Who is zeus son

The heroic mortal sons of Zeus had his favor, but no sons were as loved by Zeus as the Olympians. While Ares was often ignored or even disparaged by his father, Apollo , Dionysus, and Hermes were often regarded as his favorite sons. He showed them a great deal of favor by elevating them to high positions within the hierarchy of the gods. Apollo was the son to the Titaness Leto and the twin brother of Artemis. Although she tried to prevent Leto from giving birth in every way she could, even holding the goddess of childbirth hostage to withhold her aid, Hera was not able to stop Apollo and Artemis from coming into the world.

From the moment they were born, it was clear that the twins would be powerful and well-loved deities. The goddess Artemis was sometimes depicted as being doted on by her father, especially in her youth.

But Apollo rose to great heights in the pantheon, becoming seen as an almost national god of the Greek people as a whole. As he [Apollon] goes through the house of Zeus, the gods tremble before him, and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow. Then she leads him to a seat and makes him sit: and the Father gives him nektar in a golden cup welcoming his dear son, while other gods make him sit down there, and queenly Leto rejoices because she bare a mighty son and an archer.

Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare glorious children…. Hermes, the son of the nymph Maia , was born in secret. Zeus had managed to keep his visits to Maia a secret from both his wife and the court of gods so no one knew when she gave birth to his son.

Hermes was a born trickster. On the first night of his life he crept from his crib while his mother slept and stole the prized cattle of Apollo on a whim. The older son of Zeus was only able to track the thief because of his prophetic gifts, and even Maia could not believe that her newborn child was capable of such mischief.

Apollo took the baby to Olympus to be judged by their father, but the proceedings did not go as he might have planned. Despite his knack for making trouble, Hermes was welcomed by the Olympians as one of their own. And in spite of their rocky start, Hermes and Apollo became friends as well.

The gift of the newly-invented lyre smoothed over any anger Apollo felt over the theft of his cattle and established the elder brother as the god of music and poetry. While Maia kept her pregnancy a secret from Hera, Semele was not so lucky.

Hera tricked the human girl into seeing Zeus in all his divine glory, resulting in her immediate death. Zeus sewed the unborn child into his own leg, cutting Dionysus out when it was time for his birth. He was the god of wine, feasting, and merriment. Hera tried again to destroy him, cursing him with madness as she had done to Heracles. Dionysus roamed the world, spreading his gift of wine to all the people he encountered.

Dionysus was eventually cured of his temporary insanity, although madness was forever part of his infamous revels. Among the mortals and semi-divine sons of Zeus, however, several still left their mark on the Greek world. Sometimes this lineage was a matter of local legend, but often it was an established and widely-held belief throughout the region. An incomplete list of the royal sons of Zeus is still an impressive overview of Greece and the Mediterranean.

Virtually every land in the region could trace its ruling heritage back to the king of the gods. Added grandsons and further generations would tie virtually every city-state and foreign land known to the Greeks back to the king of Olympus.

There was a good reason so many cities and nations claimed to have been founded by sons and grandsons of Zeus. Zeus was the king of the gods, the highest authority in the cosmos. When a king claimed his family tree went back not just to a god, but to the king of Olympus, it strengthened his claim to power. The divine blood running through him, even if watered down after many generations, gave him a greater right to rule than someone from a purely mortal background.

The same held true for entire cities and countries. Of course, in many cases it is obvious that supposed descent from Zeus was an invention of later eras and not a long-held belief. Newer colonies, for example, would sometimes claim ancient divine origins in an attempt at establishing greater authority and legitimacy.

One of the most famous examples of this was the Roman hero Aeneas. In an effort to establish their ancient origins and link to the Greek past, the early Romans borrowed the figure of Aeneas from the Iliad and created a mythology in which the son of Venus Aphrodite traveled west to found Rome.

The creation of the myth of Aeneas gave the Romans a claim to a heritage that included three major deities in the Greco-Roman pantheon and the legendary king of Troy. The idea of claiming a god, particularly Zeus, as the ancestor of kings helped to establish monarchies based on divine authority as well as mortal lineage.

Artemis was the daughter of Zeus. She was also the twin of Apollo. Artemis was the Goddess of the hunt. This is a statue of Apollo. Apollo was Zeus's son and the God of light.

This is a statue of Hermes. Hermes was also Zeus's son. He was the messenger of the Gods. This is a statue of Aphrodite's head. She was one of Zeus's daughters. Aphrodite was the Goddess of love. This is a statue of Ares's head. Ares was one of Zeus's sons. Zeus was also attracted to young boys. Ganymede, a young and beautiful Trojan prince, was abducted by Zeus and taken up to Olympus to be his personal cupbearer and probably his lover as well.

Because Zeus was the ruler of the gods, the gods often took their quarrels to Zeus for arbitration. He also meted out punishments to immortals and mortals alike who angered him. The Lydian King, Tantalus, was a son of Zeus who was favored by the gods, but he wanted to test their knowledge and power.

He invited the gods to a dinner party and served them a dish made from his own son, Pelops. They put Pelops together again giving him an ivory shoulder to replace the one that had been eaten and Tantalus was punished in the Underworld by having to stand up to his chin in a lake that would recede any time he moved to take a drink and overhead was a tree with delicious, ripe fruit that would move away from him when he tried to reach up and grab one.

This myth is the origin of the word tantalize. Zeus was the sky god of the Mycenaean Greek-speaking peoples who migrated to the Greek peninsula sometime around BC.

Zeus may have been conflated with a pre-Greek Minoan fertility god on the island of Crete. This would help to explain the story of Zeus being brought to Crete as a baby and living on Crete for a year in a cave [see Origins ].