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166-746: In Greek mythology, newborn Hestia, along with four of her five siblings, was devoured by her father Cronus, who feared being overthrown by one of his offspring. Zeus , the youngest child, escaped with his mother's help, and made his father disgorge all his siblings. Cronus was supplanted by this new generation of deities; and Hestia thus became one of the Olympian gods, the new rulers of the cosmos, alongside her brothers and sisters. In spite of her status, she has little prominence in Greek mythology. Like Athena and Artemis , Hestia elected never to marry and remained an eternal virgin goddess instead, forever tending to

332-602: A chthonic earth-god rather than a god of the sky. These local divinities were gradually consolidated, via conquest and religious syncretism , with the Homeric conception of Zeus. Local or idiosyncratic versions of Zeus were given epithets — surnames or titles which distinguish different conceptions of the god. Giants (Greek mythology) In Greek and Roman mythology , the Giants , also called Gigantes ( Greek : Γίγαντες, Gígantes , singular: Γίγας, Gígas ), were

498-531: A " Gigantomachia " in which the Titan Cronus (as a horse) sires the centaur Chiron by mating with Philyra (the daughter of two Titans), but the scholiast may be confusing the Titans and Giants. Other possible archaic sources include the lyric poets Alcman (mentioned above) and the sixth-century Ibycus . The late sixth early fifth century BC lyric poet Pindar provides some of the earliest details of

664-466: A Giant and a god might range farther afield, with Enceladus buried beneath Sicily, and Polybotes under the island of Nisyros (or Kos ). Other locales associated with Giants include Attica , Corinth , Cyzicus , Lipara , Lycia , Lydia , Miletus , and Rhodes . The presence of volcanic phenomena, and the frequent unearthing of the fossilized bones of large prehistoric animals throughout these locations may explain why such sites became associated with

830-494: A bride, and names it Daidale. When preparations are being made for the wedding, Hera rushes down from Cithaeron, followed by the women of Plataia , and upon discovering the trick, the couple are reconciled, with the matter ending in joy and laughter among all involved. After his marriage to Hera, different authors describe Zeus's numerous affairs with various mortal women. In many of these affairs, Zeus transforms himself into an animal, someone else, or some other form. According to

996-588: A building separate from the city's council hall and adjoining theatre. A temple to Hestia was in Andros . Prospective founders of city-states and colonies sought approval and guidance not only of their "mother city" (represented by Hestia) but of Apollo , through one or another of his various oracles. He acted as consulting archegetes (founder) at Delphi . Among his various functions, he was patron god of colonies, architecture, constitutions and city planning. Additional patron deities might also be persuaded to support

1162-729: A central hearth. Likewise, the hearth of the later Greek prytaneum was the community and government's ritual and secular focus. Hestia's naming thus makes her a personification of the hearth and its fire, a symbol of society and family, also denoting authority and kingship. Hestia is a goddess of the first Olympian generation. She is the eldest daughter of the Titans Rhea and Cronus , and sister to Demeter , Hades , Hera , Poseidon , and Zeus . Immediately after their birth, starting with Hestia, Cronus swallowed each of them, but their mother deceived Cronus and helped Zeus escape. Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge his siblings and led them in

1328-573: A combination of human and animal forms. Some are snake-legged, some have wings, one has bird claws, one is lion-headed, and another is bull-headed. Some Giants wear helmets, carry shields and fight with swords. Others are naked or clothed in animal skins and fight with clubs or rocks. The large size of the frieze probably necessitated the addition of many more Giants than had been previously known. Some, like Typhon and Tityus, who were not strictly speaking Giants, were perhaps included. Others were probably invented. The partial inscription "Mim" may mean that

1494-424: A cuckoo bird, landing on Mount Thornax. He creates a terrible storm, and when Hera arrives at the mountain and sees the bird, which sits on her lap, she takes pity on it, laying her cloak over it. Zeus then transforms back and takes hold of her; when she refuses to have intercourse with him because of their mother, he promises that she will become his wife. Pausanias similarly refers to Zeus transforming himself into

1660-416: A cuckoo to woo Hera, and identifies the location as Mount Thornax. According to a version from Plutarch , as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica , Hera is raised by a nymph named Macris on the island of Euboea when Zeus kidnaps her, taking her to Mount Cithaeron , where they find a shady hollow, which serves as a "natural bridal chamber". When Macris comes to look for Hera, Cithaeron,

1826-429: A divine personification of Rome's "public", domestic, and colonial hearths, binding Romans together within a form of extended family. The similarity of names between Hestia and Vesta is, however, misleading: "The relationship hestia-histie-Vesta cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European linguistics; borrowings from a third language must also be involved", according to Walter Burkert . Herodotus equates Hestia with

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1992-531: A fallen Giant. On the other side are Hephaestus flinging flaming missiles of red-hot metal from two pairs of tongs, Poseidon, with Nisyros on his shoulder, stabbing a fallen Giant with his trident and Hermes with his petasos hanging in back of his head, attacking another fallen Giant. None of the Giants are named. Phidias used the theme for the metopes of the east façade of the Parthenon (c. 445 BC) and for

2158-460: A female stabbing her spear at a fallen Giant (probably Porphyrion); Athena fighting Eriktypos and a second Giant; a male stepping over the fallen Astarias to attack Biatas. and another Giant; and Hermes against two Giants. Then follows a gap which probably contained Poseidon and finally, on the far right, a male fighting two Giants, one fallen, the other the Giant Mimon (possibly the same as

2324-478: A fleeing Giant; the archers Apollo and Artemis; another fleeing Giant (Tharos or possibly Kantharos); the Giant Ephialtes lying on the ground; and a group of three Giants, which include Hyperphas and Alektos, opposing Apollo and Artemis. Next comes a missing central section presumably containing Zeus, and possibly Heracles, with chariot (only parts of a team of horses remain). To the right of this comes

2490-469: A fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. According to Musaeus , after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to Themis . Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus. Antoninus Liberalis , in his Metamorphoses , says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in

2656-547: A great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton. Hyginus , in his Fabulae , relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus

2822-542: A great oath, that she would remain a virgin for all time and never marry. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite (goddess of sex and love) has "no power" over Hestia. At Athens, "in Plato's time", notes Kenneth Dorter "there was a discrepancy in the list of the twelve chief gods , as to whether Hestia or Dionysus was included with the other eleven. The altar to them at the agora, for example, included Hestia, but

2988-525: A hundred snake heads growing from his shoulders. This snake-legged motif becomes the standard for the rest of antiquity, culminating in the monumental Gigantomachy frieze of the second century BC Pergamon Altar . Measuring nearly 400 feet long and over seven feet high, here the Gigantomachy receives its most extensive treatment, with over one hundred figures. Although fragmentary, much of the Gigantomachy frieze has been restored. The general sequence of

3154-489: A man who was guilty of murdering his father-in-law, by purifying him and bringing him to Olympus. However, Ixion started to lust after Hera. Hera complained about this to her husband, and Zeus decided to test Ixion. Zeus fashioned a cloud that resembles Hera ( Nephele ) and laid the cloud-Hera in Ixion's bed. Ixion coupled with Nephele, resulting in the birth of Centaurus . Zeus punished Ixion for lusting after Hera by tying him to

3320-526: A more complex narrative. Typhon is, similarly to in Hesiod, the child of Gaia and Tartarus, produced out of anger at Zeus's defeat of the Giants. The monster attacks heaven, and all of the gods, out of fear, transform into animals and flee to Egypt, except for Zeus, who attacks the monster with his thunderbolt and sickle. Typhon is wounded and retreats to Mount Kasios in Syria, where Zeus grapples with him, giving

