The Ancients - Zeus: King of the Gods

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Zeus, the chief deity in Greek mythology, is the Olympian god of sky and thunder, and is king of all other gods and men.His tale is one of overthrowing fathers, eating babies and seducing women, both mortal and divine, by changing his own form. He's one of the most complex figures in history, and his story is one that's been retold throughout millennia. To try and make sense of it all, we're going back to very beginning, to the origins of Zeus, starting with his grandfather and grandmother, Uranus and Gaia. We learn about the prophecy that ultimately overthrows Uranus, the same one that is also fated for Zeus's father, Cronus, and start to understand the family-tree that becomes the Olympians - from Athena to Dionysus.For this episode, Tristan Hughes is joined by academic, author, broadcaster and Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, Michael Scott. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy The Symposium: How To Party Like An Ancient Greek, also with Michael Scott.Script written by Andrew HulseVoice over performed by Deryn OliverProduced, edited and sound designed by Elena GuthrieThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. That is Zeus's command. The father of gods and men has summoned the muses, that company of sisters, to the bronze-floored halls of Olympus, for his mind is filled with worry. Nervous peals of thunder boom amid the peaks and roll across the plains, and lightning flashes spread anxiety among man and beast alike. The muses know which song to sing, which threads to weave. It is the same story Zeus has asked for every stormy evening

since his bride, Wise Metis, grew round with their first child. It is a story of incarceration, usurpation, dominion and prophecy. A cycle that repeats like the pattern on a loom. It is the story of Zeus himself. It's the Ancients on History Hit. And well now, it's a big day for the podcast because this is the first episode in our newest series, a series where we're going to be exploring each of the Olympian gods of the ancient Greek pantheon.

And of all of the gods and goddesses, the one that we're going to start with is the big man himself. We're going to be talking about the incredibly complicated figure of Zeus. Now, the way we're going to be approaching the series is slightly different to previous podcast episodes. The heart of the episode will be a wonderful interview with a brilliant expert, in this case Professor Michael Scott, the legend himself. But before we get into the interview itself, to set the scene we're going to add a story, a story from ancient Greek times related to the figure of Zeus, a myth about the Greek god Zeus, to give you a flavour for how these myths would have been told in antiquity, the time of

oral history. So without further ado, to kick off this new Gods and Goddesses series for the ancients, Zeus. Zeus. The Muses start their story with a world at its youngest. All saplings, striplings and unweathered stone. It is not Zeus but his grandfather, star-clad Uranus, who holds the sky and that young world in his power. Uranus desires children, but he is an immortal, so it is not heirs he seeks, merely perfect reflections of his godhood,

paeans to his terrible greatness. He holds an image of these children in his mind. He turns it this way and that. He weaves his thoughts and winds his reckonings, and then he takes his wife Gaia of the good earth to bed. After a turn of the world, the cries of Gaia are replaced by the wails of babes. Star-clad Uranus takes them into his astral embrace and looks down, ready to shine with the pride of a new father. But the first children are horrific to him. To see them is to see his perfect image through a kaleidoscope. Each child stretches forth five hundred fingers, each bears one hundred arms governed by fifty heads. Uranus brands them hundred-handers, hecatonchires, and in disgust, or perhaps embarrassment, he banishes them to the depths.

the depths. Once again, he takes his wife to bed. And once again, after a turn of the world, the cries of Gaia are replaced by the wails of babes. Uranus takes them into his astral embrace and looks down, ready to shine, and a single eye stares back from each child. Cyclops, he brands them, and in disgust, or perhaps embarrassment, he banishes them to the depths. Another turn of the world, another wail of babes. Wearily, Uranus takes them into his embrace, looks down, and... Six perfect boys and six perfect girls. He rejoices. Finally, the image of his perfection.

Children worthy of an all-powerful god. And he quickly forgets his earlier offspring, imprisoned deep in the abyss of Tartarus. But their mother, Gaia of the Good Earth, does not. She seeks revenge, and it is Cronos, youngest born, who alone comes to her aid. He naps a sickle from Flint, the first shattered rock of that young world. He hones it till it is as curved and keen as a waxing moon. And under the starlight reflected in its perfect edge, as Gaia lures Uranus to her bed,

Cronos removes his father's crown. Sing now, muses, of the reign of Cronos, youngest born. With the deed done, he takes the skies as his dominion. He takes a wife, his sister, noble Rhea, and he takes to the idea of his own children. and he takes to the idea of his own children. But star-clad Uranus, even castrated and cast down, is not without guile. He brands Kronos and all his siblings as those who would strive, in short, titans. The word preys upon Kronos.

He holds it in his mind. He turns it this way and that. He weaves his thoughts and winds his reckonings, and he realizes it is not merely a title, but a prophecy. A curse, even. With the overthrow of his father, he has set a precedent. His usurpation has shattered a timelessness. Uranus's dominion, an endless age, has ended. The age of Kronos has begun. Which means it could end too. And with the ages threatening to flow like the blood of his father, Cronos determines a way to staunch their progress.

