The Pantheon of Olympus

Greek Name		Roman Name		Divine Realm
Aphrodite		Venus		Love, beauty, fertility
Apollo		Apollo		Archery, music, prophecy, healing, light
Ares		Mars		War
Artemis		Diana		Hunting, the moon
Athena		Minerva		Wisdom, war
Demeter		Ceres		The harvest, grain, corn
Dionysus		Bacchus		Wine, festivity, the theater
Eros		Cupid		Love, sexual desire
Hades		Pluto		The underworld, the dead
Hephaestus		Vulcan		Fire, the forge, smithery
Hera		Juno		Marriage, queen of immortals
Hermes		Mercury		Messenger, commerce, science, doctors
Hestia		Vesta		The hearth
Pan		Pan		Wild beasts, the forest
Persephone		Proserpine		Queen of the underworld
Poseidon		Neptune		The sea
Zeus		Jupiter		Thunder, the heavens, king of immortals

 

Aphrodite

Aphrodite emerges fully formed from the sea foam off the coast of the island of Cyprus. The goddess of beauty, love, and fertility, she is forced to wed the least sexually attractive of the gods—the divine metal smith, Hephaestus. Unsatisfied with her lame husband, Aphrodite takes many lovers, most notably Ares, the god of war. Her children include Eros, the boy god who incites romantic desire with his arrows, and the Trojan hero Aeneas, whose birth results from an affair between Aphrodite and the Trojan shepherd Anchises. The goddess seduces Anchises as he is tending to his flock but forbids him to tell anyone of their affair. When Aphrodite catches Anchises bragging to his friends about his exploits with the goddess, he is struck by lightning, blinded, and lamed. Nonetheless, their son, Aeneas, remains dear to Aphrodite, and she aids the Trojans in the Trojan War and in their exodus to Italy after the sack of Troy.

 

Apollo

Zeus sires Apollo on the island of Delos. Apollo’s mother, the Titaness Leto, suffers an agonizing nine-day labor to deliver him and his twin, the divine virgin huntress Artemis. Apollo is the patron of herdsmen and the god of archery, music, healing, and light. Prophecy of the future also falls under his realm, and he inspires the prophetess who serves as the Oracle at Delphi. During the Trojan War, Apollo favors Troy and personally guides the arrow of the Trojan warrior Paris so that it cuts down the mighty Greek hero Achilles. To the ancient Greeks, Apollo embodied the ideal of youth and masculinity, and stories of his love affairs with mortal women abound. The women in these stories who spurn his advances inevitably pay the price. While wooing Cassandra, a daughter of the Trojan king Priam, Apollo bestows on her the gift of prophecy, but when she rejects him, he curses her to make prophecies that are always correct but never believed. While courting the Cumaean Sibyl, Apollo offers to grant her any wish, and she asks to live as many years as she can hold grains of sand. The god allows the Sibyl her wish, but after she refuses him, he denies her the gift of eternal youth. She withers with each passing year and, before long, comes to wish in vain for her own death.

 

Ares

The god of war and a son of Zeus and Hera, Ares incites violence and behaves brutishly, drawing the ire and disdain of the other gods, including his parents. Ares never marches with a particular army into battle but merely inspires various combatants to fight each other with savage aggression. In the Trojan War, he assists the Trojans. Ares fathers warriors by many mortal lovers and pursues a long love affair with Aphrodite. By the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia of Alba Longa he sires the twins Romulus and Remus, who are expelled from their home and raised by a she-wolf. In their maturity, they found Rome, and the Romans attribute their success in martial affairs to the twins’ divine father.

 

Artemis

Daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Leto, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo and a patroness of women, especially athletic, warlike women such as Atalanta and the Amazons. Artemis rules over the forest and the hunt and aggressively protects her virtue and virginity. Suffering an insult, she murders the handsome, gigantic hunter Orion, who assumes a place among the constellations in the night sky.

 

Athena

When Hephaestus strikes Zeus’s skull with an ax to relieve him of a headache, motherless Athena springs forth, fully armed for battle and uttering a war cry, from the skull of her father. The goddess of wisdom and craftsmanship, Athena sometimes assumes the form of an owl. She often leads armies into battle and assists warriors in combat, as she does Odysseus and Achilles in the Trojan War. The city of Athens is under Athena’s rule as a result of her victory in a contest with Poseidon for stewardship of the city. Zeus declares that the one who presents the city with the more useful gift will win its devotion. Poseidon causes a spring to well up, but it yields only salt water; Athena counters with an olive tree, which provides food, oil, and wood.