3486-522: A priestess of Hera, who is subsequently turned into a cow, and suffers at Hera's hands: according to Apollodorus, Hera sends a gadfly to sting the cow, driving her all the way to Egypt, where she is finally transformed back into human form. In later accounts of Zeus's affair with Semele , a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia , Hera tricks her into persuading Zeus to grant her any promise. Semele asks him to come to her as he comes to his own wife Hera, and when Zeus upholds this promise, she dies out of fright and

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3652-510: A prophecy from his parents, Gaia and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father. This causes Rhea "unceasing grief", and upon becoming pregnant with her sixth child, Zeus, she approaches her parents, Gaia and Uranus, seeking a plan to save her child and bring retribution to Cronus. Following her parents' instructions, she travels to Lyctus in Crete , where she gives birth to Zeus, handing

3818-438: A punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the human race. After Hephaestus does so, several other gods contribute to her creation. Hermes names the woman ' Pandora '. Pandora was given in marriage to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus . Zeus gave her a jar which contained many evils. Pandora opened

3984-714: A race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size. They were known for the Gigantomachy (also spelled Gigantomachia ), their battle with the Olympian gods . According to Hesiod , the Giants were the offspring of Gaia (Earth), born from the blood that fell when Uranus (Sky) was castrated by his Titan son Cronus . Archaic and Classical representations show Gigantes as man-sized hoplites (heavily armed ancient Greek foot soldiers) fully human in form. Later representations (after c. 380 BC) show Gigantes with snakes for legs . In later traditions,

4150-480: A race of mortal men. The 6th–5th century BC lyric poet Bacchylides calls the Giants "sons of the Earth". Later the term "gegeneis" ("earthborn") became a common epithet of the Giants. The first century Latin writer Hyginus has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus , another primordial Greek deity. Though distinct in early traditions, Hellenistic and later writers often confused or conflated

4316-650: A reference to their size. Though a possible later addition, the Theogony also has the Giants born "with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands". Other early sources characterize the Giants by their excesses. Pindar describes the excessive violence of the Giant Porphyrion as having provoked "beyond all measure". Bacchylides calls the Giants arrogant, saying that they were destroyed by " Hybris " (the Greek word hubris personified). The earlier seventh century BC poet Alcman perhaps had already used

4482-587: A sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Moirai and Themis ; he instead transforms them into various species of birds. According to

4648-541: A scholion on the Iliad (citing Hesiod and Bacchylides ), when Europa is picking flowers with her female companions in a meadow in Phoenicia, Zeus transforms himself into a bull, lures her from the others, and then carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where he resumes his usual form to sleep with her. In Euripides ' Helen , Zeus takes the form of a swan, and after being chased by an eagle, finds shelter in

4814-518: A snake and raped her. Rhea became pregnant and gave birth to Persephone . Zeus in the form of a snake would mate with his daughter Persephone, which resulted in the birth of Dionysus . Zeus granted Callirrhoe's prayer that her sons by Alcmaeon , Acarnan and Amphoterus , grow quickly so that they might be able to avenge the death of their father by the hands of Phegeus and his two sons. Both Zeus and Poseidon wooed Thetis , daughter of Nereus . But when Themis (or Prometheus) prophesied that

4980-404: A stone to swallow. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he is not in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him. Hyginus also says that Ida , Althaea, and Adrasteia , usually considered the children of Oceanus , are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus. According to

5146-417: A transparent Indo-European etymology. Plato , in his Cratylus , gives a folk etymology of Zeus meaning "cause of life always to all things", because of puns between alternate titles of Zeus ( Zen and Dia ) with the Greek words for life and "because of". This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship. Diodorus Siculus wrote that Zeus

Hestia - Misplaced Pages Continue

5312-476: A tree which produces golden apples as a wedding gift. Eratosthenes and Hyginus attribute a similar story to Pherecydes, in which Hera is amazed by the gift, and asks for the apples to be planted in the "garden of the gods", nearby to Mount Atlas . Apollodorus specifies them as the golden apples of the Hesperides , and says that Gaia gives them to Zeus after the marriage. According to Diodorus Siculus ,

5478-474: A war against their father and the other Titans. As "first to be devoured ... and the last to be yielded up again", Hestia is thus both the eldest and youngest daughter; this mythic inversion is found in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (700 BC). Zeus assigned Hestia a duty to feed and maintain the fires of the Olympian hearth with the fatty, combustible portions of animal sacrifices to the gods. Wherever food

5644-416: A wheel that spins forever. Once, Helios the sun god gave his chariot to his inexperienced son Phaethon to drive. Phaethon could not control his father's steeds so he ended up taking the chariot too high, freezing the earth, or too low, burning everything to the ground. The earth itself prayed to Zeus, and in order to prevent further disaster, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at Phaethon, killing him and saving

5810-430: A youthful affair between Zeus and Hera. In the Iliad , the pair are described as having first lay with each other before Cronus is sent to Tartarus, without the knowledge of their parents. A scholiast on the Iliad states that, after Cronus is banished to Tartarus, Oceanus and Tethys give Hera to Zeus in marriage, and only shortly after the two are wed, Hera gives birth to Hephaestus , having lay secretly with Zeus on

5976-682: Is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan war and the battle over the City of Troy , in which Zeus plays a major part. Scenes in which Zeus appears include: When Hades requested to marry Zeus's daughter, Persephone , Zeus approved and advised Hades to abduct Persephone, as her mother Demeter would not allow her to marry Hades. In the Orphic "Rhapsodic Theogony" (first century BC/AD), Zeus wanted to marry his mother Rhea . After Rhea refused to marry him, Zeus turned into

6142-593: Is born, emerging from Zeus's head, but the foretold son never comes forth. Apollodorus presents a similar version, stating that Metis took many forms in attempting to avoid Zeus's embraces, and that it was Gaia alone who warned Zeus of the son who would overthrow him. According to a fragment likely from the Hesiodic corpus, quoted by Chrysippus, it is out of anger at Hera for producing Hephaestus on her own that Zeus has intercourse with Metis, and then swallows her, thereby giving rise to Athena from himself. A scholiast on

6308-435: Is described as being as big as a mountain. Over time, descriptions of the Giants make them less human, more monstrous and more "gigantic". According to Apollodorus the Giants had great size and strength, a frightening appearance, with long hair and beards and scaly feet. Ovid makes them "serpent-footed" with a "hundred arms", and Nonnus has them "serpent-haired". The most important divine struggle in Greek mythology

6474-424: Is given "ephemeral fruits" by the Moirai , which reduce his strength. The monster then flees to Thrace, where he hurls mountains at Zeus, which are sent back at him by the god's thunderbolts, before, while fleeing to Sicily , Zeus launches Mount Etna upon him, finally ending him. Nonnus , who gives the longest and most detailed account, presents a narrative similar to Apollodorus, with differences such as that it

6640-638: Is his sister Demeter , with whom he has Persephone . Zeus's next consort is the Titan Mnemosyne ; as described at the beginning of the Theogony , Zeus lies with Mnemosyne in Piera each night for nine nights, producing the nine Muses. His sixth wife is the Titan Leto , who bears him the twins Apollo and Artemis , who, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , are born on the island of Delos . In Hesiod's account, Zeus's seventh and final wife

6806-442: Is his sister Hera . While Hera is Zeus's seventh wife in Hesiod's version, in other accounts she is his first and only wife. In the Theogony , the couple has three children, Ares , Hebe , and Eileithyia . While Hesiod states that Hera produces Hephaestus on her own after Athena is born from Zeus's head, other versions, including Homer, have Hephaestus as a child of Zeus and Hera as well. Various authors give descriptions of

