Armed with lightning, lightning and thunder, Zeus is the lord of the heavens and the universewho rules from his palace on Mount Olympus. However, it was not easy for him to reach that position of privilege.

The greek gods They were not the same. Among them there were strict hierarchies marked by kinship and, no less, by relevance. At the top of everything was Zeus, the lord of the sky, lightning and thunder. He was the most powerful of the gods and all the others, as well as mortals, not only respected his position, but were also very careful not to provoke his anger.

Who was Zeus and how did he gain power?

Zeus, however, was not born a king. His father Cronus was, but a prophecy had warned him that his son would take the throne from him.just as he had done with his, Uranus. That’s why, all the children that his wife Rhea gave him he devoured them They only came to light in the world. If Zeus did not suffer the same fate, it was because His mother, tired of sacrificing her little ones, replaced him with a stone which Cronus swallowed without noticing anything strange.

Zeus grew up and, once he felt strong enough, he faced his father and made him regurgitate his siblings: Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter and Hera. Cronus did not take this challenge well and, as soon as he recovered, he called his brothers the Titans to help him take revenge. A war then broke out, the Titanomachy, which devastated the universe.. The sons of Cronus were the winners of that contest, who established their residence on Olympus, hence the name by which they are known: Olympians.

How did Zeus divide the universe?

Zeus was generous in victory and shared the universe with his two male brothers, Hades and Poseidon. To him was the dominion of the seas, while, less fortunate, Hades had to settle for the underground world of the dead. As soon as Zeus got the sky. The Cyclopes, as a sign of gratitude for having freed them from the prison in which their brother Cronus had imprisoned them, forged for him what were to be His weapons: lightning, lightning and thunder.

The loves of Zeus

Zeus married one of his sisters, Hera.the goddess of marriage. With her he had several children: Ares, the god of war; Hebe, goddess of youthand Ilithia, goddess of childbirth. According to some myths, to that list we must add Hephaestus, the god of fire and forgealthough others consider that Hera conceived him without needing her husband. In the same way, his daughter emerged directly from the head of the god Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

That Hera was the goddess of marriage did not prevent Zeus from becoming the paradigm of an unfaithful husband. Thus, many other gods were born from their relationships with other divinities, nymphs and even mortals: his sister Demeter gave him Persephone; the titanic Leto, to the twins Apollo and Artemis; the Mayan pleiad, Hermesand the mortals Semele and Alcmene, to Dionysus and Heracles, respectively. Zeus did not stop there: with Mnemosyne, memory, he had the nine Muses.

Sometimes, love led Zeus to show off his talent for cross-dressing: He kidnapped Europe in the form of a bull and thus he took her to Crete, where he lay with her and begat three sons, Minos, Rhadamantis, and Sarpedon. Leda, on the other hand, was seduced like a swan. According to myth, her four children were born from an egg: they were Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra and Helen, the latter the cause of the Trojan War.

If the animal thing didn’t work, Zeus had other resources: To reach Danae it transformed into a shower of gold. This is how the hero Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, was conceived.

The cult of the god Zeus

Zeus and his people lived on Mount Olympusin northern Greece. Around him there were many sacred places, such as the city of Dion, which had an important temple dedicated to the king of the gods.

At Dodona, Zeus had an oracle. Their designs were expressed through the noise produced by the foliage and branches of a sacred oak, which the priests in charge of the enclosure knew how to interpret.

His main sanctuary, however, was in Olympia. For the main temple, the sculptor Phidias carved a spectacular thirteen meter high gold and ivory statue of Zeuswhich came to be considered one of the seven wonders of the world.

Olympia was also famous for competitions that, since 776 BC, were held every four years in honor of the god: the olympics. The flame of the current Olympic Games continues to be lit in that sanctuary.