As noble Rhea births each child, Cronos swallows them whole. He imprisons them in his carceral gut. He has children to glorify his all-power, but they are inert. They pose no threat. The age of Cronos will remain timeless. Or so he thinks. For noble Rhea, after losing five children to Cronos's hunger, schemes to save the sixths. A simple trick. Instead of the babe, she wraps a great stone in swaddling clothes. She knows it will work.

Cronos can barely stomach the price of his dominion. He never looks at the children as he devours them. And so it is that Zeus escapes, hidden by his mother. Before long, he grows into his godhood, ready to challenge Kronos. With knowledge of plant and root, Zeus brews a draught for Rhea to slip into his father's wine cup. It acts as a key to a lock. Kronos vomits up first the stone, then each of his children in turn until all of Zeus' siblings are free.

The war they wage is fierce. But though Kronos, youngest born of Uranus, puts up a fierce battle, he does so with grim resignation. His usurpation is fated. It always was. With Kronos banished to the depths and Zeus crowned, the Muses now bring their story of his lineage to a close. They cease to sing, to dance, to play the lyre and the flute.

But it is the same as every other stormy night since wise Metis grew round with his unborn child. Worry continues to knit the brow of Zeus, father of gods and men. You see, he knows the story does not end there. For just as Uranus branded Kronos a striver, a titan, so Kronos has branded Zeus one. It is a prophecy. And with it the wheel of his lineage threatens to turn once more. Incarceration, usurpation, dominion and prophecy. The age of Zeus will come to tarnish and end too. Michael, it's great to have you back on the podcast.

It's great to be here. What a topic to be talking about. I know, what a topic. As you say, the big one, the father of them all in one sense, isn't it? And we're recording it at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, a brilliant location. We're talking about Zeus. There's something about Zeus in there when talking about the Greek gods. This is the person at the top. This is the guy, right?

The big daddy. And calling him the big daddy is not unfair because a number of the ancient sources talk about the fact that all the divinities, even if he wasn't actually their dad, and he was the dad to quite a few of them, even those others called him father because he was considered to be the sort of the father of everything and everyone and all the gods were supposed to rise in his presence.

And I think also when we think about Greek gods, we've got his image in the back of our heads, that kind of slightly long haired, bearded male look, that mixture of wisdom, seniority, thoughtfulness combined with strength and a little bit of ferocity when called for. It's all kind of encapsulated in what Zeus looks like and comes to mind, I think, when we think of the Greek gods. Quick tangent straight away, can it be sometimes a bit daunting to talk about some of these gods, especially someone like Zeus, who's been in existence for so long in antiquity?

And I'm guessing in some ways he's kind of quite a fluid god as well when you're talking about a god like Zeus, because I can imagine you've given that depiction, that idea of Zeus there, but perhaps he looked different to different people too as time progressed. It's a curious mix actually. On the one hand he's right there at the centre and at the apex of everything, right? The chief, the king of the gods, the sort of the ruler of them all, and he's got obvious things that he looks after. So we think of him always with his

thunderbolt in his hand. So he's the god of the skies, thunder, kind of, et cetera, the heavens. But at the same time, he actually doesn't have the same kind of really clearly defined areas of expertise, if you like, that a number of the other gods have. And so that's quite a bizarre mix that he's sort of the boss of them all, but without his actual specialisation. He kind of keeps an eye on everything. And he pops up in lots of different places with very micro-specific sort of things that he's in charge of, but at the same time doesn't have that kind of obvious area. Well, let's get this hammered out straight away with this idea of whose use exactly was, Let's get this hammered out straight away with this idea of who Zeus exactly was and the role he played in the pantheon of these Olympian gods.

Yeah, I mean, Zeus has a brilliant backstory, right? This is the stuff of soap operas and every sort of reality TV show. I mean, a reality TV show would eat their hearts out to have this kind of backstory. Here is Zeus and he is the son of a god called Kronos. Now Kronos is himself the son of a god before that, Uranus. So there was originally at the beginning of everything, there was the god Uranus and the god Gaia, goddess Gaia. They had children, one of which was Kronos, who married sister Rhea. And of those, that pairing came Zeus and another five kids who were other gods that we know about, like Poseidon and Hades and Hera, who will end up being Zeus's wife. Yes, exactly. It all gets pretty incestuous pretty quick, along with a couple of others.

Pretty incestuous, pretty quick, along with a couple of others. Now, it gets even worse because Kronos had taken power from his dad by castrating his dad. Good start. Kronos then was given a prophecy by his parents that his own children would overthrow him, just as he'd overthrown his dad, and so decided to swallow all of his children rather than allow them to live. He does that with the first five kids. Zeus is the sixth. And this time, by which time his wife stroke sister Rhea is a bit fed up with this, so the mythology goes and catches a cunning plan to hide baby Zeus on Crete. That's where all the kind of mythological stories tell us he's hidden. And instead, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which of course will fox,

you know, a god as brilliant as Kronos, is supplied to Kronos to swallow. And so baby Zeus is the one god that manages to survive the swallowing episode and so grows up on Crete, hidden away from everything. And there's lots of great mythological stories about how they managed to hide the fact that there's a god growing up in a cave on Crete. Until he gets to adulthood, when he comes along, again, in cahoots with his mum and manages to get Kronos to basically vomit up all his previous children, who are still miraculously alive inside his stomach, even though he swallowed them, alongside the stone that he swallowed, thinking it was Zeus. And hey presto, you've now got the stage set for a massive battle that will take place. And this is called the Titanomachy, the battle of the gods as we will know them, so the