Hestia - Misplaced Pages Continue

6972-612: Is instead Cadmus and Pan who recovers Zeus's sinews, by luring Typhon with music and then tricking him. In the Iliad , Homer tells of another attempted overthrow, in which Hera, Poseidon, and Athena conspire to overpower Zeus and tie him in bonds. It is only because of the Nereid Thetis , who summons Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires , to Olympus, that the other Olympians abandon their plans (out of fear for Briareus). According to Hesiod, Zeus takes Metis , one of

7138-654: Is married to Hera , by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares , Eileithyia , Hebe , and Hephaestus . At the oracle of Dodona , his consort was said to be Dione , by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite . According to the Theogony , Zeus's first wife was Metis , by whom he had Athena . Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Apollo , Artemis , Hermes , Persephone , Dionysus , Perseus , Heracles , Helen of Troy , Minos , and

7304-422: Is reduced to ashes. According to Callimachus, after Zeus sleeps with Callisto, Hera turns her into a bear, and instructs Artemis to shoot her. In addition, Zeus's son by Alcmene, the hero Heracles , is persecuted continuously throughout his mortal life by Hera, up until his apotheosis. According to Diodorus Siculus , Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, was the very last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with; following

7470-415: Is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and mythology , who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus . His name is cognate with the first syllable of his Roman equivalent Jupiter . Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea , the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he

7636-518: The Iliad , in contrast, states that when Zeus swallows her, Metis is pregnant with Athena not by Zeus himself, but by the Cyclops Brontes. The motif of Zeus swallowing Metis can be seen as a continuation of the succession myth: it is prophesied that a son of Zeus will overthrow him, just as he overthrew his father, but whereas Cronos met his end because he did not swallow the real Zeus, Zeus holds onto his power because he successfully swallows

7802-614: The Acropolis , Livia , and Julia ", and of "Hestia Romain" ("Roman Hestia", thus "The Roman Hearth" or Vesta). At Delos , a priest served "Hestia the Athenian Demos " (the people or state) "and Roma ". An eminent citizen of Carian Stratoniceia described himself as a priest of Hestia and several other deities, as well as holding several civic offices. Hestia's political and civic functions are further evidenced by her very numerous privately funded dedications at civic sites, and

7968-779: The Arcadians claimed that battle took place "not at Pellene in Thrace " but in the plain of Megalopolis in the central Peloponnese where "rises up fire". The tradition of the battle being in Megalopolis may have been inspired by the presence of numerous gigantic bones around Megalopolis as noted by Pausanias, which in Ancient Greek times were attributed to giants, but which in modern times are known to be those of fossil Pleistocene mammals such as straight-tusked elephants , an enormous extinct elephant species formerly native to

8134-636: The Cyclopes , who, in return, and out of gratitude, give him his thunderbolt, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Then begins the Titanomachy , the war between the Olympians, led by Zeus, and the Titans, led by Cronus, for control of the universe, with Zeus and the Olympians fighting from Mount Olympus , and the Titans fighting from Mount Othrys . The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases

8300-479: The Giants , who fight the Olympian gods in a battle known as the Gigantomachy. According to Hesiod, the Giants are the offspring of Gaia, born from the drops of blood that fell on the ground when Cronus castrated his father Uranus; there is, however, no mention of a battle between the gods and the Giants in the Theogony . It is Apollodorus who provides the most complete account of the Gigantomachy. He says that Gaia, out of anger at how Zeus had imprisoned her children,

8466-601: The Gigantomachy as she is the one who must keep the home fires burning when the other gods are away. Nevertheless, her possible participation in the fight against the Giants is evidenced from an inscription on the northern frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi ; Brinkmann (1985) suggests that the letter tracings of one of the two goddesses right next to Hephaestus be restored as "Hestia", although other possible candidates include Demeter and Persephone , or two of

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8632-564: The Gorgon 's gaze turn the Giants into mountains. Valerius Flaccus , in his Argonautica , makes frequent use of Gigantomachy imagery, with the Argo (the world's first ship) constituting a Gigantomachy-like offense against natural law, and example of hubristic excess. Claudian , the fourth-century AD court poet of emperor Honorius , composed a Gigantomachia that viewed the battle as a metaphor for vast geomorphic change: "The puissant company of

8798-619: The Hundred-Handers , who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface. He gives them nectar and ambrosia and revives their spirits, and they agree to aid him in the war. Zeus then launches his final attack on the Titans, hurling bolts of lightning upon them while the Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning

8964-495: The Metamorphoses , Ovid refers to the Gigantomachy as: "The time when serpent footed giants strove / to fix their hundred arms on captive Heaven". Here Ovid apparently conflates the Giants with the Hundred-Handers , who, though in Hesiod fought alongside Zeus and the Olympians, in some traditions fought against them. Eratosthenes records that Dionysus, Hephaestus and several satyrs mounted on donkeys and charged against

9130-537: The Muses . He was respected as a sky father who was chief of the gods and assigned roles to the others: "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence." He was equated with many foreign weather gods , permitting Pausanias to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". Zeus's symbols are the thunderbolt , eagle , bull , and oak . In addition to his Indo-European inheritance ,

9296-461: The Oceanid daughters of Oceanus and Tethys , as his first wife. However, when she is about to give birth to a daughter, Athena , he swallows her whole upon the advice of Gaia and Uranus, as it had been foretold that after bearing a daughter, she would give birth to a son, who would overthrow him as king of gods and mortals; it is from this position that Metis gives counsel to Zeus. In time, Athena

9462-539: The PIE root *wes , "burn" (ultimately from *h₂wes- "dwell, pass the night, stay"). It thus refers to the oikos : domestic life, home, household, house, or family. Burkert states that an "early form of the temple is the hearth house; the early temples at Dreros and Prinias on Crete are of this type as indeed is the temple of Apollo at Delphi which always had its inner hestia ". The Mycenaean great hall ( megaron ), like Homer 's hall of Odysseus at Ithaca , had

9628-594: The Phlegraean Fields . The third century BC poet Lycophron , apparently locates a battle of gods and Giants in the vicinity of the volcanic island of Ischia , the largest of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples, where he says the Giants (along with Typhon) were "crushed" under the island. At least one tradition placed Phlegra in Thessaly . According to the geographer Pausanias ,

9794-552: The Proto-Indo-European vocative * dyeu-ph 2 tēr ), deriving from the root * dyeu - ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Albanian Zoj-z and Messapic Zis are clear equivalents and cognates of Zeus . In the Greek, Albanian, and Messapic forms the original cluster *di̯ underwent affrication to *dz . Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such

9960-433: The Theogony , after Zeus reaches manhood, Cronus is made to disgorge the five children and the stone "by the stratagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus", presumably in reverse order, vomiting out the stone first, then each of the five children in the opposite order to swallowing. Zeus then sets up the stone at Delphi , so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men". Zeus next frees

10126-496: The magi suggested. The accidental or negligent extinction of a domestic hearth fire represented a failure of domestic and religious care for the family; failure to maintain Hestia's public fire in her temple or shrine was a breach of duty to the broad community. A hearth fire might be deliberately, ritually extinguished at need; but its lighting should be accompanied by rituals of completion, purification, and renewal, comparable with

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10292-517: The tutelary deity of the mountain, stops her, saying that Zeus is sleeping there with Leto. Photius , in his Bibliotheca , tells us that in Ptolemy Hephaestion 's New History , Hera refuses to lay with Zeus, and hides in a cave to avoid him, before an earthborn man named Achilles convinces her to marry Zeus, leading to the pair first sleeping with each other. According to Stephanus of Byzantium , Zeus and Hera first lay together at

