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| Zeus is protected from all-seeing Kronos by his attentive nymph carers and the noise of the Kouretes, as shown in this 17th-century painting The Childhood of Zeus on Mount Ida. |
IN BRIEF
THEME
Lovers of the gods
SOURCES
Iliad, Homer, 8th century BCE; Theogony, Works and Days, The Shield of Heracles, Hesiod, c. 700 BCE; Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus, c. 100 CE.
SETTING
Greece and the Aegean.
KEY FIGURES
Zeus - Father of the gods.
Hera Zeus's wife; queen of the gods.
Mnemosyne - Goddess of memory.
Europa - Phoenician princess.
Antiope - Daughter of the river god Asopos.
Leda - A Spartan princess.
Metis - Daughter of Oceanus.
Athena - Daughter of Metis.
The sexual adventures of Zeus, the king of the gods, made up a significant strand of ancient Greek mythology. Without Zeus’s many infidelities, the myths suggest that knowledge and artistic expression of any kind – poetry, music, drama, or works of art – would not exist.
One of Zeus’s first affairs was with Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. After he slept with her on nine consecutive nights, nine daughters were born. Collectively known as the Muses, each of these daughters became responsible for inspiring mortals in a particular area of artistic endeavour: Calliope inspired epic poetry; Clio history; Euterpe lyric poetry and song; Erato love poetry; and Polyhymnia sacred poetry. Melpomene became responsible for inspiring tragic drama, Thalia took charge of comedy and pastoral poetry; Terpsichore inspired dance, and Urania astronomy.
All through the classical period, musicians and poets called on the Muses for assistance as they worked. “Blessed is he whom the Muses love,” said the Greek poet Hesiod after invoking their help in Theogony, his poem about the genealogy of the gods. With the inspiration of the Muses, Hesiod said, musicians and poets could relieve a suffering mind of its cares.
Hera
As the daughter of the Titans Kronos and Rhea, and wife and sister of the mighty Zeus, it might seem odd that Hera was commonly associated with cattle. She was often pictured with a sacred cow and in the Iliad is described as “cow-faced” or “ox-eyed”. Such imagery was probably more flattering than it sounds. To the ancient Greeks, the cow was an emblem of motherhood and prosperity; wealth was often measured in the number of livestock owned.
While Hera was clearly no sex symbol – a role more associated with the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite – she did exemplify the importance of women in everyday life in Greece. She was celebrated as a goddess of both marriage and virginity. At Kanathos, in the Peloponnese, she was worshipped as Hera Parthenos (“Virgin”) and was said to renew her virginity by bathing in the spring every year. The Heraion of Argos – possibly the first of many temples dedicated to Hera – honoured her as Zeus’s consort and queen. Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, according to Homer, were the cities she loved best.
Hera and the cuckoo
Zeus’s instinct for trickery was an integral part of his character and informed all of his erotic exploits. He had assumed the form of a mortal – a handsome shepherd – to seduce Mnemosyne, and many of his other love affairs involved similar sorts of shape-shifting.
Hera, Zeus’s wife, had also been won this way. The notoriously formidable goddess had dismissed Zeus disdainfully when he had first approached her, forcing him to take deceptive measures to win her affections. First, he summoned a thunderstorm, then he stood outside her window and took on the form of a fledgling cuckoo, its expression helpless and its feathers ruffled up as if chilled and battered by the wind-blown hail. Hera could not bear to see this tiny creature suffering. She cupped the cuckoo in her hand and placed it inside her dress against her bosom, so that it could get warm. At this point, Zeus assumed his normal quasi-human form and seduced her.
The conquest of Hera was not the only time Zeus took the form of a bird. Zeus took on the shape of a swan in order to seduce the Spartan princess Leda. As with Hera, he took advantage of his victim’s compassion. Apparently fleeing from an attacking eagle, he fell into her arms, but when she cradled him protectively, Zeus raped her. In the case of the Theban princess Semele, his choice of species – a raptor – clearly signalled his predatory intentions. Taking the form of an eagle, his royal emblem, he visited Semele and made her pregnant. Dionysus, god of wine and festivity, was the result of their union.
Ruined innocence
Zeus’s conquest of Alcmene – a mortal princess with whom he fathered Herakles – was more sinister. Alcmene was a paragon of beauty, charm, and wisdom. She was betrothed to Amphitryon, the son of a Theban general. Zeus assumed his guise to approach Alcmene while her fiance was away avenging the deaths of her brothers.