Olympian gods, the pantheon, the Zeus, the Hera, the Poseidon, Hades, Ares, all of that jazz, versus the Titans who are led by Kronos, Zeus's father. And so an enormous epic super battle takes place between the Olympian gods led by Zeus and the Titans led by Kronos. And this Titanomachy, that kind of thing, I'm guessing was this quite a popular topic to depict on ancient Greek art? Yeah, I mean, who doesn't love a battle between two super divine manic beings? And it's not the only one that there was because we get the Titan and Machia being displayed. And of course, Zeus and the Olympian gods versus Cronus and the Titans, it's a sort of, it's a head to head. Neither can clinch that victory over the other until Zeus has a brilliant

idea, which is to release a whole series of other massive monsters that have been hidden away under the earth. So first, it's the race of the Cyclops that are released and they promise to help him, but then he still can't quite tip the balance. So then you get the release of something called the Hundred Handers. You can imagine the ancient art has great fun depicting what all of these things look like. Who again, Zeus has released them,

so they again promise their loyalty to him to help him overturn Kronos and the Titans, which they again promise their loyalty to him to help him overturn Kronos and the Titans, which they are then finally able to do. And Zeus then imprisons Kronos and the Titans under the earth, and the Hundred Handers are put on duty to guard them forevermore. So you then finally get the Olympian gods as we know them, which are actually in fact the third generation of gods if you like, taking over power and residing from Mount Olympus, their home. It is so interesting how this origin story, it always seems like it centres around the toppling of your father. Yeah, I mean don't let the psychologists near it because they would have

a field day with telling you what this says about how the ancient Greeks particularly conceived of the origins and development of their world. And what's really interesting is that I've tried to give you a sort of fairly linear, clear narrative of what happened, but actually all the ancient authors are continually changing and updating that story. This is all myth. And one of the great things about myth is that it continually be retold and represented in action. So if you read Hesiod and his Theogony, which is the earliest kind of text that gives us a real sense of the genealogy and the development of the gods, you get one set of stories. But if you move to Diodorus Siculus, you get a slightly different set.

Apollodorus, you get a slightly different set. So this story is constantly being updated, tweaked, re-angled slightly as things go through the time in the ancient Greek world. So what you've been saying there is almost like the base version, as it were, but as you said, as time went on, things were added, things were tweaked here, and then as you say, it's myth. I remember Nassli Haynes saying about Helen of Troy and Pandora and other figures too, how you can't just tell the story of a myth, black and white, that's it. Because as you say, there are many different versions of that same myth over time.

And partly, I think all of those different retellings are often prompted by and in response to something that's happening in the world in which that retelling is being created. How do we help understand what's going on around us now? One of the key ways the ancients did that was through the telling of myth and the retelling of the myths to help give an explanation or at least a kind of sense of why something might happen again. Because it had a justification, it had a precedent in the stories of the gods. So often trying to understand something that's happening in the here and now, one of the best ways to do that is to reimagine the myths of what's happened before to ensure that there is a way of understanding it and a precedent for it. Having toppled his father, Zeus, he assumes that the chief position amongst his siblings, amongst the Olympians, does he? So this is where, again, the myths completely split. How does it end up with Zeus as the king of the gods? Because at the end of the day, he's one of six kids, right? They've all got an equal share, haven't they? Apart from the fact that Zeus has been the smart one to avoid being swallowed and then has led the battle to get the other kids puked back up and then has kind of led the battle against Kronos

and got the Cyclops and the hundred handlers on board. So some of the sources talk about the fact actually that Zeus had no automatic right to be king of the gods afterwards. And actually what they did was draw a set of lots between his three brothers. So there was Poseidon and there was Hades and there was him. And they drew lots for who would be in charge of the sky, who would be in charge of the sea, who would be in charge of the underworld. So again, very interesting, tells you a lot about the patriarchal nature of ancient society. But the female divinities of that era, his sisters, didn't get a look in, in any of this. It was all kind of a portion between the men. But that's one set of stories. Another set of stories is that actually Zeus automatically grabs that lead spot and there's no decision, there's no randomised lot involved whatsoever.

And then another set of stories is that actually, immediately after imprisoning Kronos and the Titans, he's faced with another big battle because his mum, Rhea, who did help him initially get back at Kronos, is now a bit annoyed that he's gone this far and so actually ends up kind of giving birth to a race of giants which then take on Zeus and his Olympian deity so there's a second mega battle the Gigantamachy if you haven't had enough mackeys like it sounds like we're all doing sushi doesn't it but like kind of uh kind of Gigantamachy so so then you get another massive battle which again Zeus has to pull out all the stops with his thunderbolts, etc. and win. And it's only after that that he is said to sort of have a rule of the gods and of the world, which then goes unchallenged for quite some time. And so what about his sisters?