10458-630: The Council Chamber, leaping onto her hearth not to save himself, but in the hope that his slayers would demonstrate their impiety by killing him there". Very few free-standing temples were dedicated to Hestia. Pausanias mentions one in Hermione and one in Sparta , the latter having an altar but no image. Xenophon 's Hellenica mentions fighting around and within Olympia 's temple of Hestia,

10624-722: The Giant Mimas mentioned by Apollodorus). The Gigantomachy also appeared on several other late sixth century buildings, including the west pediment of the Alkmeonid Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the pediment of the Megarian Treasury at Olympia , the east pediment of the Old Temple of Athena on the Acropolis of Athens, and the metopes of Temple F at Selinous . The theme continued to be popular in

10790-570: The Giant Mimas was also depicted. Other less-familiar or otherwise unknown Giant names include Allektos, Chthonophylos, Eurybias, Molodros, Obrimos, Ochthaios and Olyktor. The subject was revived in the Renaissance, most famously in the frescos of the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo del Te , Mantua . These were painted around 1530 by Giulio Romano and his workshop, and aimed to give the viewer

10956-588: The Giants and their Gigantomachy with an earlier set of offspring of Gaia and Uranus, the Titans and their war with the Olympian gods, the Titanomachy . This confusion extended to other opponents of the Olympians, including the huge monster Typhon , the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus , whom Zeus finally defeated with his thunderbolt, and the Aloadae , the large, strong and aggressive brothers Otus and Ephialtes, who piled Pelion on top of Ossa in order to scale

11122-518: The Giants as an example of hubris, with the phrases "vengeance of the gods" and "they suffered unforgettable punishments for the evil they did" being possible references to the Gigantomachy. Homer's comparison of the Giants to the Laestrygonians is suggestive of similarities between the two races. The Laestrygonians, who "hurled ... rocks huge as a man could lift", certainly possessed great strength, and possibly great size, as their king's wife

11288-529: The Giants battling the gods. Homer's remark that Eurymedon "brought destruction on his froward people" might possibly be a reference to the Gigantomachy and Hesiod's remark that Heracles performed a "great work among the immortals" is probably a reference to Heracles' crucial role in the gods' victory over the Giants. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (also called Ehoiai ), following mentions of Heracles' sacks of Troy and of Kos , refers to his having slain "presumptuous Giants". Another probable reference to

11454-620: The Giants be the offspring of Gaia (Earth). According to Hesiod, Gaia, mating with Uranus , bore many children: the first generation of Titans , the Cyclopes , and the Hundred-Handers . However, Uranus hated his children and, as soon as they were born, he imprisoned them inside Gaia, causing her much distress. Therefore, Gaia made a sickle of adamant which she gave to Cronus , the youngest of her Titan sons, and hid him (presumably still inside Gaia's body) to wait in ambush. When Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus castrated his father, and "the bloody drops that gushed forth [Gaia] received, and as

11620-572: The Giants once again enemies of order and civilization. Horace makes use of this same meaning to symbolize the victory of Augustus at the Battle of Actium as a victory for the civilized West over the barbaric East. Ovid , in his Metamorphoses , describes mankind's moral decline through the ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, and presents the Gigantomachy as a part of that same descent from natural order into chaos. Lucan , in his Pharsalia , which contains many Gigantomachy references, makes

11786-412: The Giants were often confused with other opponents of the Olympians, particularly the Titans , an earlier generation of large and powerful children of Gaia and Uranus. The vanquished Giants were said to be buried under volcanoes and to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The name "Gigantes" is usually taken to imply "earth-born", and Hesiod 's Theogony makes this explicit by having

11952-450: The Giants, a practice dating from perhaps as early as the second millennium BC. The earliest extant indisputable representations of Gigantes are found on votive pinakes from Corinth and Eleusis , and Attic black-figure pots, dating from the second quarter of the sixth century BC (this excludes early depictions of Zeus battling single snake-footed creatures, which probably represent his battle with Typhon , as well as Zeus' opponent on

12118-497: The Giants, whom he gives a "hundred arms". So perhaps do Callimachus and Philostratus , since they both make Aegaeon the cause of earthquakes, as was often said about the Giants (see below). Homer describes the Giant king Eurymedon as "great-hearted" ( μεγαλήτορος ), and his people as "insolent" ( ὑπερθύμοισι ) and "froward" ( ἀτάσθαλος ). Hesiod calls the Giants "strong" ( κρατερῶν ) and "great" ( μεγάλους ) which may or may not be

12284-547: The Giants, wish to "drag down everything from heaven and the invisible to earth". In Latin literature , in which the Giants, the Titans , Typhon and the Aloadae are all often conflated, Gigantomachy imagery is a frequent occurrence. Cicero , while urging the acceptance of aging and death as natural and inevitable, allegorizes the Gigantomachy as "fighting against Nature". The rationalist Epicurean poet Lucretius , for whom such things as lightning, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions had natural rather than divine causes, used

12450-569: The Giants. From the sixth century BC onwards, the Gigantomachy was a popular and important theme in Greek art, with over six hundred representations cataloged in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae ( LIMC ). The Gigantomachy was depicted on the new peplos (robe) presented to Athena on the Acropolis of Athens as part of the Panathenaic festival celebrating her victory over

12616-426: The Giants. As they drew closer and before the Giants had spotted them, the donkeys brayed, scaring off some Giants who ran away in terror of the unseen enemies, for they had never heard a donkey's bray before. Dionysus placed the donkeys in the skies in gratitude, and in vase paintings from the classical period, satyrs and Maenads can sometimes be seen confronting their gigantic opponents. A late Latin grammarian of

12782-496: The Gigantomachy in the Catalogue has Zeus produce Heracles to be "a protector against ruin for gods and men". There are indications that there might have been a lost epic poem, a Gigantomachia , which gave an account of the war: Hesiod's Theogony says that the Muses sing of the Giants, and the sixth century BC poet Xenophanes mentions the Gigantomachy as a subject to be avoided at table. The Apollonius scholia refers to

12948-418: The Gigantomachy to celebrate the victory of philosophy over mythology and superstition. In the triumph of science and reason over traditional religious belief, the Gigantomachy symbolized for him Epicurus storming heaven. In a reversal of their usual meaning, he represents the Giants as heroic rebels against the tyranny of Olympus. Virgil —reversing Lucretius' reversal—restores the conventional meaning, making

13114-529: The Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity. Popular conceptions of Zeus differed widely from place to place. Local varieties of Zeus often have little in common with each other except the name. They exercised different areas of authority and were worshiped in different ways; for example, some local cults conceived of Zeus as

13280-583: The Hundred-Hander Briareus were also said to be buried under Etna). The Giant Alcyoneus along with "many giants" were said to lie under Mount Vesuvius , Prochyte (modern Procida ), one of the volcanic Phlegraean Islands was supposed to sit atop the Giant Mimas , and Polybotes was said to lie pinned beneath the volcanic island of Nisyros , supposedly a piece of the island of Kos broken off and thrown by Poseidon . Describing

13446-695: The Hundred-Handers the task of acting as their warders. Apollodorus provides a similar account, saying that, when Zeus reaches adulthood, he enlists the help of the Oceanid Metis , who gives Cronus an emetic , forcing to him to disgorge the stone and Zeus's five siblings. Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe . The Cyclopes give him his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident and Hades his helmet of invisibility, and

13612-672: The Lydian , considered Zeus to have been born in Lydia , while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus , says that he was born in Arcadia . Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he is born in Dicte , and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he

13778-451: The Olympians fighting from above and the Giants fighting with large stones from below. With the beginning of the fourth century BC probably comes the first portrayal of the Giants in Greek art as anything other than fully human in form, with legs that become coiled serpents having snake heads at the ends in place of feet. Such depictions were perhaps borrowed from Typhon, the monstrous son of Gaia and Tartarus , described by Hesiod as having

