Why the ancient Greek god Zeus is popular in the world: myths, wives and children, movies

The story of his power begins before he was born. Zeus is the son of the titan Kronos, the patron of agriculture and ruler of time. Cronus, fearing a prediction that he would be overthrown by one of his descendants, devoured his children as soon as they were born.

Rhea, the mother of the babies, grew tired of losing her children and gave birth to Zeus in secret. She gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it without feeling any difference. Zeus was saved from his cruel father by the nymph Amalthea; she brought him up on Crete and fed him with goat's milk.

The grown-up god decided to take revenge on his father and save his sisters and brothers. Metida, Zeus' first wife, prepared a potion. Drinking it, Cronus vomited out all his descendants, the future Olympian gods. Thus began a ten-year battle between the gods and the titans for dominion over the world. This was a time of powerful volcanic eruptions on the islands of ancient Greece.

With victory, the gods, led by Zeus, took their place on Olympus. The world was divided, Poseidon became the lord of seas, Hades became the master of underground kingdom of dead, and Zeus became the lord of Olympus, the earth and sky, the ruler of the world of living.

The new gods of the pantheon, the descendants of Zeus, patronized art, science, and law. All Olympians, regardless of origin, worshipped Zeus as their spiritual father.The great multitude of heroes, born to Zeus by mortal women, embodied his will on earth, fighting chaos and monsters.

Zeus was the ancestor of the legendary kings. To demonstrate the thunderer's protection of the dynasty, the great god was depicted on coins.

Zeus-Jupiter was the father of statehood in ancient Greece and Rome. He can also be considered the ancestor of the modern world order, as our civilization has inherited so much from antiquity and the Roman Empire.

Different peoples had their own deity of thunder and lightning, but the only god of justice and destiny is Jupiter.

In today's world, the name Zeus is a symbol of power and justice.

Characteristics of a mythical character

Zeus was often the judge in human affairs and the intercessor for the unjustly offended. But legends tell not only about the wisdom of the thunderer, but also about his cruelty. Zeus was angry and fierce. In Greek epos, the image of the king of the gods is very controversial.

Zeus had a sympathetic attitude toward women and lived vividly. He had three wives and many female titanids and mortal lovers, from whom a host of half-god heroes were born.

His first wife, the Goddess of wisdom Metida, was swallowed by Zeus and has lived in his belly ever since, raising his daughter Athena. Metida, while inside, helped Zeus with advice. The ruler listened to her advice and one day he got such a headache that he asked his son Hephaestus to smash his skull in. And so the goddess Athena was born from her father's head.

The second wife of the ruler of Olympus was Themis, the goddess of justice. She gave birth to six daughters, who became the goddesses of fate and of the seasons.

The third wife, Hera, was not unreasonably jealous and vengeful. Zeus had to turn the priestess Io into a cow to avoid a family scandal. A statue of Zeus with Io as a cow can be seen in Potsdam, Germany.

Zeus himself often turned into animals to please women. He seduced Leda as a swan, met Hera in the form of a cuckoo, with other women he was an ant, a bear, a pigeon and could be almost anything. In order to kidnap Europe, the great god became a white bull. It worked, Europe gave him three sons.

The Cult of Zeus in the World

There is disagreement as to the birthplace of Zeus, but the most common version is Mount Ida or Dikte on the island of Crete.

In ancient Greece, a great many sanctuaries were dedicated to the god, in the cities of Thebes, Dodona, Athens, Delphi and Syracuse, it is impossible to list them all.

One of the most famous is the temple at Olympia, its construction was begun in 520 BC and lasted more than three hundred years. In the third century A.D. the temple was destroyed by the barbarians and has not been rebuilt since. Today, the ruins at Olympia are only a reminder of the greatest cult of the ancient world.

The temple to Zeus-Jupiter is preserved in Rome. It is on top of the Capitoline Hill, by which the city, which became the capital, was built.

In modern Greece the worship of the pantheon gods is gaining ground. Modern Greek pagans consider the cult of the Olympian gods their national religion.Many images of the king of Olympus have survived in Italy. In Palermo you can see a seated statue of Zeus from Solunta, in Florence a bronze statue of Jupiter with a bundle of lightning.

The life of the ancient gods was a frequent subject of Baroque paintings. Little Zeus is depicted in the painting Baby Jupiter on the Island of Crete by Nicholas Peters Burham, it is kept in the Hermitage Museum.

In the Louvre is Jacob Jordaens' Childhood of Jupiter.

Paul Brill and Peter Paul Rubens' "Landscape with Psyche and Jupiter" depicts the god as an eagle.

The lovelorn Zeus enriched the world's art with a huge number of animalistic subjects. Leda and the swan, Europe and the bull are themes of paintings of all times and peoples.

Movies, games and TV series

Films

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) USA
Battle of the Titans (1981) USA
Hercules (1997) USA Cartoon
Hercules (1994) USA TV series
Clash of the Titans (2010) UK, France, Spain
Wrath of the Titans (2012) UK, France, Spain
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Snatcher (2010) UK, USA, Canada
War of the Gods. Immortals USA, UK, France
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Games

Zeus: Master of Olympus (2000) Windows
Age of Mythology (2002) Classic Mac OS, Windows, MacOS
God Of War (2005) PlayStation®2
Immortals: Fenyx Rising (2020) Windows, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4