 

Demeter

A sister of Zeus and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, Demeter reigns over agriculture, especially grain and corn. Hades kidnaps Demeter’s daughter, Persephone (Roman: Proserpine), to the underworld to be his bride. Mourning the loss of her child, Demeter flees Olympus and wanders the Earth in the guise of a mortal woman, allowing the fields to fall into drought and causing the Earth’s population to suffer famine. To appease Demeter and return fertility to the fields, Zeus plucks Persephone from Hades and returns her to her mother. However, because Persephone ate the food of the underworld—though just a few pomegranate seeds—she is bound to dwell in Hades several months of the year. Persephone’s annual absence from her mother explains the Earth’s cycle of seasons and the barrenness of winter.

 

Dionysus

When the mortal princess Semele of Thebes arouses the amorous attentions of Zeus, Hera, ever jealous of her husband’s mortal lovers, approaches Semele in disguise and tells her to ask her immortal lover to appear before her in his true, undisguised form. Zeus obeys the request and appears to Semele as a frenzy of lightning bolts, which fatally scorch her and engender a divine seed in the process. Zeus preserves the fetus by implanting it in his thigh, where it gestates and eventually emerges as the god Dionysus. The newborn god of wine and festivity seeks his mother in the underworld and delivers her to Olympus, where she is rendered immortal. To the ancient Greeks, Dionysus was the object of intense religious devotion, especially among a cult of women called Maenads. Their celebrations of Dionysus involved excessive drinking of alcohol, the whirling of torches or thyrsi (staffs wrapped in vines or leaves), and sometimes the dismemberment of animals or even human children.

 

Eros

Armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows, the boyish, winged son of Aphrodite inspires erotic desire in the hearts of his victims, his love darts causing knees to tremble with longing. When the mortal princess Psyche gains so much renown for her beauty that she incurs Aphrodite’s jealousy, the goddess dispatches her son to strike Psyche with desire for the basest of mortal men. By accident, Eros wounds himself with his own arrow when he comes upon Psyche sleeping. Stricken with desire for the princess, Eros visits her only by night and never allows her to see his face. One night, she lights a lamp and catches a glimpse of his face, so he ceases his visits. Aphrodite, still jealous of the princess, forces Psyche to perform several difficult tasks to win Eros back. One of these tasks requires her to descend to the underworld to fetch a box of beauty from Persephone. Foolishly, Psyche opens the box before she brings it to Aphrodite, and within she finds intoxicating sleep. Eros plunges to the underworld to rescue his beloved, wakes her, and pleads his case to Zeus. Ultimately, Zeus convinces Aphrodite to forgive Psyche and then welcomes the princess to Olympus as an immortal.

 

Hades

The Greeks and Romans believed that souls descended below the Earth after the death of the body. Hades, a brother of Zeus and Poseidon, is the ruler of this underworld— often called “the house of Hades.” Mortals fear Hades, who is reputed to possess enormous wealth. His realm is divided into regions corresponding to the character of the souls that dwell within them, including Elysium, the delightful plain of the blessed, and Tartarus, the gloomy terrain where the wicked are punished. When the dead arrive, they cross the river Styx under the guidance of the ferryman Charon. On the other side, they are greeted by Cerberus, Hades’ ferocious three-headed watchdog.

 

Hephaestus

To the dismay of his parents, Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus is born weak and physically lame. He redeems himself through his work as the god of fire and smithery. With the help of his apprentices, the Cyclopes, at his workshop below the volcano Mount Aetna, Hephaestus forges the armor of Achilles, the scepter of Agamemnon, and the armor of Aeneas. Although Hephaestus never takes sides in the conflicts of mortals, the weapons and armor he shapes have the power to turn the tide of battle. Hephaestus is married to Aphrodite, who is frequently unfaithful to him with Ares and others.