13944-520: The Pergamon Altar. On the right side of the East frieze, the first encountered by a visitor, a winged Giant, usually identified as Alcyoneus , fights Athena . Below and to the right of Athena, Gaia rises from the ground, touching Athena's robe in supplication. Flying above Gaia, a winged Nike crowns the victorious Athena. To the left of this grouping a snake-legged Porphyrion battles Zeus and to

14110-732: The Sanctuary of Ares and Athena Areia, dated 350–325 BC, Hestia is called, among many others, to bear witness. The Hestia tapestry is a Byzantine tapestry , made in Egypt during the 6th century AD. It is a late and very rare representation of the goddess, whom it identifies in Greek as Hestia Polyolbos ; ( Greek : Ἑστία Πολύολβος "Hestia full of Blessings"). Its history and symbolism are discussed in Friedlander (1945). Zeus Zeus ( / zj uː s / , Ancient Greek : Ζεύς )

14276-439: The Titans and banishes them to Tartarus, his rule is challenged by the monster Typhon , a giant serpentine creature who battles Zeus for control of the cosmos. According to Hesiod, Typhon is the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus , described as having a hundred snaky fire-breathing heads. Hesiod says he "would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had it not been for Zeus noticing the monster and dispatching with him quickly:

14442-467: The Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards. According to the Iliad , after the battle with the Titans, Zeus shares the world with his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus receives the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, with the earth and Olympus remaining common ground. Upon assuming his place as king of the cosmos, Zeus's rule is quickly challenged. The first of these challenges to his power comes from

14608-406: The Titans, bore the Giants to Uranus. There comes to the gods a prophecy that the Giants cannot be defeated by the gods on their own, but can be defeated only with the help of a mortal; Gaia, upon hearing of this, seeks a special pharmakon (herb) that will prevent the Giants from being killed. Zeus, however, orders Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to stop shining, and harvests all of

14774-580: The Titans, brought forth the Giants". There are three brief references to the Gigantes in Homer 's Odyssey , though it is not entirely clear that Homer and Hesiod understood the term to mean the same thing. Homer has Giants among the ancestors of the Phaiakians , a race of men encountered by Odysseus , their ruler Alcinous being the son of Nausithous , who was the son of Poseidon and Periboea ,

14940-526: The administrative rather than religious titles used by the lay-officials involved in her civic cults. Every private and public hearth was regarded as a sanctuary of the goddess, and a portion of the sacrifices, to whatever divinity they were offered, belonged to her. Aeschines , On the Embassy , declares that "the hearth of the Prytaneum was regarded as the common hearth of the state and a statue of Hestia

15106-502: The all-wise: draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song. Homeric Hymn 29, To Hestia invokes Hestia and Hermes: Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honor: glorious is your portion and your right. For without you mortals hold no banquet, – where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last. And you, slayer of Argus ( an epithet of Hermes ), Son of Zeus and Maia,

15272-416: The battle between the Giants and the Olympians. He locates it "on the plain of Phlegra " and has Teiresias foretell Heracles killing Giants "beneath [his] rushing arrows". He calls Heracles "you who subdued the Giants", and has Porphyrion , whom he calls "the king of the Giants", being overcome by the bow of Apollo . Euripides ' Heracles has its hero shooting Giants with arrows, and his Ion has

15438-412: The better portions. He sacrificed a large ox , and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones with fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones. This set a precedent for sacrifices, where humans will keep the fat for themselves and burn the bones for

15604-449: The birth of Heracles, he ceased to beget humans altogether, and fathered no more children. The following is a list of Zeus's offspring, by various mothers. Beside each offspring, the earliest source to record the parentage is given, along with the century to which the source dates. When the gods met at Mecone to discuss which portions they will receive after a sacrifice, the titan Prometheus decided to trick Zeus so that humans receive

15770-420: The blood of the Giants came a new race of beings in human form. According to Ovid, Earth (Gaia) did not want the Giants to perish without a trace, so "reeking with the copious blood of her gigantic sons", she gave life to the "steaming gore" of the blood soaked battleground. These new offspring, like their fathers the Giants, also hated the gods and possessed a bloodthirsty desire for "savage slaughter". Later in

15936-428: The bridal clothing; she is so relieved that the couple are reconciled. According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica , when Hera is angry with her husband, she retreats instead to Cithaeron, and Zeus goes to the earth-born man Alalcomeneus, who suggests he pretend to marry someone else. With the help of Alalcomeneus, Zeus creates a wooden statue from an oak tree, dresses it as

16102-430: The catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD , which buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum , Cassius Dio relates accounts of the appearance of many Giant-like creatures on the mountain and in the surrounding area followed by violent earthquakes and the final cataclysmic eruption, saying "some thought that the Giants were rising again in revolt (for at this time also many of their forms could be discerned in

16268-409: The cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing]

16434-755: The central group are the rest of the gods engaged in combat with particular Giants. While the gods can be identified by characteristic features, for example Hermes with his hat ( petasos ) and Dionysus his ivy crown, the Giants are not individually characterized and can only be identified by inscriptions which sometimes name the Giant. The fragments of one vase from this same period (Getty 81.AE.211) name five Giants: Pankrates against Heracles, Polybotes against Zeus, Oranion against Dionysus, Euboios and Euphorbus fallen and Ephialtes. Also named, on two other of these early vases, are Aristaeus battling Hephaestus (Akropolis 607), Eurymedon and (again) Ephialtes (Akropolis 2134). An amphora from Caere from later in

16600-490: The chorus describe seeing a depiction of the Gigantomachy on the late sixth century Temple of Apollo at Delphi , with Athena fighting the Giant Enceladus with her "gorgon shield", Zeus burning the Giant Mimas with his "mighty thunderbolt, blazing at both ends", and Dionysus killing an unnamed Giant with his "ivy staff". The early 3rd century BC author Apollonius of Rhodes briefly describes an incident where

16766-424: The city of Hermione , having come there from Crete. Callimachus, in a fragment from his Aetia , also apparently makes reference to the couple's union occurring at Naxos . Though no complete account of Zeus and Hera's wedding exists, various authors make reference to it. According to a scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica , Pherecydes states that when Zeus and Hera are being married, Gaia brings

16932-458: The classical "cloud-gatherer" ( Greek : Νεφεληγερέτα , Nephelēgereta ) also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East , such as the scepter . The god's name in the nominative is Ζεύς ( Zeús ). It is inflected as follows: vocative : Ζεῦ ( Zeû ); accusative : Δία ( Día ); genitive : Διός ( Diós ); dative : Διί ( Dií ). Diogenes Laërtius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling

17098-525: The daughter of the Giant king Eurymedon. Elsewhere in the Odyssey , Alcinous says that the Phaiakians, like the Cyclopes and the Giants, are "near kin" to the gods. Odysseus describes the Laestrygonians (another race encountered by Odysseus in his travels) as more like Giants than men. Pausanias , the 2nd century AD geographer, read these lines of the Odyssey to mean that, for Homer, the Giants were

17264-587: The early Roman Imperial era, when Sparta offers several examples of women with the priestly title "Hestia"; Chalcis offers one, a daughter of the local elite. Existing civic cults to Hestia probably served as stock for the grafting of Greek ruler-cult to the Roman emperor, the Imperial family, and Rome itself. In Athens, a small seating section at the Theatre of Dionysus was reserved for priesthoods of "Hestia on

17430-456: The east frieze of the Parthenon had Dionysus instead." However, the hearth was immovable, and "there is no story of Hestia's "ever having been removed from her fixed abode". Burkert remarks that "Since the hearth is immovable Hestia is unable to take part even in the procession of the gods, let alone the other antics of the Olympians". Traditionally, Hestia is absent from ancient depictions of

