60 Fun Facts About Zeus

Which daughter of Zeus and Demeter did he give to Hades as a bride behind her mother's back?

Persephone. Demeter let the crops fail in protest until Zeus ordered her daughter's return, and the earth is said to lie barren each year for the months Persephone spends below.

In the best-known telling, Zeus carried off which Trojan prince to serve as cupbearer to the gods?

Ganymede. Homer says the boy was taken for his beauty, and that Zeus paid his father for the loss with horses that were the finest under the sun.

In ancient Rome, Zeus was identified with which god?

Jupiter. That link is why the astronomer Simon Marius named the planet's four big moons after lovers of Zeus, among them Io, Europa and Callisto.

Zeus is the child of Cronus and which Titaness?

Rhea. After Cronus swallowed her first five children, she asked her own parents, Gaia and Uranus, to help her hide the sixth.

Why did Zeus's father swallow each of his children at birth?

A prophecy said one would overthrow him, and Cronus had reason to believe it: he had taken power by castrating his own father, Uranus, with a sickle.

What did Zeus's mother give Cronus to swallow in place of her newborn son?

A stone in swaddling clothes. Cronus later vomited it up, and Zeus set it at Delphi as a marvel, where travellers in Roman times were still shown a stone said to be the one.

Which son of Zeus and Europa became king of Crete and had Daedalus build the Labyrinth?

Minos. Death did not end his reign: Odysseus finds him in the underworld, golden sceptre in hand, still handing down judgments to the dead.

In most tellings, the infant Zeus was fed on the milk of which animal?

A she-goat. In Ovid's telling the goat broke a horn on a tree, and the horn was filled with fruit for the baby and became the horn of plenty.

How did the Kouretes keep Cronus from hearing the infant Zeus cry?

By beating spears on their shields. Callimachus has the armoured guardians dance a war-dance around the baby, so that Cronus would hear the din of their armour and not the crying.

In one version, the young Zeus's cradle hung from a tree so he was in none of which three places?

Heaven, earth or sea. The Roman mythographer Hyginus tells it as a loophole: Cronus was hunting everywhere for the child, and a cradle swinging from a branch lay in none of the three realms.

Who gave Zeus his thunderbolt after he freed them from imprisonment?

The Cyclopes. In thanks for their release the one-eyed smiths armed his brothers too, giving Poseidon his trident and Hades a helmet that made its wearer invisible.

After his ten-year war with the Titans, whom did Zeus sentence to hold up the sky forever?

Atlas. His burden was the heavens and never the Earth: Hesiod has him bracing the sky with his head and arms at the far edge of the world.

In Homer's account, how did Zeus and his brothers divide the world between them?

Drawing lots. Poseidon throws it back at Zeus in the Iliad when ordered off the battlefield: Zeus holds only his own third, he says, and the earth is common to all three.

Where did Zeus banish the defeated Titans?

Tartarus. Hesiod says a bronze anvil dropped from earth would fall nine days and nights to reach it, and Zeus posted the three Hundred-Handers there as guards.

Which monster with a hundred snaky fire-breathing heads challenged Zeus after the Titans fell?

Typhon. When he stormed heaven, Apollodorus says, the other gods fled to Egypt and hid in the shapes of animals while Zeus fought on with his thunderbolts.

In Apollodorus's account, a hundred-headed monster disabled Zeus by cutting out what?

The sinews of his hands and feet. The monster hid them in a bearskin under a she-dragon's guard, until Hermes and Aegipan stole them back and refitted them to Zeus.

In Apollodorus's account, Zeus buried his hundred-headed challenger by hurling which mountain on top of him?

Etna. Apollodorus says its blasts of fire come from the thunderbolts Zeus threw, and Aeschylus warns that the pinned monster will one day send rivers of fire across Sicily.

In the Iliad, which three gods conspired to tie Zeus up in bonds?

Hera, Poseidon and Athena. The sea-nymph Thetis saved him by summoning the hundred-handed Briareus, and Achilles later tells her to remind Zeus of the debt.

According to the Theogony, who was Zeus's first wife, whom he swallowed while she was pregnant?

Metis. Hesiod says Zeus tricked her with cunning words and put her in his own belly, where she went on advising him on good and evil.

Which goddess was born from Zeus's head?

Athena. She leapt out fully armed after Zeus's skull was split with an axe, a blow that different tellers credit to Hephaestus or to Prometheus.

Which daughters were born after Zeus lay with the Titaness Mnemosyne on nine successive nights?

