete but not on the mountain. The early Greek poet Hesiod puts the hiding place in a cave on Mount Aegeum, near Lyctus. Apollodorus, whose Library retells the Greek myths, names Mount Dicte. There the nymphs Adrastia and Ida nursed the child, while the armed Curetes beat their spears on their shields to cover his cries. Other traditions chose Mount Ida. Each of these places claimed a share in the god’s beginning.

The war against the Titans

Zeus grew up in hiding. When he was grown, he came back for his brothers and sisters.

The sources differ on how they were freed. Hesiod says it happened through the advice of Earth. In Apollodorus, the goddess Metis plays the main part. She gave Cronus a drug that made him bring up what he had swallowed. The stone came out first, then the brothers and sisters, in the reverse order of their swallowing.

Being free did not yet make the young gods rulers. Zeus and his allies fought Cronus and the Titans, the older generation of gods, for ten years. Victory depended on prisoners held below in Tartarus. Earth told Zeus that he needed them. So he killed their guard, Campe, and freed the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handers.

Drawing lots for the world

The Cyclopes thanked Zeus with weapons. These weapons still tell the three brothers apart. Zeus took the thunderbolt, Poseidon the trident and Hades the helmet that made its wearer invisible.

With the Hundred-handers on their side, the younger gods defeated the Titans. The Hundred-handers then stayed below to guard them.

Next the three brothers drew lots to share out the world. The sky fell to Zeus, the sea to Poseidon and the world below to Hades. Olympus was now his. Zeus did not seize his realm, and he did not receive it as the eldest son. Chance gave it to him.

The prophecy returns

Zeus had escaped the fate Cronus planned for him. He had not escaped his father’s fear.

His first wife was Metis, whom Hesiod calls the wisest of gods and mortals. She was destined to bear two children. First would come Athena, a daughter equal to her father in strength and judgement. Then would come a son who would become king of gods and men.

Zeus met the threat with a version of his father’s act. He tricked Metis and swallowed her while she was pregnant with Athena. This saved his reign. Athena was still born, fully armed, from his head, but the son who was to rule was never conceived. Hesiod adds that Metis stayed inside Zeus and advised him on good and evil. He kept her advice and lost only the rival.

The two acts were alike, with one difference. Cronus swallowed his children and so kept alive the rivals who later defeated him. Zeus swallowed their mother before the rival existed. With that, the chain of sons overthrowing fathers stopped.

More than a god of thunder

The thunderbolt and the eagle make Zeus easy to recognise. His cult titles, the names under which people worshipped him, show where else the Greeks expected his power to reach.

As Horkios he guarded oaths. As Herkeios he protected the household inside its boundary wall. As Xenios he watched over what a host owed a stranger. As Agoraios he watched over the assembly of citizens. All four titles ask the same thing: will an agreement between people hold, whether it is made at home or before a city? The same power made him the founder of royal power and of law. The goddesses Themis and Nemesis were his helpers.

That gives the story of his rise its edge. The god who was called on to make promises hold took power by a trick. Then he made order the work of his reign. The myth shows his order beginning in deceit, and it shows how badly order was wanted after generations of violence.

The altar made of ash

At Olympia, the sanctuary of Zeus showed his power on a huge scale. A sanctuary was a piece of sacred ground set aside for a god. In the fifth century BC a temple of Zeus was built there in the Doric style of Greek architecture. Inside sat the sculptor Pheidias’s statue of Zeus, made of gold and ivory and more than 12 metres high. It was counted among the wonders of the ancient world. The sanctuary’s strangest object stood outside.

The Greek traveller Pausanias describes an altar that had no stone core. It was built up from the ash of the thighs burned for Zeus. Animals were killed on a lower platform, and the thighs were burned higher up. Once a year the seers, the men who read signs from the gods, mixed ash from the town hall with water from the river Alpheius. Then they spread the paste over the altar.

So the altar grew with worship. Each generation of offerings made it larger. Archaeologists have not fixed its position with certainty. Pausanias preserves the idea: the chief altar of Zeus was built from everything his worshippers had already given him.