17596-405: The fifth century AD, Servius , mentions that during the battle, the eagle of Zeus (who once had been the boy Aëtos before his metamorphosis) assisted his master by placing the lightning bolts on his hands. Various places have been associated with the Giants and the Gigantomachy. As noted above Pindar has the battle occur at Phlegra ("the place of burning"), as do other early sources. Phlegra

17762-536: The fifth century BC. A particularly fine example is found on a red-figure cup (c. 490–485 BC) by the Brygos Painter (Berlin F2293). On one side of the cup is the same central group of gods (minus Gaia) as described above: Zeus wielding his thunderbolt, stepping into a quadriga, Heracles with lion skin (behind the chariot rather than on it) drawing his (unseen) bow and, ahead, Athena thrusting her spear into

17928-554: The figures and the identifications of most of the approximately sixty gods and goddesses have been more or less established. The names and positions of most Giants remain uncertain. Some of the names of the Giants have been determined by inscription, while their positions are often conjectured on the basis of which gods fought which Giants in Apollodorus ' account. The same central group of Zeus, Athena, Heracles and Gaia, found on many early Attic vases, also featured prominently on

18094-399: The fire with a prayer addressed to all the powers, then carved the meat into seven equal portions: "one he set aside, lifting up a prayer to the forest nymphs and Hermes , Maia 's son." Hestia is identified with the hearth as a physical object, and the abstractions of community and domesticity, in contrast to the fire of the forge employed in blacksmithing and metalworking, the province of

18260-421: The giants confounds all differences between things; islands abandon the deep; mountains lie hidden in the sea. Many a river is left dry or has altered its ancient course....robbed of her mountains Earth sank into level plains, parted among her own sons." Various locations associated with the Giants and the Gigantomachy were areas of volcanic and seismic activity (e.g. the Phlegraean Fields west of Naples ), and

18426-420: The god Hephaestus. Portrayals of her are rare and seldom secure. In classical Greek art, she is occasionally depicted as a woman simply and modestly cloaked in a head veil. At times, she is shown with a staff in hand or by a large fire. She sits on a plain wooden throne with a white woolen cushion. Her associated sacrificial animal was a domestic pig. Her Roman equivalent is Vesta ; Vesta has similar functions as

18592-458: The gods themselves punishing the Giants for their arrogant challenge to the gods' divine authority. The Gigantomachy can also be seen as a continuation of the struggle between Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky), and thus as part of the primal opposition between female and male. Plato compares the Gigantomachy to a philosophical dispute about existence, wherein the materialist philosophers, who believe that only physical things exist, like

18758-453: The gods. Zeus, enraged at Prometheus's deception, prohibited the use of fire by humans. Prometheus, however, stole fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk and gave it to humans. This further enraged Zeus, who punished Prometheus by binding him to a cliff, where an eagle constantly ate Prometheus's liver, which regenerated every night. Prometheus was eventually freed from his misery by Heracles . Now Zeus, angry at humans, decides to give humanity

18924-440: The great prosperity of the rich Agathocleadae, seated in the midst of city streets near the fragrant river Peneius in the valleys of sheep-nurturing Thessaly . From there Aristoteles came to flourishing Cirrha , and was twice crowned, for the glory of horse-mastering Larisa ... (The rest of the ode is lost) Orphic Hymn 84 and Pindar 's 11th Nemean ode are dedicated to Hestia. In one military oath found at Acharnai , from

19090-465: The hearth of Olympus. As the goddess of sacrificial fire, Hestia received the first offering at every domestic sacrifice. In the public domain, the hearth of the prytaneum functioned as her official sanctuary. Whenever a new colony was established, a flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement . The goddess Vesta is her Roman equivalent . Hestia's name means "hearth, fireplace, altar". This stems from

19256-480: The heavens and attack the Olympians (though in the case of Ephialtes there was probably a Giant with the same name). For example, Hyginus includes the names of three Titans, Coeus , Iapetus , and Astraeus , along with Typhon and the Aloadae, in his list of Giants, and Ovid seems to conflate the Gigantomachy with the later siege of Olympus by the Aloadae. Ovid also seems to confuse the Hundred-Handers with

19422-409: The herb himself, before having Athena summon Heracles . In the conflict, Porphyrion , one of the most powerful of the Giants, launches an attack upon Heracles and Hera; Zeus, however, causes Porphyrion to become lustful for Hera, and when he is just about to violate her, Zeus strikes him with his thunderbolt, before Heracles deals the fatal blow with an arrow. In the Theogony , after Zeus defeats

19588-616: The high ranking Scythian deity Tabiti . Procopius equates her with the Zoroastrian holy fire ( atar ) of the Sasanians in Adhur Gushnasp . To Vesta is attributed one more story not found in Greek tradition by the Roman poet Ovid in his poem Fasti , where during a feast of the gods Vesta is nearly raped in her sleep by the god Priapus , and only avoids this fate when a donkey cries out, alerting Vesta and prompting

19754-587: The interior of the shield of Athena Parthenos . Phidias' work perhaps marks the beginning of a change in the way the Giants are presented. While previously the Giants had been portrayed as typical hoplite warriors armed with the usual helmets, shields, spears and swords, in the fifth century the Giants begin to be depicted as less handsome in appearance, primitive and wild, clothed in animal skins or naked, often without armor and using boulders as weapons. A series of red-figure pots from c. 400 BC, which may have used Phidas' shield of Athena Parthenos as their model, show

19920-475: The island of Kos called Nisyros , and threw it on top of Polybotes ( Strabo also relates the story of Polybotes buried under Nisyros but adds that some say Polybotes lies under Kos instead). Hermes , wearing Hades ' helmet, killed Hippolytus , Artemis killed Gration, and the Moirai (Fates) killed Agrius and Thoas with bronze clubs. The rest of the giants were "destroyed" by thunderbolts thrown by Zeus, with each Giant being shot with arrows by Heracles (as

20086-459: The island of Samos beforehand; to conceal this act, she claimed that she had produced Hephaestus on her own. According to another scholiast on the Iliad , Callimachus , in his Aetia , says that Zeus lay with Hera for three hundred years on the island of Samos. According to a scholion on Theocritus ' Idylls , Zeus, one day seeing Hera walking apart from the other gods, becomes intent on having intercourse with her, and transforms himself into

20252-431: The jar and released all the evils, which made mankind miserable. Only hope remained inside the jar. When Zeus was atop Mount Olympus he was appalled by human sacrifice and other signs of human decadence. He decided to wipe out mankind and flooded the world with the help of his brother Poseidon . After the flood, only Deucalion and Pyrrha remained. This flood narrative is a common motif in mythology. The Iliad

20418-474: The lap of Leda , subsequently seducing her, while in Euripides's lost play Antiope , Zeus apparently took the form of a satyr to sleep with Antiope . Various authors speak of Zeus raping Callisto , one of the companions of Artemis , doing so in the form of Artemis herself according to Ovid (or, as mentioned by Apollodorus, in the form of Apollo ), and Pherecydes relates that Zeus sleeps with Alcmene ,

20584-404: The leading woman of the household, although sometimes to a man. Hestia's rites at the hearths of public buildings were usually led by holders of civil office; Dionysius of Halicarnassus testifies that the prytaneum of a Greek state or community was sacred to Hestia, who was served by the most powerful state officials. However, evidence of her dedicant priesthood is extremely rare. Most stems from