King Acrisius of Argos was particularly anxious to keep his only daughter Danaë chaste. He had been warned by an oracle that she was destined to bear a son who would one day slay him. To avoid this fate, he placed her in a cell so that no one could come near her. However, Zeus took the form of a shower of gold to pour himself through her prison skylight. The child of the encounter, Perseus, would later unwittingly cause her father’s death.
Zeus as beast
Despite her name, Europa was a child of Asia, a princess from Phoenicia, a region covering parts of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Smitten by her charms, Zeus took on the form of a fine, white bull and mingled among her father’s cattle. Picking flowers, Europa noticed the new bull and was struck by its beauty and its seeming gentleness. When she drew near to pet it, the bull lay down and she climbed onto its back. Suddenly, the bull leapt up and sped away across the fields and over the sea while the terrified girl clung on for dear life. The bull only stopped when it reached the island of Crete, where Zeus at last revealed himself and bedded his young victim. Zeus rewarded Europa by making her Crete’s first queen. In time, she gave birth to Minos, the island’s first king. Scholars think the story of Europa may have originated in Crete, where the cult of the bull also produced the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.
For his assault on Antiope, the daughter of Asopos, a river god from Attica in central Greece, Zeus took the shape of a satyr – a half-man, half-goat who roamed the wild woods. Usually associated with the idea of lechery, satyrs were often depicted with erections in ancient art: Zeus had disguised his identity, not his lust.
Hiding from Hera
In some stories, it was Zeus’s quarry who had to take a different shape. In the case of Io – the daughter of the king of Argos, and a priestess in the temple of Zeus’s wife Hera – Zeus transformed himself into a cloud to make his approach and conceal it from the watchful Hera. Once he had raped Io, he turned her into a beautiful white heifer, to hide her from his wife. Hera saw through the trick and asked if she could have the heifer as a gift. Zeus had no option but to agree. Hera consigned Io to the care of the hundred-eyed giant Argus to watch over.
Maddened with frustration, Zeus sent his son Hermes to slay the all-seeing herdsman; the divine messenger blinded Argus with a touch from his kerykeion, or staff. As the giant lay there dead, Hermes collected up his hundred eyes and set them in a peacock’s tail: the bird was sacred to Hera from that time on.
If Zeus thought the way was now clear for him to pursue Io, he was wrong. Hera sent a fly to attack her. Buzzing about, and biting her again and again, the insect put Io to flight and chased her across the earth. Io was never to find rest.
The birth of Athena
Metis, Zeus’s cousin – and in some accounts, his first wife – wrought her own transformation in a bid to shake off Zeus’s pursuit. Metis assumed a series of different forms to avoid him, but Zeus eventually succeeded in catching her and making her pregnant. Nevertheless, Zeus was worried: Metis was renowned for her sharp intellect and wiliness, and an oracle had told him that Metis was destined to bear a child who matched her strength and cunning. Zeus – a usurper who had overthrown his own father – was on his guard against this child. Just before Metis was due to give birth, Zeus challenged her to a shape-shifting match. She was vain enough to agree. When Zeus told her that he did not believe she could transform herself into a tiny fly, she promptly did – and was swallowed by a triumphant Zeus.
It was a clever trick, but it did not succeed. When Zeus developed an unbearable headache, the Titan god Prometheus swung an axe at his head, splitting it wide open. Out from the wound sprang Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, in a full suit of armour. She became one of the most important deities on Olympus and the patron goddess of the powerful city state of Athens.
Both transformed
In some stories, both predator and prey underwent changes. Zeus again disguised himself as an eagle to pursue Asteria, the Titan goddess of shooting stars. She transformed herself into another bird – the timid quail – in a desperate bid to escape and finally dived into the sea. There she changed her shape again and was preserved forever as an island, later variously identified as Delos or Sicily. It was on this island that Asteria’s younger sister Leto was to find sanctuary some years later, after she too caught the lecherous eye of Zeus. Here she gave birth to twins: Apollo, the god of the sun and of poetry, prophecy, and healing; and the divine huntress Artemis, goddess of the moon.
Mythology relates scores of Zeus’s exploits, highlighting a sexual appetite that apparently drew little censure in ancient Greece. Despite his countless acts of rape, deception, and infidelity – the king of the gods was not seen as a villain. In his dialogue Euthyphro, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, declared: “Do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?”
Published by DK (Dorling Kindersley Limited), a Penguin Random House company, London, Jonathan Metcalf publishing director, 2018. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.