by Tanner Hinkel

Created on: September 12, 2010

Zeus is by far the most popular god in the Greek pantheon as well as the most powerful. He would be the god of thunder and the sky and king of the gods. His affairs would become the subject of many legends and his children would all find some way to live up to the honor that involved being the child of such a mighty god.

                Zeus had a fairly rough birth being the son of the Titan king Cronus and his wife Rhea. A prophesy had been told that Cronus would be overthrown by one of his children just as he had overthrown his father Uranus. This led Cronus to literally devour all of his children after birth and they lived in his stomach; though Zeus would live to overthrow his father and save his siblings because of his mother Rhea wanting to save one of her children with the help of her mother Gaia. After a great war against the Titans, Zeus and his siblings established their kingdom on Mount Olympus where they ruled everything.

                Zeus was also very famous for many affairs with women even though he was married to Hera, the goddess of marriage. Some of his most famous relationships would be with the goddess Leto who give birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis, his affair with Io who would be mother to Epaphus a king of Egypt, and a third affair with Callisto who would be turned into a bear and later a star with her son Arcas.

                His influence over the elements of Greek myths would not be the only thing he was known for. Many people blamed the turmoil that humans experienced at the time could somehow be linked to Zeus like with Pandora’s Box, which when opened would release much unhappiness on the world.  The evil that humans had committed would also lead Zeus to request that the world be flooded and for the gods to be able to restart humanity and create a better race of humans. Zeus was not all about destroying the very things he created, when the son of Helios flew the chariot of the sun too close to the Earth it was Zeus who struck him down into the river Po; though the belief in the myths of Zeus may have faded, their lasting influence over future people would have a lasting effect that still shapes things today.

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