20750-443: The left of Zeus is Heracles. On the far left side of the East frieze, a triple Hecate with torch battles a snake-legged Giant usually identified (following Apollodorus) as Clytius. To the right lays the fallen Udaeus, shot in his left eye by an arrow from Apollo, along with Demeter who wields a pair of torches against Erysichthon. The Giants are depicted in a variety of ways. Some Giants are fully human in form, while others are

20916-460: The location of the marriage is in the land of the Knossians , nearby to the river Theren, while Lactantius attributes to Varro the statement that the couple are married on the island of Samos. There exist several stories in which Zeus, receiving advice, is able to reconcile with an angered Hera. According to Pausanias, Hera, angry with her husband, retreats to the island of Euboea, where she

21082-536: The messenger of the blessed gods, bearer of the goldenrod, the giver of good, be favorable and help us, you and Hestia, the worshipful and dear. Come and dwell in this glorious house in friendship together; for you two, well knowing the noble actions of men, aid on their wisdom and their strength. Hail, Daughter of Cronos, and you also, Hermes, bearer of the goldenrod! Now I will remember you and another song also. Bacchylides Ode 14b, For Aristoteles of Larisa : Golden-throned Hestia ( Ἐστία χρυσόθρον᾽ ), you who increase

21248-520: The monster a chance to wrap him in his coils, and rip out the sinews from his hands and feet. Disabled, Zeus is taken by Typhon to the Corycian Cave in Cilicia, where he is guarded by the "she-dragon" Delphyne . Hermes and Aegipan , however, steal back Zeus's sinews, and refit them, reviving him and allowing him to return to the battle, pursuing Typhon, who flees to Mount Nysa; there, Typhon

21414-400: The myth of Zeus. In Hesiod 's Theogony (c. 730 – 700 BC), Cronus , after castrating his father Uranus , becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister Rhea , by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six. He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received

21580-681: The name Ζάς . The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀇𐀸 , di-we (dative) and 𐀇𐀺 , di-wo (genitive), written in the Linear B syllabic script. Zeus is the Greek continuation of * Di̯ēus , the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called * Dyeus ph 2 tēr ("Sky Father"). The god is known under this name in the Rigveda ( Vedic Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita ), Latin (compare Jupiter , from Iuppiter , deriving from

21746-480: The new settlement, but without Hestia, her sacred hearth, an agora and prytaneum there could be no polis . Homeric Hymn 24, To Hestia , is an invocation of five lines, alluding to her role as an attendant to Apollo: Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo, the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho , with soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house, come, having one mind with Zeus

21912-450: The newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon (Aegeum). Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it is not his son. While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so, and other authors give different locations. The poet Eumelos of Corinth (8th century BC), according to John

22078-492: The north (c. 2000 BC) over the old gods of the existing peoples of the Greek peninsula. For the Greeks, the Gigantomachy represented a victory for order over chaos—the victory of the divine order and rationalism of the Olympian gods over the discord and excessive violence of the earth-born chthonic Giants. More specifically, for sixth and fifth century BC Greeks, it represented a victory for civilization over barbarism, and as such

22244-402: The other gods to attack Priapus in defense of the goddess. This story is an almost word-for-word repeat of the myth of Priapus and Lotis , recounted earlier in the same book, with the difference that Lotis had to transform into a lotus tree to escape Priapus, making some scholars suggest the account where Vesta supplants Lotis only exists in order to create some cult drama. The worship of Hestia

22410-568: The prophecy seemingly required). The Latin poet Ovid gives a brief account of the Gigantomachy in his poem Metamorphoses . Ovid, apparently including the Aloadae 's attack upon Olympus as part of the Gigantomachy, has the Giants attempt to seize "the throne of Heaven" by piling "mountain on mountain to the lofty stars" but Jove (i.e. Jupiter , the Roman Zeus) overwhelms the Giants with his thunderbolts, overturning "from Ossa huge, enormous Pelion ". Ovid says that (as "fame reports") from

22576-661: The region. Another tradition apparently placed the battle at Tartessus in Spain. Diodorus Siculus presents a war with multiple battles, with one at Pallene, one on the Phlegraean Fields, and one on Crete . Strabo mentions an account of Heracles battling Giants at Phanagoria , a Greek colony on the shores of the Black Sea . Even when, as in Apollodorus, the battle starts at one place. Individual battles between

22742-424: The request of Apollo's mother, Leto , Zeus instead ordered Apollo to serve as a slave to King Admetus of Pherae for a year. According to Diodorus Siculus , Zeus killed Asclepius because of complains from Hades, who was worried that the number of people in the underworld was diminishing because of Asclepius's resurrections. The winged horse Pegasus carried the thunderbolts of Zeus. Zeus took pity on Ixion ,

22908-413: The right. Zeus mounts a chariot brandishing his thunderbolt in his right hand, Heracles, in the chariot, bends forward with drawn bow and left foot on the chariot pole, Athena, beside the chariot, strides forward toward one or two Giants, and the four chariot horses trample a fallen Giant. When present, Gaia is shielded behind Herakles, apparently pleading with Zeus to spare her children. On either side of

23074-592: The rituals and connotations of an eternal flame and of sanctuary lamps . At the level of the polis , the hearths of Greek colonies and their mother cities were allied and sanctified through Hestia's cult. Athenaeus , in the Deipnosophistae , writes that in Naucratis the people dined in the Prytaneion on the birthday of Hestia Prytanitis. Responsibility for Hestia's domestic cult usually fell to

23240-565: The seasons moved round she bore ... the great Giants." From these same drops of blood also came the Erinyes (Furies) and the Meliai (ash tree nymphs), while the severed genitals of Uranus falling into the sea resulted in a white foam from which Aphrodite grew. The mythographer Apollodorus also has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, though he makes no connection with Uranus' castration, saying simply that Gaia "vexed on account of

23406-472: The sixth century, gives the names of more Giants: Hyperbios and Agasthenes (along with Ephialtes) fighting Zeus, Harpolykos against Hera , Enceladus against Athena and (again) Polybotes, who in this case battles Poseidon with his trident holding the island of Nisyros on his shoulder (Louvre E732). This motif of Poseidon holding the island of Nisyros, ready to hurl it at his opponent, is another frequent feature of these early Gigantomachies. The Gigantomachy

23572-491: The sky". There was a prophecy that the Giants could not be killed by the gods alone, but they could be killed with the help of a mortal. Hearing this, Gaia sought for a certain plant ( pharmakon ) that would protect the Giants. Before Gaia or anyone else could find this plant, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine, harvested all of the plant himself and then he had Athena summon Heracles. According to Apollodorus, Alcyoneus and Porphyrion were

23738-488: The son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus . Zeus was afraid that his grandson Asclepius would teach resurrection to humans, so he killed Asclepius with his thunderbolt. This angered Asclepius's father, Apollo , who in turn killed the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolts of Zeus. Angered at this, Zeus would have imprisoned Apollo in Tartarus. However, at

23904-534: The sun god Helios takes up Hephaestus , exhausted from the fight in Phlegra, on his chariot. The most detailed account of the Gigantomachy is that of the (first or second-century AD) mythographer Apollodorus . None of the early sources give any reasons for the war. Scholia to the Iliad mention the rape of Hera by the Giant Eurymedon, while according to the scholia to Pindar 's Isthmian 6, it

24070-505: The threat, in the form of the potential mother, and so the "cycle of displacement" is brought to an end. In addition, the myth can be seen as an allegory for Zeus gaining the wisdom of Metis for himself by swallowing her. In Hesiod's account, Zeus's second wife is Themis , one of the Titan daughters of Uranus and Gaia, with whom he has the Horae , listed as Eunomia , Dike and Eirene , and

