The Divine Loves of Zeus

Author: Hesiod

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

Zeus is the king of the gods, a deity of thunder and lightning who resides on Mount Olympus and looks down on all creation. Many humans praise Zeus for his might in battle and his brave leadership, but he is equally well known for his insatiable desires and his many, many affairs with mortals and gods alike.

The first goddess Zeus takes as a wife is the Titan Metis. It has been prophesied that Metis will bear a son with even greater power than Zeus’s. When she becomes pregnant, Zeus fears that her child will overthrow him just as he had overthrown his own father, and he decides to eat Metis. She does give birth to a child, although it is the goddess Athena rather than a warrior boy, and Zeus releases Athena from his body while keeping Metis imprisoned. Satisfied that he has made the right choice, he then turns his attention to the Titan Themis. With this goddess, he fathers the gods of the seasons, fate, justice, and order, filling the magical realm with beautiful, young creatures. He soon seduces Eurynome, who gives birth to the Graces, and Demeter, who gives birth to gorgeous Persephone. From there, still lustful in heart, he comes to the sacred bed of Mnemosyne, who lives in a secluded home away from the other gods. For nine nights, Zeus and Mnemosyne embrace, and from this union come the nine muses. He then fathers Apollo and Artemis with Leto and chases down Asteria, another Titan goddess.

Perhaps the greatest romance of Zeus’s life, and certainly the one that lasts the longest, is his marriage to Hera, his sister and eternal consort. During the long war in which Zeus and the Olympian gods overthrow the rule of the Titans, Hera and Zeus run away to wed one another in secret. Joined together, Hera is the queen of the gods and Zeus their king. However, the rare beauty and power Hera possesses are not enough to satisfy the notoriously lustful Zeus, and he immediately returns to his old ways, causing his wife great stress and his conquests much torment at the hands of the jealous goddess. When Zeus seduces the goddess Aphrodite, for instance, Hera discovers the affair and places her hands on Aphrodite’s swollen abdomen, cursing their child with ugliness. However, this does little to deter Zeus from further affairs. When he meets the goddess Persephone, he even scorns the advances of Hera and many of the beautiful Titans, ignoring their seductions in order to transform himself into a large serpent and lie with the virginal Persephone.

Some of Zeus’s many divine loves willingly approach the powerful king of the gods, some are slowly seduced by his might and persistence, and still others are violently overpowered. The one thing that remains consistent, however, is that Zeus no sooner seduces a new beauty than he loses interest, a new consort on his mind and a new target vulnerable to Hera’s jealous rages.

SIGNIFICANCE

The countless romances and affairs of Zeus form the core of many Greek myths, with the lustful whims of Zeus and the jealousy of Hera initiating a significant portion of the ancient Greek narratives. While these myths are often presented with a humorous edge to them, when viewed in succession, the violent misogyny and patriarchy of the stories becomes painfully clear.

The ancient Greek myths, including the canonical versions compiled by the poet Hesiod in the seventh or eighth century BCE, often present the seductions and affairs of Zeus in neutral tones, the god simply getting up to his old tricks once again. In reality, however, Zeus is performing a long string of sexual assaults, overpowering women who do not wish to sleep with him and going to great lengths in order to trick young virgins into becoming his consorts. The Titan Metis, for instance, is rewarded with violence and eternal imprisonment after her encounter with Zeus, while Asteria turns into a bird in a desperate attempt to flee him. Even his wife and sister, Hera, resists his advances for years before Zeus finally turns himself into a bird in order to get close enough to the goddess that he can overpower and rape her. A great number of the goddesses (not to mention a majority of the mortals and nymphs) with whom Zeus shares a romance, then, are actually unwilling women who, within the patriarchal world of Greek mythology and culture, have no choice but to become the temporary playthings of the father god.

This deeply problematic portrayal of romance does not end with Zeus, however. Despite having faced the brunt of Zeus’s attentions in the past, Hera has no sympathy for the women he takes as lovers and typically goes to incredible lengths to punish them for bringing shame onto her. Hera is a goddess who champions and protects wives, and one might assume that she would turn her anger toward Zeus while defending these wronged women. Instead, however, Zeus regularly faces few repercussions while Hera, a goddess who never betrays her husband despite his infidelities, focuses some of the most powerful rage in the mythological realm onto the hapless and abandoned consorts.

The affairs of Zeus are so numerous that a large number of deities in the Greek pantheon owe their lineage to him. Furthermore, the gods and goddesses who do not come directly from the bloodline of Zeus still regularly refer to him as the father of all gods, suggesting that his symbolic role as patriarch is more significant than the actual lineage of many deities. Sitting atop Mount Olympus and looking down on a world filled with women he might abuse and objectify, Zeus is a prime example of a dangerous patriarch, whose position of cultural, political, and familial privilege serves only to satisfy his own indulgent fancies at great cost to the women he supposedly loves.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Caviness, Alys. “Hera.” Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology. Ed. C. Scott Littleton. Vol. 5. New York: Marshall, 2005. Print.

Evelyn-White, Hugh, trans. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1943. Print.

“Hera Wrath.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Aaron J. Atsma, 2011. Web. 20 June 2013.

Lies, Betty Bonham. Earth’s Daughters: Stories of Women in Classical Mythology. Golden: Fulcrum, 1999. Print.

“Loves of Zeus.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Aaron J. Atsma, 2011. Web. 20 June 2013.