Well, he ends up marrying quite a few of them in the best traditions of previous generations of his forebears. And this gets us onto the other aspect of Zeus's character. So we've seen that martial aspect through King of the Gods, the warrior leader, the usurper, the rebel, you know, kind of all of those things coming through. Now he's sort of an established King of the Gods and you start to hear much more about Zeus as the figure of justice, the person who works in conjunction with the fates to ensure the destinies of all men and of gods, the person who is the sort of overseer, the father role, and not in a bad way. But at the same time, we then also, alongside that, start to hear an awful lot about his rather interesting personal life, particularly his marriages. So he has seven

supposedly wives through time. And Hera, the one we all know about, is actually the last. So he's gone through most of his sisters before that, and a few others as well, had kids with most of them who all end up being further gods of the Greek pantheon, and then finally ends up with Hera. And in those stories of those previous wives, which is really interesting, don't get picked up very often by a number of the stories. We see indications that things could have ended up with Zeus just like ended up with his dad. So he's given a prophecy, for instance, when he's married to Mertes coming, that any offspring of Mertes and him will end up usurping him, just like he's usurped his father, who usurped his father beforehand.

And so he sort of puts a stop to that quick. But one of the kids to come out of that union is Athena. And how does Athena get born? Very unusually, when Hephaestus takes an axe to Zeus's head, and Athena pops out of Zeus's head, fully born. Now, we don't then get in the mythological stories kind of any sense that Athena does end up challenging and taking over from Zeus. But there's always that potential. And if anyone's going to do it, it's Athena that has the courage, the conviction, the strength, and the whole gambit of skills that might make her the next usurper. Kind of feels like an unfinished plot line there.

Yeah, absolutely. You could take those myths and continue to run with them. And then there's several other wives as well before he then... Absolutely. And they're all giving him kids as well, divine kids. So we got Hephaestus, we're talking about, that comes out of Hera and Zeus. But it's Hera and Zeus that is the famous one that is talked about and sets up this really interesting dichotomy between the two of them as a couple that are continually at each other's throats and also incredibly supportive of one another. Zeus isn't a faithful husband in any way, shape or form. I think if you go through Greek mythology in total,

you can count up something like just over 100 affairs that Zeus has while supposedly married to one person. Now, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing in any way, shape or form within the Greek psyche and within Greek culture, but he is the philanderer par excellence of Greek mythology at the same time. Gone Medieval is History Hit's podcast dedicated to the greatest millennium in human history. I'm Dr Kat Jarman, a Viking Age bioarchaeologist and author. And I'm Matt Lewis, a medievalist and writer.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, we'll explore some of the biggest stories, the greatest mysteries and latest research. We'll talk Vikings, Normans, Popes, rebellions and so much more. We'll travel the medieval world in search of the stories you haven't heard and get under the skin of the ones you do know. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. These romantic entanglements, let's say,

that he's involved with, not just with other gods, but also with other women too, what are some of the most important, most significant romantic entanglements and some of the most significant people to be born from them? One of the things that Zeus is known for is, as we've already discussed from his wives, a whole series of divine children come, and that's how we fill up the rest of the Greek pantheon. So we've got those.

Then there are the kids that come out of the affairs. Again, it would be a brilliant twist in reality TV shows, kind of soap opera, because oftentimes Zeus does not turn up to have an affair with these women in his divine form. And lots of explanations are given for that. It'd be too overpowering. They'd run away in fright, as you may do if you sort of hear Zeus coming along around the corner. So often he appears in disguise and ends up then consummating the marriage in some sort of way,

still in his disguise, with these women who range from entirely mortal women through to semi-divine to divine. And the range of disguises he pulls, again, would not look good on a rap sheet if he was upcharged with, frankly, what we today would often define as rape. So again, it is an extraordinary set of actions which show how much distance and clear blue sea there really is between ancient greek cultural understanding of what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior and certainly a modern cultural understanding but you know he turns up as an eagle a flame that's a particular favorite as well i kind of think he's a shower of gold a bull an ant ant, you know, because yes, you can't have one end of the spectrum without the other, an eagle, a cuckoo, a shepherd, a goose, serpent, vulture. That sort of gives you this sort of sense

of his tendencies to sort of turn into different animals in order to either sneak up on or take over power the women that he's particularly interested in. But out of these different couplings, both with other gods and with humans and with the semi-divine, you get a whole host of characters that we know and love. Heracles is the most famous one, right? Kind of Heracles is the coupling of Alcmena and Zeus, and you get Heracles as this sort of semi-divine, heroic individual who in many of the myths actually ends up helping Zeus when he's in a sticky situation or two. That's one of the best bits of Disney's Hercules, which if listeners have not watched

Disney's Hercules, I would still recommend them to watch it. It's perhaps the best Disney film of all time. But Persephone as well. At one point, Zeus and Demeter are married. And so Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, who will get nabbed by then Hades and taken down to the underworld. That's one of his. God Ares, again coming from his marriage to Hera. We've got Apollo and Artemis being born from when he was married to Leto. Hermes, the god Hermes, comes out of his coupling with Maya. Dionysus is another god born from his coupling with Semele. There's a massive genealogical family tree to be constructed out of Zeus's couplings in terms of with his wife, and then also with these kind of wider range of affairs, stroke, consummation, stroke, what we would term today as rapes of women in antiquity.

I actually must admit, it is quite difficult to hear some of that stuff, Michael, especially like, you know, in the 21st century as he's saying that and like what the ancient greek concepts were back there compared to us today it just is so strange you know so many things i'll just pick out one now he mentioned how he was supposed to change forms so that he did not scare people away or whatsoever and then one of the forms well many of the forms he therefore takes is in the form of animals varying from a bull to an ant. With obviously the swan in the middle. With the swan in the middle as well, and having to try and do all that jazz.

I mean, it's just, it is so strange, isn't it? But we have to imagine ourselves back in the footsteps of people who are trying to explain and understand a world around them. A world which is not fair, right? Or naturally, necessarily just. I think that gets us into absolute key facet of how to understand the ancient Greek gods, whether we're talking about Zeus or any of them,

which is that they are not good people. And I think that is the crucial thing to get our heads around, that we are very used to imagining divine beings of different religions who are good or embody goodness in some way. In actual fact, the ancient Greek gods are an equal mix of good and bad, of just and unjust, of light and dark. And they have all of that within them. And as a result, their actions, which are all supercharged, obviously, because they're divine beings, are all of the same kinds of actions and interactions that one can see in the human world, where we are more willing to accept that we are all good and bad, etc. They're just supersized

because they're happening in the divine world. So that reflection between what can happen in the divine world, just exactly as can happen in the human world, both good and bad, just and unjust, people and gods can be for you and against you. And frankly, the Greeks spend most of their time, as a result, trying desperately to make sure that the Greek gods are on their side for whatever particular thing they want to do. Because if you haven't got a Greek god on your side, or pro you, you haven't got a hope in hell. Do you think that's actually one of the reasons why Greek mythology, why these myths remain so popular even down to the present day compared to something, let's say, the verses in

the Old Testament or something like that? Do you think this might be a key reason why these myths have remained so popular and so interesting, that relatedness, as you say, down to the present day? Well, they're certainly colourful. The joy about these myths and these stories is that they have, A, remained changeable and mutable, because that mythological telling and retelling allowed them to continue to morph in antiquity and allows us to continue to respond to them, change them, update them, reenact them in different ways and think about them in different ways, that you can't do with more sacred canonical texts. The Greek world didn't have an equivalent of the Bible or the Quran. It didn't have that sort of fixed text, this is what you believe, right? Instead,

it had this much wider, constantly changing mass of myth that you could play with. And I think it's that coupled then with, as you say, that real nature, if you like, that the ancients imbued their divinities with, that made them such relatable, interesting and characters that were always good to think with and think about and use to help understand the world around you. And to a great extent, I think you're absolutely right. They continue to play that role to this day. Absolutely. So I figured we went on a huge tangent there. I know we'll go back to Zeus, but that's one of the joys of podcasts, as we were talking about before recording, just go down all these different, different streets. And that stuff about Zeus, you know, it's not just in the way in which he interacts with both his wives and all his conquests that we see that sort of nastier side of Zeus coming through. I mean, one of the key

stories that's at the absolute centre of explaining why the ancient Greeks worshipped and sacrificed to the gods in the way that they did is in the story of Zeus and Prometheus. So Prometheus is there tricking Zeus into accepting the bones wrapped in fat from an ox and hiding the nicer, juicier, meatier part under the disgusting outside of the ox's stomach for humankind. And this sets the precedent supposedly for why humans always took the bones from an animal, wrapped them in fat and burnt them to the gods, because the gods were supposed to like that more because that's what Zeus had chosen. Zeus and Prometheus as a result have a bit of a one-off against one another and sort of Zeus says right fine well you've tricked me into doing this so I'm going to deny humans fire. Prometheus then goes behind Zeus's back and gives fire to humans.

As a result Zeus turns around and famously pins Prometheus to a rock in which he has his liver pecked out of him every single day by an eagle, which it then grows back overnight. But then Prometheus will eventually be freed, et cetera, et cetera, by those descendants of Zeus himself. So there are some stories here right at the outset that help us understand the very basic ways in which the ancient Greeks related to their gods, that are all about how gods and heroes are trying to trick one another and then get revenge on one another and then deny people stuff. And of course, the continuation of that story is the supposed invention of woman, of Pandora, and Zeus giving Pandora this jar full of evils, which she didn't release. Zeus giving Pandora this jar full of evils, which she said release. So the kind of very concept of bad things happening in the real human world is linked right back to an argy-bargy between Zeus

and others in which all sides are not actually acting in a very kind of upright kind of way. So that kind of, that reality, I mean, I guess we could call it a reality, but that sense of everything is both black and white here. Everything is both good and bad. Everything is a mix of good and evil, kind of is absolutely inherent in the gods and in everything they do with the result that the real world, the real human world has exactly that same mix in it. Let's move on, because I did hear you talk about this, the first mentions of Zeus that we have

in the world. I mean, how far back do we think the worship of Zeus, of a figure called Zeus, goes? I mean, the word Zeus that we can trace back in the surviving kind of literary sources, he first pops up in the Linear B tablets of the Mycenaean Greek world. But actually, there's quite a lot of argument and understanding by people who are far more specialised in this material than me, that Zeus and his name is actually one of the only gods for which we can trace a pretty clear Proto-Indo-European root for the name back to a sort of, if you like, a kind of earlier manifestation of a sky god, right, that actually then appears, that sky god mixed with powers over thunder, lightning, all of that, you can then see, if you like, spitting images of Zeus across a range of cultures. So clearly that

