After the worship of Zeus had displaced the oak-grove oracle at Dodona, some poets made Zeus the father of Aphrodite.

Hera, after requesting Zeus to swear an oath to that effect, descended from Olympus to Argos and made the wife of Sthenelus ( a son of Perseus ) give birth to Eurystheus after only seven months, while at the same time preventing Alcmene from delivering Heracles.

Some traditions related that at the time when Aeacus was born, Aegina was not yet inhabited, and that Zeus changed the ants () of the island into men ( Myrmidons ) over whom Aeacus ruled, or that he made men grow up out of the earth.

Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, home early from war ( Amphitryon did return later the same night, and Alcmene became pregnant with his son at the same time, a case of heteropaternal superfecundation, where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers ).

Although perhaps made explicit in the Prometheia, later authors such as Hyginus, the Bibliotheca, and Quintus of Smyrna would confirm that Prometheus warned Zeus not to marry the sea nymph Thetis.

In mainland Greece, a stream of individuals made their way to Delphi or the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, and once every four years, at the period of the Olympic games, the temple of Zeus at Olympia formed the goal of swarms of pilgrims from every part of the Hellenic world.

However, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, fragment # 5, had made a " Pandora " one of the daughters of Deucalion, and the mother of Graecus by Zeus.

Uranus and Gaia prophesied to him that one of his children would overthrow him, so when he married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of the children she birthed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus ( in that order ).

Zeus ( or Cybele, or Rhea ) turned Atalanta and Melanion into lions after they made love together in one of his temples.

Clotho, one of the three Fates, ordered by Zeus, brought the boy to life again ( she collected the parts of the body and boiled them in a sacred cauldron ), rebuilding his shoulder with one wrought of ivory made by Hephaestus and presented by Demeter.

In a different story, Tantalus was blamed for indirectly having stolen the dog made of gold created by Hephaestus ( god of metals and smithing ) for Rhea to watch over infant Zeus.

Atlas was punished by Zeus and made to bear the weight of the heavens ( the idea of Atlas carrying the Earth is not correct according to the original myth ) on his back.

Nonnus does not present the conception as virginal ; rather, the editor's notes say that Zeus swallowed Zagreus ' heart, and visited the mortal woman Semele, whom he seduced and made pregnant.

A fanciful reconstruction of Phidias ' statue of Zeus, in an engraving made by Philippe Galle in 1572, from a drawing by Maarten van Heemskerck

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was made by the Greek sculptor Phidias, circa 432 BCE on the site where it was erected in the Temple of Zeus, Olympia, Greece.

" The Zeus was a chryselephantine sculpture, made of ivory and gold-plated bronze.

A reconstruction of Phidias ' statue of Zeus, in an engraving made by Philippe Galle in 1572, from a drawing by Maarten van Heemskerck

' Whereas Christians ( who have learned that their eternal life consists in knowing the only true God, who is over all, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent ; and who have learned also that all the gods of the heathen are greedy demons, which flit around sacrifices and blood, and other sacrificial accompaniments, in order to deceive those who have not taken refuge with the God who is over all, but that the divine and holy angels of God are of a different nature and will from all the demons on earth, and that they are known to those exceedingly few persons who have carefully and intelligently investigated these matters ) will not endure a comparison to be made between them and Apollo or Zeus, or any being worshipped with odour and blood and sacrifices ; some of them, so acting from their extreme simplicity, not being able to give a reason for their conduct, but sincerely observing the precepts which they have received ; others, again, for reasons not to be lightly regarded, nay, even of a profound description, and ( as a Greek would say ) drawn from the inner nature of things ; and amongst the latter of these God is a frequent subject of conversation, and those who are honoured by God, through His only-begotten Word, with participation in His divinity, and therefore also in His name.

* A metope relief of Athena, Heracles and Atlas are made on a frieze in the Temple of Zeus in Olympia ( approximate date ).

The mythological lineage of the Palici is uncertain ; one legend made the Palici the sons of Zeus, or possibly Hephaestus, by Aetna or Thalia, but another claimed that the Palici were the sons of the Sicilian deity Adranus.

In the Mystery cults of the highly syncretic Hellenistic era Pan is made cognate with Phanes / Protogonos, Zeus, Dionysus and Eros.

Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus.

Because of her beauty, other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat.

In another version of her origin, she was considered a daughter of Zeus and Dione, the mother goddess whose oracle was at Dodona.

The older, Urania, is the daughter of Uranus, and inspires homosexual male ( and more specifically, ephebic ) love / eros ; the younger is named Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and all love for women comes from her.

Due to her immense beauty, Zeus was frightened that she would be the cause of violence between the other gods.

