Zeus

Zeus

ZEUS, the son of Kronos and Rhea, is the main divinity of the Greek pantheon. Besides Hestia, he is the only god in the Greek pantheon with an undisputed Indo-European provenance, to judge from his name: it derives from the root *diéu- (day; Latin dies, meaning "[clear] sky") and has close parallels in the Latin Iu-piter or the Ancient Indian (Ṛgveda) Dyaus (pitar). The Homeric and later epithet pater (father) closely corresponds to the Latin or early Indian way his name is expanded: his mythical and religious role as father must be already Indo-European. Despite the frequent Homeric formula "Zeus, father of men and gods," however, Zeus is father not in a theogonical sense, but, as the Homeric variant Zeus ánax (Lord Zeus) shows, in the sense of having the power of a father in a strict patriarchal system. This explains why all the Olympian gods are either his siblings (Poseidon, Hera, Demeter) or his children by different mothers (Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Dionysos, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos). This role—which implies unrestricted power over all members of the family, but also its check through father-like benignity—continues as the fundamental role of Zeus throughout antiquity and finds its expression in the standard iconography of Zeus as a bearded and powerful middle-aged man.

Read the rest of this Article with our Zeus Access Pass.