sort of concept of a god that ruled over and through the sky and the mountain and was one of these kind of rulers is there going even further back into the origins of civilization itself but zeus as a character within the greek if you like line of that development comes into focus for us with the mycenaean greeks so that's going back to the second millennium bc we're talking that sounds really that's way before like classical athens BC we're talking about. That's way before classical Athens and the golden age. Yeah. So it's interesting that Zeus is there from those earliest days of literary attestations that we can currently read. So Linear B obviously was cracked. Linear A, an earlier language than that, we can't currently read. So who knows what may change in the future. But at the same time as Zeus being there from the very beginning,

as far as we can tell, it's interesting that, and it goes back to this point about him being rule of everything, but not really having a specialization necessarily that's so clear as others, that also the way he's worshipped, he isn't necessarily the main god that then comes to mind in lots of locales for specific worship. So obviously he's the main god at Olympia, right? At the home of the Olympic Games we think of Zeus, but actually he didn't have a temple at Olympia until the late 5th century BCE. Hera had a temple way before him and in fact that can be paralleled at lots of different sites. So again there's this curious dichotomy he's been there since the beginning but actually his individualized worship particularly through temples even at the sites that we most associate with him occurs quite late on in the story of the ancient greece all right then i'll challenge that straight away because we're going to one of my favorite areas of greece we're going to epirus i know you've been there talk to me about dodona and the oracle here and how this can potentially fit into what you've

just been saying there about places buildings dedicated to zeus himself that particular god so the oracle of zeus at dodona is a really really interesting sideline if you like of what zeus can do and does do we We don't think about him naturally as an oracular god, i.e. someone you'd go to when you want to know the future. That guy's Apollo, one of Zeus's kids, isn't it? And you think about Delphi and you think about lots of other kind of oracular sites around the Greek world. But Zeus could, and the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona was one. There was also, over in Egypt, the Oracle at Siwa, the oasis town of Siwa, which is another great place to visit if you ever get out there.

I remember a couple of years ago visiting in the days when you could easily get out there, and you turn up in this oasis, and someone had a wonderful A, business sense, and B, sense of irony, because they'd got got a donkey put a small cart attached to it and written taxi siwa on the side of it so this was your taxi around the sea where aces was by donkey but there are the remains of the oracle of zeus amon so an oracle of zeus who's actually been equalized and joined up with that manifestation of what zeus does within another culture culture of the god amon so there's a couple of different oracular sites we can look at,

but Dodona is the most famous. And there again, we have a site which seems to have quite a good history going back. So clearly there's a reason in that part of the world that they've chosen to use Zeus as their conduit to understand the will of the gods rather than say Apollo. And it's done through a very different kind of way

than is done at any other oracular site. So there was supposedly an oak tree that the priests listened to the rustling of the leaves of the oak tree. And through that rustling of the leaves, they interpreted the will of the gods in response to particular questions. And actually Dodona worked in a different way again, because people actually had to write their questions on tablets that have survived because they were buried around the tree. And then occasionally you get the responses as well. And the range of questions, as a rule, is extraordinary that has come out. So we could and should do a whole episode, if you haven't done it already, about the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona. But it's questions like, did Thorpeon steal the silver? How do I best protect my daughter's chastity? Should I go

on this business venture? Should I sell? All of this kind of amazing everyday stuff. But it has to be said, that challenge that you offer me, like, well, what about the Zeus? Yes, the site is there from into the archaic period, but actually its biggest monumentalisation, when it starts getting all the big buildings and becoming really fancy is again much later on in the ancient greek story of the classical period and on into the hellenistic this is this is pyrrhus and talking now aren't we we're talking much much later yeah because i do want to bring up that example i'm really glad you mentioned see we're there because i guess that also leads us into another tangent and the fact that with the worship of Zeus at these places did the Greeks look at other I dare say like chief gods from

other cultures contemporary cultures like the ancient Egyptian culture did they see a god like Amun and then they think he is the local manifestation of Zeus in that culture maybe they saw the Romans they see Jupiter was the local manifestation of Zeus in that culture. Maybe they saw the Romans, they see Jupiter was a local manifestation of Zeus in that culture too. I mean, I think that business of equating gods within different sects that the Greeks and then the Romans obviously were ultimately always interacting with. I mean, I think we make such a mistake if we think about the Greeks as this sort of cut-off singular group who existed somehow in glorious isolation in the Mediterranean. Not a bit of it. They were constantly interacting with and being influenced by and influencing all these other cultures that they were engaged with. And that

game of equalling and going, all right, your divinities make sense to me by translating them into the gods that I have, absolutely standard practice. And it wouldn't happen just with Zeus, it would happen with a number of the gods. And so you start to see these joined up, if you like, sanctuaries in places where there are communities coming from these different sides who are trying to kind of live and work together and rub shoulder to shoulder. So Zeus Amon is one. We see it in places like Delos actually as well, when you're getting communities of traders coming from all over the ancient Mediterranean world, bringing their gods with them. So on this tiny little Greek island in the middle of the Cyclades, you've got Egyptian gods, you've got Syrian gods, you've got gods coming from Asia

