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1、ZEUSZEUS was the king of the gods, the god of sky and weather, law, order and fate. He was depicted as a regal man, mature with sturdy figure and dark beard. His usual attributes were a lightning bolt, royal sceptre and eagle. Some of the more famous myths featuring the god include:-His birth and up
2、bringing in the Diktaion cave, where he was nursed by Amaltheia and guarded by the shield-clashing Kouretes;The Titan War in which he overthrew the Titanes and imprisoned them in Tartaros; His battle with Typhoeus, a hundred headed, monstrous giant who attempted to capture heaven;The War of the Gian
3、ts who attempted to storm Olympos but were slain by Zeus and the gods; The Great Deluge in which he flooded the earth to destroy mankind and begin the world anew; His conflict with Prometheus over the theft of benefactions for mankind; The punishment of Salmoneus, Tantalos and Ixion, men who offende
4、d the god with their impiety;The birth and life of Herakles, his favoured son, who he had transferred to Olympos at death; His extramarital affairs with women such as Leda, seduced in the form of a swan; Europa, as a bull; Danae, as a golden shower; Kallisto, as Artemis; and Antiope as a satyr;The T
5、rojan War which he orchestrated from start to end, including the casting of the golden apple of discord. INTRODUCTION ZEUS (Zeus), the greatest of the Olympian gods, and the father of gods and men, was a son of Cronos and Rhea, a brother of Poseidon, Hades (Pluto), Hestia, Demeter, Hera, and at the
6、same time married to his sister Hera. When Zeus and his brothers distributed among themselves the government of the world by lot, Poseidon obtained the sea, Hades the lower world, and Zeus the heavens and the upper regions, but the earth became common to all Later mythologers enumerate three Zeus in
7、 their genealogies two Arcadian ones and one Cretan; and tne first is said to be a son of Aether, the second of Coelus, and the third of Saturnus (Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 21). This accounts for the fact that some writers use the name of the king of heaven who sends dew, rain, snow, thunder, and ligh
8、tning for heaven itself in its physical sense. According to the Homeric account Zeus, like the other Olympian gods, dwelt on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, which was believed to penetrate with its lofty summit into heaven itself. He is called the father of gods and men, the most high and powerful among
9、the immortals, whom all others obey (Il. xix. 258, viii. 10, his amours with other goddesses or mortal women are not concealed from her, though they generally rouse her jealousy and revenge. During the Trojan war, Zeus, at the request of Thetis, favoured the Trojans, until Agamemnon made good the wr
10、ong he had done to Achilles. Zeus, no doubt, was originally a god of a portion of nature, whence the oak with its eatable fruit and the fertile doves were sacred to him at Dodona and in Arcadia (hence also rain, storms, and the seasons were regarded as his work, and hence the Cretan stories of milk,
11、 honey, and cornucopia) ; but in the Homeric poems, this primitive character of a personification of certain powers of nature is already effaced to some extent, and the god appears as a political and national divinity, as the king and father of men, as the founder and protector of all institutions h
12、allowed by law, custom. or religion. Hesiod also calls Zeus the son of Cronos and Rhea , and the brother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Cronos swallowed his children immediately after their birth, but when Rhea was near giving birth to Zeus, she applied to Uranus and Ge for advice as
13、 to how the child might be saved. Before the hour of birth came, Uranus and Ge sent Rhea to Lyctos in Crete, requesting her to bring up her child there. Rhea accordingly concealed her infant in a cave of Mount Aegaeon, and gave to Cronos a stone wrapped up in cloth, which he swallowed in the belief
14、that it was his son. Other traditions state that Zeus was born and brought up on Mount Dicte or Ida (also the Trojan Ida), Ithome in Messenia, Thebes in Boeotia, Aegion in Achaia, or Olenos in Aetolia. According to the common account, however, Zeus grew up in Crete. As Rhea is sometimes identified w
15、ith Ge, Zeus is also called a son of Ge. In the meantime Cronos by a cunning device of Ge or Metis was made to bring up the children he had swallowed, and first of all the stone, which was afterwards set up by Zeus at Delphi. The young god now delivered the Cyclopes from the bonds with which they ha
16、d 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 Gigantes, Briareos, Cottus, and Gyes, that they might assist him in his fight against the Titans. The Titans were conquered and shut up in Tartarus (Theog. 717), where they were henceforth guarded by the Hecatoncheires. Thereupon Tartarus and Ge begot Typhoeus, who began a fearful strugg
