Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [104]
Eventually Hermes became the protector of merchants and was considered an important god as the Greeks moved from farming to more commercial pursuits.
Hestia (Vesta) The eldest child of Cronus and Rhea, Hestia is the sister of Zeus and the first child swallowed by Cronus. Her name means “hearth,” and she is the traditional Greek protectress of the home and also guards the hearth fire, one of the crucial duties of a woman in a Greek home. Although she was worshipped in the home of every Greek, Hestia is perhaps the least significant of the Olympians, and there are few stories about her. She is, in essence, the first “stay at home” woman. As a result, she has little chance for adventure—or mischief. In later times, Hestia’s place in Olympus among the twelve is taken by Dionysus.
Hestia was considered far more important in Rome, where she had been adopted as Vesta, and served as symbol of the city. Residing at her shrine in a temple in the Roman Forum were six vestal virgins, who tended an eternal flame. Chosen when they were between six and ten years old, they served for thirty years, and the punishment for losing their virginity was severe. A vestal virgin who broke the taboo was whipped and buried alive in a small chamber with only a bed. Over a thousand years, about twenty vestals were known to have been punished this way.
Poseidon (Neptune) One of the three sons of Cronus, Poseidon becomes ruler of the sea and is, in Homer’s words, the “shaker of earth”—literally responsible for earthquakes, which were frequent and violent in Greece and the Aegean Sea region. Almost always depicted carrying his three-pronged spear, the trident, and driving a chariot, he is one of the most widely—and anciently—worshipped of the Greek gods.
Some scholars believe that Poseidon may have been an older god already worshipped in Greece when the Mycenaeans arrived, perhaps as a fertility god, associated with the water. But by the time of Homer and Hesiod, he is thought of as Lord of the Deep. A powerful figure who often resists his brother Zeus, he becomes one of the most significant figures in Homer’s Odyssey, as the god who is most hostile to the hero Odysseus.
Zeus (Jupiter) King of the gods, god of thunder and weather, and originally bearing a name that meant “shining sky,” Zeus is the son of the Titan Cronus, who had toppled his own father, Uranus. Similarly, Zeus brings his father down and supplants him as the chief deity. The only major Greek god whose Indo-European origins are undisputed, Zeus is connected with older gods who probably arrived in Greece with the people later known as Mycenaeans. Some scholars see parallels between his story and the Mesopotamian god-feud in which Enki killed Apsu. (See chapter 3.) There are also similarities between Zeus and Marduk, hinting that the Greeks may have been influenced by the earlier Mesopotamian myths. In Greek myth, this old god of the bright sky is transformed into Zeus, the weather god. After the great war with the Titans, Zeus draws lots with his brothers, and divides the world. He is lord of the sky; one of his brothers, Hades, becomes lord of the underworld; and the other, Poseidon, gets dominion over the sea.
Zeus’s first wife is Metis, a sea nymph known for her wisdom, but Zeus is most famously married to Hera. Still, he is a notorious adulterer and has many lovers, both divine and human, and Hera deeply resents all of his many offspring. Some scholars believe that this was another vestige of the early rivalry between the male-dominated Zeus cult that arrived with the Mycenaeans and Hera’s goddess/earth mother-religion, which may have predated the Mycenaean era. Whatever the sexual politics may have been, Zeus became ruler of the world, presiding over