24236-408: The three Fates . Her mythographic status as firstborn of Rhea and Cronus seems to justify the tradition in which a small offering is made to Hestia before any sacrifice ("Hestia comes first"), though this was not universal among the Greeks. In Odyssey   14 , 432–436, the loyal swineherd Eumaeus begins the feast for his master Odysseus by plucking tufts from a boar's head and throwing them into

24402-609: The three Moirai : Clotho , Lachesis and Atropos . A fragment from Pindar calls Themis Zeus's first wife, and states that she is brought by the Moirai (in this version not her daughters) up to Olympus, where she becomes the bride of Zeus and bears him the Horae. According to Hesiod, Zeus next marries the Oceanid Eurynome , with whom he has the three Charites , namely Aglaea , Euphrosyne and Thalia . Zeus's fourth wife

24568-511: The two of them meet in a cataclysmic battle, before Zeus defeats him easily with his thunderbolt, and the creature is hurled down to Tartarus. Epimenides presents a different version, in which Typhon makes his way into Zeus's palace while he is sleeping, only for Zeus to wake and kill the monster with a thunderbolt. Aeschylus and Pindar give somewhat similar accounts to Hesiod, in that Zeus overcomes Typhon with relative ease, defeating him with his thunderbolt. Apollodorus, in contrast, provides

24734-567: The two strongest Giants. Heracles shot Alcyoneus, who fell to the ground but then revived, for Alcyoneus was immortal within his native land. So Heracles, on Athena 's advice, dragged him beyond the borders of that land, where Alcyoneus then died (compare with Antaeus ). Porphyrion attacked Heracles and Hera , but Zeus caused Porphyrion to become enamoured of Hera, whom Porphyrion then tried to rape, but Zeus struck Porphyrion with his thunderbolt and Heracles killed him with an arrow. Other Giants and their fates are mentioned by Apollodorus. Ephialtes

24900-599: The unsettling idea that the large hall was in the process of collapsing. The subject was also popular in Northern Mannerism around 1600, especially among the Haarlem Mannerists , and continued to be painted into the 18th century. Historically, the myth of the Gigantomachy (as well as the Titanomachy) may reflect the "triumph" of the new imported gods of the invading Greek speaking peoples from

25066-424: The vanquished Gigantes (along with other "giants") were said to be buried under volcanos. Their subterranean movements were said to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The Giant Enceladus was thought to lay buried under Mount Etna , the volcano's eruptions being the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors caused by the Giant rolling over from side to side beneath the mountain (the monster Typhon and

25232-589: The west pediment of the Temple of Artemis on Kerkyra (modern Corfu ) which is probably not a Giant). Though all these early Attic vases are fragmentary, the many common features in their depictions of the Gigantomachy suggest that a common model or template was used as a prototype, possibly Athena's peplos . These vases depict large battles, including most of the Olympians, and contain a central group which appears to consist of Zeus, Heracles, Athena, and sometimes Gaia. Zeus, Heracles and Athena are attacking Giants to

25398-530: The wife of Amphitryon , in the form of her own husband. Several accounts state that Zeus approached the Argive princess Danae in the form of a shower of gold, and according to Ovid he abducts Aegina in the form of a flame. In accounts of Zeus's affairs, Hera is often depicted as a jealous wife, with there being various stories of her persecuting either the women with whom Zeus sleeps, or their children by him. Several authors relate that Zeus sleeps with Io ,

25564-558: The world from further harm. In a satirical work, Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian , Zeus berates Helios for allowing such thing to happen; he returns the damaged chariot to him and warns him that if he dares do that again, he will strike him with one of this thunderbolts. Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults . Though

25730-432: Was also a popular theme in late sixth century sculpture. The most comprehensive treatment is found on the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi (c. 525 BC), with more than thirty figures, named by inscription. From left to right, these include Hephaestus (with bellows), two females fighting two Giants; Dionysus striding toward an advancing Giant; Themis in a chariot drawn by a team of lions which are attacking

25896-411: Was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was the cause of life (zen). While Lactantius wrote that he was called Zeus and Zen, not because he is the giver of life, but because he was the first who lived of the children of Cronus . Zeus was called by numerous alternative names or surnames, known as epithets . Some epithets are the surviving names of local gods who were consolidated into

26062-456: Was blinded by an arrow from Apollo in his left eye, and another arrow from Heracles in his right. Eurytus was killed by Dionysus with his thyrsus , Clytius by Hecate with her torches and Mimas by Hephaestus with "missiles of red-hot metal" from his forge. Athena crushed Enceladus under the Island of Sicily and flayed Pallas , using his skin as a shield. Poseidon broke off a piece of

26228-521: Was born in a cave in Dicte. While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts. According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida , daughters of Melisseus , to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea , while the Kouretes guard

26394-623: Was centered around the hearth, both domestic and civic. The hearth was essential for warmth, food preparation, and the completion of sacrificial offerings to deities. At feasts, Hestia was offered the first and last libations of wine. Pausanias writes that the Eleans sacrifice first to Hestia and then to other gods. Xenophon in Cyropaedia wrote that Cyrus the Great sacrificed first to Hestia, then to sovereign Zeus, and then to any other god that

26560-402: Was cooked, or an offering was burnt, she thus had her share of honor; also, in all the temples of the gods, she has a share of honor. "Among all mortals, she was chief of the goddesses". The gods Poseidon and Apollo (her brother and nephew respectively) both fell in love with Hestia and vied for her hand in marriage. But Hestia would have neither of them, and went to Zeus instead, and swore

26726-402: Was raised, and Zeus, unable to resolve the situation, seeks the advice of Cithaeron, ruler of Plataea , supposedly the most intelligent man on earth. Cithaeron instructs him to fashion a wooden statue and dress it as a bride, and then pretend that he is marrying one "Plataea", a daughter of Asopus . When Hera hears of this, she immediately rushes there, only to discover the ruse upon ripping away

26892-611: Was said to be an ancient name for Pallene (modern Kassandra ) and Phlegra/Pallene was the usual birthplace of the Giants and site of the battle. Apollodorus, who placed the battle at Pallene, says the Giants were born "as some say, in Phlegrae, but according to others in Pallene". The name Phlegra and the Gigantomachy were also often associated, by later writers, with a volcanic plain in Italy, west of Naples and east of Cumae , called

27058-403: Was the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos. It is primarily for this battle that the Giants are known, and its importance to Greek culture is attested by the frequent depiction of the Gigantomachy in Greek art. The references to the Gigantomachy in archaic sources are sparse. Neither Homer nor Hesiod mention anything explicit about

27224-556: Was the theft of the cattle of Helios by the Giant Alcyoneus that started the war. Apollodorus, who also mentions the theft of Helios' cattle by Alcyoneus, suggests a mother's revenge as the motive for the war, saying that Gaia bore the Giants because of her anger over the Titans (who had been vanquished and imprisoned by the Olympians). Seemingly, as soon as the Giants are born they begin hurling "rocks and burning oaks at

27390-556: Was there, and in the senate-house there was an altar of the goddess." A temple at Ephesus was dedicated to Hestia Boulaea – Hestia "of the senate", or boule . Pausanias reports a figurative statue of Hestia in the Athenian Prytaneum, together with one of the goddess Eirene ("Peace"). Hestia offered sanctuary from persecution to those who showed her respect and would punish those who offended her. Diodorus Siculus writes that Theramenes sought asylum directly from Hestia at

27556-694: Was used by Phidias on the metopes of the Parthenon and the shield of Athena Parthenos to symbolize the victory of the Athenians over the Persians. Later the Attalids similarly used the Gigantomachy on the Pergamon Altar to symbolize their victory over the Galatians of Asia Minor . The attempt of the Giants to overthrow the Olympians also represented the ultimate example of hubris, with

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