 

Hera

Hera, the queen of the Olympian gods and the goddess of women and marriage, is a daughter of Cronus and Rhea and becomes Zeus’s wife after the overthrow of their Titan father. Hera is famous for her jealousy of her husband’s mortal lovers and her ire at the children spawned in his affairs, especially Heracles. The Trojan prince Paris incurs Hera’s wrath when he judges Aphrodite to be more beautiful. Hera’s grudge against Troy drives her to favor the Greek side in the war and, after the war, to place innumerable obstacles in the way of the Trojan hero Aeneas on his quest to found Rome.

 

Hermes

The mischievous Hermes displays talent and cunning from the day he is born. Soon after he springs from the womb of Maia, who bears him to her lover, Zeus, Hermes finds a turtle on the threshold of his cave, chops off its limbs, hollows out its shell, and stretches strings across the shell to create the world’s first lyre, a musical instrument and ancestor of the modern guitar. Later, little Hermes steals the sacred cattle of his brother Apollo, burns them in ritual sacrifice, and then sneaks back to his cradle and wraps himself in swaddling clothes. Maia, and then Apollo himself, confront Hermes, but he denies his crime. The two gods bring the matter before Zeus, who chuckles at his newborn son’s deviousness. Hermes further lightens the mood by playing a song on his lyre, which enchants Apollo. Offering his brother the lyre as a form of reconciliation, Hermes enters the gods’ good graces and assumes a place on Mount Olympus. He serves as the gods’ messenger, descending to Earth wearing winged sandals and carrying a staff entwined by two snakes (called the kerykeion in Greek, the caduceus in Latin).

 

Hestia

A daughter of Cronus and Rhea, Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, the fireplace at the center of every ancient household. She refuses offers of marriage from both Poseidon and Apollo, choosing instead to remain a virgin and to tend to the hearth of Olympus. Hestia is the most minor of the Olympians in ancient mythology, but she held an important place in the religious practices of ancient Greece and Rome. Every family honored her at the birth of a child, and every meal began and ended with a service for her.

 

Pan

Pan is the chief of the lesser gods of nature. With the torso and head of a man and the legs, horns, and ears of a goat, he dwells in woods, mountains, and caves. Pan, a son of Hermes, is famous for his love affairs with nymphs. He grants fertility to flocks, avenges cruelties perpetrated against animals, and has the power to incite panic in men and beasts. The Greeks held noon to be a sacred hour because they believed that Pan slept at that hour and would become angry if he were roused.

 

Poseidon

When the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades draw lots for dominion over the sky, the sea, and the underworld, Poseidon becomes ruler of the sea. The ancient Greeks called him “earth shaker” and believed that he caused earthquakes, tidal waves, and tempests at sea. Among Poseidon’s sons are brutal men and monsters like the Cyclops Polyphemus, as well as horses and bulls. Poseidon earns a reputation as the most vengeful of the gods for his torment of Odysseus during the ten years of Odysseus’s wanderings from Troy home to Ithaca. With the Gorgon Medusa, Poseidon sires the winged steed Pegasus. With Poseidon’s aid, the hero Bellerophon tames the flying horse and fights on its back victoriously against the Amazons, a race of warrior women, and the Chimera, a fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body, and snake’s tail. When Bellerophon tries to fly Pegasus to the heavens, the horse throws him to his death—a common fate for mortals who display hubris, the Greek term for excessive pride or arrogance toward fate or the gods.

 

Zeus

Zeus rules over the heavens and all the gods of Mount Olympus as the “father of gods and men.” When he is born, his mother, Rhea, spirits him away to a cave on Crete to save him from his father, Cronus, who, fearing that his children will overthrow him, swallows each of them as he or she is born. Rhea tricks Cronus by feeding him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes in place of the baby Zeus. When Zeus grows up, he returns from Crete, rescues his siblings from their father’s belly, and defeats Cronus to take control of the universe. Armed with thunderbolts crafted for him by his son Hephaestus and his Cyclops servants, Zeus exerts supreme control over the heavens and Earth. Although Zeus often allows mortal and divine affairs to play out themselves, his intervention in any matter is decisive. By his wife, Hera, he fathers the gods Ares and Hephaestus. His children by other lovers include the gods Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, and Hermes, as well as the mortal hero Heracles. Assuming the form of a swan, Zeus impregnates Princess Leda of Aetolia with Helen, the wife of Menelaus and the woman for whom the Trojan War is fought, and Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon.