The male and female deities fathered by Zeus were mothered by different goddesses. Consorting at first with a goddess named Metis, Zeus had born to him a daughter, the great goddess Athena. She was in charge of common sense and handiwork, and was thus the Goddess of Wisdom. But as the only major deity to have stayed with Zeus during his combat with Typhon (all the other gods had fled), Athena acquired martial qualities and was also the Goddess of War. She was the "perfect maiden" and became no one's wife; but some tales link her frequently with her uncle Poseidon, and though his official consort was the goddess who was the Lady of the Labyrinth from the island of Crete, his niece Athena was his mistress. Zeus then consorted with other goddesses, but their children did not qualify for the Olympian Circle. When Zeus got around to the serious business of producing a male heir, he turned to one of his own sisters. The eldest was Hestia. She was, by all accounts, a recluse - perhaps too old or too sick to be the object of matrimonial activities - mid Zeus needed little excuse to turn his attentions to Demeter, the middle sister, the Goddess of Fruitfulness. Hut, instead of a son, she bore him a daughter, Persephone, who became wife to her uncle Hades and shared his dominion over the Lower World.
Disappointed that no son was born, Zeus turned to other goddesses for comfort and love. Of Harmonia he had nine daughters. Then Leto bore him a daughter and a son, Artemis and Apollo, who were at once drawn into the group of major deities. Apollo, as firstborn son of Zeus, was one of the greatest gods of the Hellenic pantheon, feared by men and gods alike. He was the interpreter to mortals of the will of his father Zeus, and thus the authority in matters of religious law and temple worship. Representing moral and divine laws, he stood for purification and perfection, both spiritual and physical. Zeus's second son, born of the goddess Maia, was Hermes, patron of shepherds, guardian of the flocks and herds. Less important and powerful than his brother Apollo, he was closer to human affairs; any stroke of good luck was attributed to him. As Giver of Good Things, he was the deity in charge of commerce, patron of merchants and travelers. But his main role in myth and epic was as herald of Zeus, Messenger of the Gods.
Impelled by certain dynastic traditions, Zeus still required a son by one of his sisters - and he turned to the youngest, Hera. Marrying her in the rites of a Sacred Marriage, Zeus proclaimed her Queen of the Gods, the Mother Goddess. Their marriage was blessed by a son, Ares, and two daughters, but rocked by constant infidelities on the part of Zeus, as well as a rumored infidelity on the part of Hera, which cast doubt on the true parentage of another son, Hephaestus.
Ares was at once incorporated into the Olympian Circle of twelve major gods and was made Zeus's chief lieutenant, a God of War. He was depicted as the Spirit of Carnage; yet he was far from being invincible - fighting at the battle of Troy, on the side of the Trojans, he suffered a wound which only Zeus could heal.
Hephaestus, on the other hand, had to fight his way into the Olympian summit. He was a God of Creativity; to him was attributed the fire of the forge and the art of metallurgy. He was a divine artificer, maker of both practical and magical objects for men and gods. The legends say that he was born lame and was therefore cast away in anger by his mother Hera. Another and more believable version has it that it was Zeus who banished Hephaestus - because of the doubt regarding his parentage - but Hephaestus used his magically creative powers to force Zeus to give him a seat among the Great Gods. The legends also relate that Hephaestus once made an invisible net that would close over his wife's bed if it were warmed by an intruding lover. He may have needed such protection, for his wife and consort was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty. It was only natural that many tales of love affairs would build up around her; in many of these the seducer was Ares, brother of Hephaestus. (One of the offspring of that illicit love affair was Eros, the God of Love.)
Aphrodite was included in the Olympian Circle of Twelve, and the circumstances of her inclusion shed light on our subject. She was neither a sister of Zeus nor his daughter, yet she could not be ignored. She had come from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean facing Greece (according to the Greek poet Hesiod, she arrived by way of Cyprus); and, claiming great antiquity, she ascribed her origin to the genitals of Uranus. She was thus genealogically one generation ahead of Zeus, being (so to say) a sister of his father, and the embodiment of the castrated Forefather of the Gods.
Aphrodite, then, had to be included among the Olympian gods. But their total number, twelve, apparently could not be exceeded. The solution was ingenious: Add one by dropping one. Since Hades was given domain over the Lower World and did not remain among the Great Gods on Mount Olympus, a vacancy was created, admirably handy for seating Aphrodite in the exclusive Circle of Twelve.
It also appears that the number twelve was a requirement that worked both ways: There could be no more than twelve Olympians, but no fewer than twelve, either. This becomes evident through the circumstances that led to the inclusion of Dionysus in the Olympian Circle. He was a son of Zeus, born when Zeus impregnated his own daughter, Semele. Dionysus, who had to be hidden from Hera's wrath, was sent to far-off lands (reaching even India), introducing vinegrowing and winemaking wherever he went. In the meantime, a vacancy became available on Olympus. Hestia, the oldest sister of Zeus, weaker and older, was dropped entirely from the Circle of Twelve. Dionysus then returned to Greece and was allowed to fill the vacancy. Once again, there were twelve Olympians.
Though Greek mythology was not clear regarding the origins of mankind, the legends and traditions claimed descent from the gods for heroes and kings. These semi-gods formed the link between the human destiny - daily toil, dependence on the elements, plagues, illness, death - and a golden past, when only the gods roamed Earth. And although so many of the gods were born on Earth, the select Circle of Twelve Olympians represented the celestial aspect of the gods. The original Olympus was described by the Odyssey as lying in the "pure upper air." The original Twelve Great Gods were Gods of Heaven who had come down to Eearth; and they represented the twelve celestial bodies in the "vault of Heaven."
The Latin names of the Great Gods, given them when the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon, clarify their astral associations: Gaea was Earth; Hermes, Mercury; Aphrodite, Venus; Ares, Mars; Cronus, Saturn; and Zeus, Jupiter. Continuing the Greek tradition, the Romans envisaged Jupiter as a thundering god whose weapon was the lightning bolt; like the Greeks, the Romans
associated him with the bull.
There is now general agreement that the foundations of the distinct Greek civilization were laid on the island of Crete, where the Minoan culture flourished from circa 2700 B.C. to 1400 B.C. In Minoan myth and legend, the tale of the minotaur is prominent. This half-man, half-bull was the offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos, and a bull. Archaeological finds have confirmed the extensive Minoan worship of the bull, and some cylinder seals depict the bull as a divine being accompanied by a cross symbol, which stood for some unidentified star or planet. It has therefore been surmised that the bull worshiped by the Minoans was not the common earthly creature but the Celestial Bull - the constellation Taurus - in commemoration of some events that had occurred when the Sun's spring equinox appeared in that constellation, circa 4000 B.C.
By Greek tradition, Zeus arrived on the Greek mainland via Crete, whence he had fled (by swimming the Mediterranean) after abducting Europa, the beautiful daughter of the king of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Indeed, when the earliest Minoan script was finally deciphered by Cyrus H. Gordon, it was shown to be "a Semitic dialect from the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean." Gods came directly to Greece from the heavens. Zeus arrived from across the Mediterranean, via Crete. Aphrodite was said to have come by sea from the Near East, via Cyprus. Poseidon (Neptune to the Romans) brought the horse with him from Asia Minor. Athena brought "the olive, fertile and self-sown," to Greece from the lands of the Bible.