The Muses. Their mother was Memory herself, yet Hesiod says the nine were born to bring a forgetting of ills and a rest from sorrow.

Leto, pregnant by Zeus, roamed far and wide before she could give birth to Apollo on which island?

Delos. Callimachus says land after land turned her away for fear of Hera, while the island drifted loose until it gave Apollo a birthplace and took root.

Zeus first won Hera by turning into which small bird, which she caught and kept as a pet?

A cuckoo. Pausanias says the mountain where it happened was renamed Cuckoo Mountain, and that Hera's great statue near Argos held a sceptre with the bird perched on top.

In the Iliad, Hera seduces Zeus away from the Trojan War using a charm borrowed from which goddess?

Aphrodite. Hera borrowed her embroidered band of desire, then bribed the god Sleep with a bride to knock Zeus out afterwards, and the Greeks rallied while he dozed.

What did Gaia give as a wedding present when Zeus married Hera?

A tree bearing golden apples. Hera had it planted in her own distant garden with a dragon on guard, and stealing its fruit later became one of the labours of Heracles.

Zeus carried Europa across the sea to Crete in the form of which animal?

A bull. He appeared as a tame white bull, so gentle that the princess climbed onto his back, and only then did he plunge into the sea.

In Euripides's Helen, Zeus comes to Leda as a swan fleeing from which pursuer?

An eagle. Helen tells the tale herself as the play opens, right after naming Tyndareus as her father, and undercuts it with the words 'if this story is true'.

Zeus reached the imprisoned princess Danae in what form?

A shower of gold. Her father had locked her in a bronze chamber because an oracle said her son would kill him, and her son Perseus later did, by accident, with a stray discus.

Zeus's lover Io, a priestess of Hera, was turned into which animal?

A cow. Hera set the all-seeing Argus to guard her, and when Hermes killed him she sent a gadfly that chased Io as far as Egypt.

In Ovid's telling, what happened to Semele when Zeus appeared to her as he did to Hera?

She was burned to ashes. Zeus had sworn to grant whatever she asked and could not refuse, but he saved her unborn son Dionysus by sewing him into his own thigh.

Which mother of Heracles does Diodorus call the last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with?

Alcmene. Zeus came to her disguised as her own husband, Amphitryon, and stretched that single night to three times its normal length.

At Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing which pile from a sacrificed ox?

Bones dressed in fat. That is why, Hesiod says, people ever after burned the bones on the altar and kept the meat, though he insists Zeus saw through the trick all along.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and carried it to humans hidden in what?

A fennel stalk. Zeus had withheld fire from mankind in anger at the trick over the sacrifice, and Hesiod says the sight of it glowing among men stung him to the heart.

As punishment, Zeus bound Prometheus to a cliff where an eagle ate which organ every day?

His liver. It grew back every night so that the torment could begin again, until Heracles shot the eagle and set him free.

Which first woman did Zeus have Hephaestus mould from earth as mankind's punishment for stolen fire?

Pandora. Each god added a gift, and the one from Hermes was a lying tongue and a thief's nature; she then lifted the lid of a jar and let every evil out, with only hope left inside.

When Zeus flooded the world to wipe out decadent mankind, which couple survived?

Deucalion and Pyrrha. They rode out the flood in a small vessel, then repopulated the earth by throwing stones behind them, which turned into men and women.

Zeus killed his grandson Asclepius with a thunderbolt for mastering which art?

Resurrection. Asclepius had begun raising the dead, and when his father Apollo took revenge for the killing, Zeus sentenced Apollo to a year as a mortal king's herdsman.

How did Zeus punish Ixion for lusting after Hera?

Tied him to a wheel that spins forever. Zeus first tested him with a cloud shaped like Hera, and the child of that embrace, Centaurus, became the ancestor of the centaurs.

Zeus and Poseidon both stopped courting Thetis after a prophecy that her son would be what?

Mightier than his father. To be safe the gods married her to a mortal, Peleus, so the son who outdid his father was Achilles and no threat to heaven.

In Hesiod's Theogony, which winged creature brings Zeus his thunder and lightning?

Pegasus. Hesiod has the winged horse living in Zeus's house, and in one telling he arrived riderless after Bellerophon tried to fly him up to the gods and fell.

Zeus's name descends from *Dyeus, the Proto-Indo-European god of what?

The daytime sky. The root behind his name meant 'to shine', and it also gave Latin its words for 'god' and 'day', which makes deity and diary distant relatives of Zeus.

The fearsome aegis that Zeus bears in Homer displays whose head?

Medusa's. In the Iliad the Gorgon's head glares from the tasselled aegis, a thing so dreadful that Zeus hands it to Apollo to shake over the Greek army and terrify it.

As Zeus Xenios, the god was the patron of what?

Hospitality and guests. To Homer's Greeks, wronging a host was an offence against Zeus himself, and Menelaus warns the Trojans that the god will destroy their city for the theft of his wife.

At Olympia, what was the great altar of Zeus built from?

Ash from sacrificed animals. Once a year the seers mixed fresh ash into a paste with water from the river Alpheus and plastered it on, so the altar kept growing.

The rites of Zeus Lykaios on Mount Lykaion threatened to turn participants into what?

Wolves. Plato repeats the tale that one piece of human flesh was hidden among the sacrificial meat, and Pausanias adds that the change wore off after nine years if the wolf ate no human flesh.

At the oracle of Dodona, priests divined Zeus's will by observing what?

The rustling of a sacred oak. Herodotus was told the shrine began when a black dove from Egypt settled on the tree and announced in a human voice that Zeus wanted an oracle there.

At Dodona, Zeus shared his temple with which goddess, whose name is a feminine form of his own?

Dione. Homer gives her one scene: when her daughter is wounded by a mortal at Troy, she takes her in her arms and tells her of other gods who suffered at human hands.

Alexander the Great trekked into the Egyptian desert to consult the oracle of Zeus Ammon at which oasis?

Siwa. Plutarch passes on a story that the priest, fumbling his Greek, greeted Alexander with a word that sounded like 'son of Zeus', and the king was happy to hear it that way.

At Lystra, a crowd hailed the talkative Paul as Hermes and which of his companions as Zeus?

Barnabas. Ovid tells of Zeus and Hermes touring the hill country of Phrygia disguised as travellers, and at Lystra the priest of Zeus brought out oxen to sacrifice to the two men.

Which sculptor made the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

Phidias. Excavators in the 1950s found his workshop at Olympia where Pausanias had placed it, with tools and moulds still inside.

The seated Olympian Zeus was a chryselephantine statue, meaning it was made of what?

Strabo said that if the god stood up he would take the roof off the temple.

Why was the great statue of Zeus at Olympia kept coated with olive oil?

To protect it from the marshy damp. Pausanias saw a rimmed floor of black tiles in front of the statue to hold the oil, and notes that on the dry Athenian Acropolis a similar statue was treated with water.

Which emperor ordered the statue of Zeus at Olympia shipped to Rome so its head could be replaced with his own?

Caligula. Suetonius says the statue let out such a peal of laughter that the scaffolding collapsed and the workmen fled, an omen, he adds, of the emperor's coming murder.

Which Roman emperor finished Athens' Temple of Olympian Zeus, begun in the 6th century BC?

Hadrian. The tyrants who began it fell before it rose above its base, and Aristotle held the project up as the kind of vast scheme tyrants use to keep their subjects busy and poor.

Athens' Temple of Olympian Zeus was finished under Roman rule with 104 columns of which order?

Corinthian. Only 15 of the 104 columns still stand, and a sixteenth lies in a row of toppled drums where a storm blew it down in the nineteenth century.

Which of these gods is usually said to be a child of Zeus and his wife Hera?

Ares. Hesiod lists the war god beside Hebe and Eileithyia as Hera's children by Zeus, yet in the Iliad Zeus tells the wounded Ares he is the most hateful to him of all the gods.

In Antoninus Liberalis's account, what nursed the infant Zeus in his sacred birth cave?

Bees. The cave was so sacred that when four thieves in bronze armour came to steal the honey, Zeus was not allowed to kill them there, so he turned them into birds.

In Hesiod, Themis, the goddess of divine law, bore Zeus the Horae and which other trio of sisters?

The Fates. Hesiod can't quite decide: earlier in the same poem Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos are daughters of Night, born without any father at all.

Athenian reliefs show the underground god Zeus Meilichios, 'the kindly one', in the form of which animal?

A snake. The gentle title flattered a god people feared: when a seer told Xenophon this Zeus was behind his money troubles, he burned whole pigs for him and kept none of the meat.

To give his son Aeacus a people, Zeus turned which insects on the island of Aegina into the first Myrmidons?

Ants. Greeks linked the name Myrmidon to myrmex, their word for ant, and it was the descendants of these ant-men that Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, led to Troy.