Minor, and they're all then equalized with Greek gods in some ways and sort of put together so that everyone can make sense of them. And I think that's a totally normal, ancient societal way of engaging. And what it allows you to do is sort of equalise. And then the next step after that, which the Romans were particularly good at, is you then sort of incorporate officially. So say, look, you don't need to be a follower of a different religion from the Romans because we'll just, you know, they had entire... Come on in, yeah because they had entire ceremonies to

welcome foreign gods into the Roman pantheon, come and have a home. And that was one of the brilliant ways in which the Roman religious world and landscape could help the political and military expansion of the Roman world by offering that big canvas, that big canopy that everyone can be part of. Was there a particular cult of Zeus in ancient Greek history? So when we say cult, the way cults work normally is it's quite rare to just have Zeus alone. It would be Zeus plus an epithet is what we call it. Another word afterwards that would underline the specific aspect of Zeus that was being worshipped in that particular place and in that particular cult. So at Olympia, right, actually Zeus Olympios was kind

of the way he was worshipped, but not the only way he was worshipped actually, even at just that one place, Olympia. Olympia is famous for having over 70 different altars to gods with particular epithets dotted around the kind of wider sanctuary. And Zeus has a number of different epithets. So literally you could turn up and go, which kind of Zeus am I sort of particularly keen to have on my side right now? Oh, I'll go and worship on this altar. And one of the most kind of weird, wacky and wonderful kind of altars to Zeus at Olympia was Zeus Apomoyos, which you don't really see anywhere else apart from Olympia. And if you translate Apomoyos, it means Zeus the swatter of flies. So it kind of makes sense when the fact that they were supposedly sacrificing a hundred animals, you know, cows or oxen to Zeus on his

Zeus Olympios altar, which was a very famously made up of just the congealed ash and remains of all the previous sacrifices. But that's a lot of blood being spilled in summertime during the Greek Olympics. And you could imagine that flies were probably actually quite a major problem as you move from having 100 carcasses to then carving them all up, putting all those bones and fat on Zeus's altar and then having a massive barbecue for all the meat to feed everyone else who's there. And so they had another altar, Zeus the Swatter of Flies, who when he was placated, supposedly kept all the flies at bay on the far side of the riverbank, so as not to cause a problem. But you also have at Olympia,

so we've had Zeus Olympias, we've had Zeus Apomoyos, you'd also have Zeus Horikos. And Horikos translates as the sort of keeper of oaths. So again, this was the sort of role that Zeus seems to perform quite a lot, where he sort of is the person that you make an oath by, and he's the one who's going to come and really take you to task if you break that oath. And all the athletes who competed at the Olympic Games had to swear an oath in front of Zeus Horacos before they were allowed to start competing in the Games. So lots of different facets, if you like, of Zeus worshipped through particular altars and particular cults, even in one single place like Olympia.

And then as you spread out around the wider Greek world, you've got a whole host of different ways in which Zeus plus his epithet is thought about. Oh, that's so interesting. It's almost like Amun and Amun-Ra, Amun-Kamutef in ancient Egyptian culture. This quite fluid nature that Zeus, as you say, can have these different epithets attached to him, depending on what the people were wanting him to help them with. And there's a couple of sort of main areas. Obviously, the sky god, obviously thunder, this keeper of oaths,

and this sense that he's somehow the keeper of some of the right ways to behave. So Zeus Xenios is also someone we see. So Zeus, who's the keeper of the rules about how you behave to strangers. So this kind of, you know, he's the guy who keeps the etiquette right across a whole series of things. right across a whole series of things and then obviously you've got the sort of zeus the king of the gods so zeus olympios zeus pan hellenios kind of you know of all the greeks etc that really speak to the fact that he is the sort of overseer of everything i can ask so many more questions but i've just a couple more i mean first of all we need to talk about art and zeus's depiction in art and let's keep on o Olympia first of all, because there is this, or there was this great statue of Zeus, wasn't there, right at the heart of this religious precinct? Yeah, so when Zeus finally got his own temple at Olympia, which was

in the second half of the 5th century, so they built the temple and then they commissioned this uber-famous sculptor of the day, Pidias, to create a cult statue that would be put inside the temple. Now, from what we can see, we think the cult statue was finished after the temple had been completed, but actually one of the things that was so famous about this statue, that it became one of the wonders of the ancient world, was it was utterly enormous. And so it's quite likely that they had to dismantle part of the temple to then actually get the statue in and then rebuild and we know this poor temple then had another series of problems after that there were some earthquakes pretty soon after that and so parts of it got

destroyed and had to be rebuilt again but Phineas's statue of Zeus stood there in the temple and it was a statue of Zeus as we imagine him beard sort of long hair sort of on the belt looking very macho muscular and all-powerful and he's. And one of the things that you often see in representations of Zeus is that he's the one who's seated. But even when seated, he's normally as tall as everyone around him who's standing. And one of the famous descriptions of this statue of Pheidias is that, you know, not only is it an incredible statue, but it feels incredibly lifelike. And people talk about the fact it feels like Zeus is about to stand up. And if Zeus stands up, he'll take the roof of the temple clean off with him.