When Amphitryon finally returned to Thebes, Alcmene told him that he had come the night before and slept with her ; he learned from Tiresias what Zeus had done.

To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon, brother to Zeus and god of the sea, sent a sea monster named Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia including the kingdom of the vain queen.

He was born on the island of Oenone or Oenopia, to which Aegina had been carried by Zeus to secure her from the anger of her parents, and whence this island was afterwards called Aegina.

When Zeus abducted Aegina, he took her to Oenone, an island close to Attica.

When the Olympian deities overtook the older deities of Greece and she was born of Metis ( inside Zeus who had swallowed the goddess ) and " re-born " through the head of Zeus fully clothed, Athena already wore her typical garments.

Hera was angry with Zeus, her husband, because he had impregnated Leto.

A poem of Callimachus to the goddess " who amuses herself on mountains with archery " imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, at three years old, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin ; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo ; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer ; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt ; to have sixty " daughters of Okeanos ", all nine years of age, to be her choir ; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested.

Zeus appeared to her disguised as Artemis, or in some stories Apollo, gained her confidence, then took advantage of her ( or raped her, according to Ovid ).

They started a quarrel so they asked Zeus to choose one of them.

When they cast lots to choose one among those warriors, the Achaeans prayed " Father Zeus, grant that the lot fall on Ajax, or on the son of Tydeus, or upon Agamemnon.

Apollo also desired her and Zeus made the girl choose.

Eventually Zeus intervened and commanded Marpessa to choose between her mortal lover and the god.

As he was of surpassing beauty, the Moon fell in love with him, and Zeus allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to sleep for ever, remaining deathless and ageless.

In works of art there is considerable resemblance between the representations of Zeus, king of the gods, and Agamemnon, king of men.

In what he called " first philosophy " or metaphysics, Aristotle did intend a theological correspondence between the prime mover and deity ( presumably Zeus ); functionally, however, he provided an explanation for the apparent motion of the " fixed stars " ( now understood as the daily rotation of the Earth ).

" The tension between reason and passion is symbolized by his character's relationship with the gods, as in Hecuba's prayer, answered not by Zeus, nor by the Law of Reason, but by brutal Menelaus as if speaking on behalf of the old gods, and most famously in Bacchae, where the god Dionysus savages his own converts.

In the contest of wills between Hera and Zeus over whose candidate would be hero, fated to defeat the remaining creatures representing an old order and bring about the reign of the Twelve Olympians, Eurystheus was Hera's candidate and Heracles — though his name implies that at one archaic stage of myth-making he had carried " Hera's fame " — was the candidate of Zeus.

In the trick at Mecone, a sacrificial meal marking the " settling of accounts " between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus ( 545 – 557 ).

As goddess of death she was also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx, the river that formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld.

The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: " when we say … Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus.

In formal terms it is a hymn invoking Zeus and the Muses: parallel passages between it and the much shorter Homeric Hymn to the Muses make it clear that the Theogony developed out of a tradition of hymnic preludes with which an ancient Greek rhapsode would begin his performance at poetic competitions.

In general, later Greek religion distinguishes between two types of deities: the Olympian, or sky, deities ( including Zeus ), which are now commonly known in some form or another ; and, the chthonic deities, or deities of the earth.

According to Greek mythology, Antichthon was placed between Earth and the center of the universe, the throne of Zeus, to stop man from looking at the gods directly.

During the 6th century BCE, Greek geographer Scylax told of a city " between the bay and the Promontory of Zeus " ( i. e., the Carmel ) which may be a reference to Haifa during the Persian period.

" This myth is Greek interpretation of mystifying Minoan ritual in an attempt to reconcile their Father Zeus with the Divine Child of Crete ; the ritual itself we may never recover with clarity, but it is not impossible that a connection exists between the Kouretes ' weapons at the cave and the dedicated weapons at Arkalochori ", Emily Vermeule observed.

Since Cronus ruled over the earth, the heavens and the sea, Adamanthea hid Zeus by dangling him on a rope from a tree, suspended between earth, sea and sky, and thus invisible to his father.

The dispute between the two goddesses was settled by Zeus ( or by Calliope on Zeus ' behalf ): Adonis was to spend one-third of every year with each goddess and the last third wherever he chose.

Kerenyi ( 1951 p 174 ) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arcas, and one a son of Cronus.

In a separate episode, Tiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed ; or, as Zeus claimed, the woman, as Tiresias had experienced both.

Enyo so delighted in warfare that she even refused to take sides in the battle between Zeus and the monster Typhon:

impartial Enyo held equal balance between the two sides, between Zeus and Typhon, while the thunderbolts with booming shots revel like dancers in the sky.