That kind of sense of only just being contained within the structures and walls that he's being built. and walls that he's being built. That kind of latent power I think is really important to understand in the descriptions of the visual representations of Zeus that as a result also combines some of those things we were talking about of both the kind of good power and the bad power that could be unleashed in either direction that was inherent in him as a god. And the statue was famously made of gold obviously but also ivory and there was a pool of oil that was around the base of the statue that helped to keep enough humidity in the air to keep the ivory from drying out and cracking in all the Greek heat. So it was an extraordinary statue. Very sadly nothing survives of it today because as a statue that got a lot of attention in antiquity it ended

up being quite a catch for those in late antiquity who wanted a little piece of good ancient history and it sort of disappears from the record very sadly and so it doesn't survive to us in any way shape or form today. Thank goodness we have these accounts of it as you mentioned and it is a remarkable statue. That seated suicide is really interesting because I'm sure at the same time my mind is immediately thinking to a statue i had to learn from my a levels there's one of zeus standing it seems quite a very virile strong pose with the zeus artemesion or whatever and i think there's a depiction of it at the atchimolian museum as well so another great statue of zeus as you say a

standing one as you say very much an action shot. But what's really interesting about the statue is that people argue backwards and forwards about whether it's Zeus or whether it's Poseidon. Because it depends entirely as to what was in his hand. And that doesn't survive. So was it the trident of Poseidon or was it the thunderbolt of Zeus? Actually, is the key thing there that would help you distinguish between those gods which in terms of their facial features actually aren't that different. I mean they're brothers at the end of the day but equally they're represented as

there are men with beards etc. That doesn't really tell you a lot. What dismayed it clear with Zeus was the presence of the thunderbolt or if his eagle perhaps those key attributes that he would have around him but that seated Zeus is another sort of way of making it clear that it it's Zeus we're talking about and Zeus we're looking at and that is something that kind of seated Zeus is something you then see echoed in Greek art more widely when they want to represent something which isn't Zeus, but which echoes the power of Zeus. So for instance, in Athens, when they created a representation of the personification of Demos, the people, Demos was represented as a man with a big beard and hair seated in a chair. Because the power of the people, right,

they wanted to have that direct link back through the iconography, if you like, the iconographical sort of echoes, through to Zeus, king of the gods. I think this has been absolutely great. And it's so interesting, isn't it, as we wrap up now, how this idea of Zeus, whether his portrayal, his his depictions the ideas that we have of him today I think I've stood the test of time from antiquity to well Russell Crowe in the latest form yeah I've yet to see I've yet to see Russell Crowe give us his Zeus I think Hugh Grant is due to play Zeus as well really in another kind

of one coming forward who knows who knows but I for me, the thing I would love people to take away from it is that, as with, I'm sure, the whole smorgasbord of this deep dive into the Olympians, is that none of them are as simple or as single-faceted as we've kind of reduced them to in our heads when we think about the gods of the Pantheon who do one thing each. And Zeus, for me, is both the kind of all-powerful mighty one who breaks all the rules and is constrained by nothing, both in terms of the good and bad things he does. His wedding banquet with Hera was supposed to last 3,000 years. I mean, what a party. But on the other hand, we've talked about a number of the really quite nasty evil things that he ends up doing, both in ancient terms and, of course, in modern terms.

And yet he's simultaneously the guy that people call out to, to hold the line on what is and what is not proper behavior. Keeper of oaths, keeper of how you behave to foreigners. of oaths, keeper of how you behave to foreigners. So he is this extraordinary mix of someone who crosses all the boundaries and ashes through all the boundaries, turning up in whatever form he wants to turn up in the consummated relationship with, and yet also is the person who's supposed to be the keeper of the rules at the same time. It is interesting. It's great that you finish on that point, because as you say, it's the kicker. It's the kick-starting off of a new great season on these gods and goddesses. So great words of wisdom there to finish this one.

Michael, it just goes for me to say always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. I look forward to being back again in the future. Who knows what we'll be discussing next time? Who knows?

Well, there you go. There was the first episode in our new Greek gods and goddesses series, kicking it off with none other than Professor Michael Scott and the big man of ancient Greek mythology himself, none other than Zeus. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, thank you to Michael.

Always a pleasure having him on the pod. Now now definitely there are a few people to give credit to for curating for creating this awesome new style of episode for the ancients the script for the story for the myth was written by andrew house it was produced edited and sound designed by our senior producer the legend that is elena guthrie she is very much the person who makes sure that the ancients keeps running smoothly and that they don't keep going down all my little holes my little rabbit holes these different unique niche parts of ancient history that i'm always so keen on she's the one who keeps me in check our assistant producer annie colo and of course the other legend the history History Hit HQ which is Aidan Lonergan who had

this whole idea of Greeks and goddesses. Annie, Aidan, Elena all absolute legends and you have my heartfelt thanks. So hang around for the next one keep listening to the ancients because in a few weeks time we're going to release the second episode of our new series. We've done the big man Zeus it's now time for the big woman. It's the time of Zeus's wife and sister Hera. That's all coming very soon and I look forward to seeing you then but in the meantime listen to our other episodes too of course naturally. That's enough rambling on from me and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.