The Gods and Their Makers.
“Want you the brand and scope of man, he is
Maker of Gods. A novice at the trade,
He made God out of winds and thunder clouds,
The unpropitious seasons, threatening moons,
And the invisible ambuscade of death.
Poor frightened babe, he worshiped with a wail,
Clutching his mother earth, and in her face
Burying his fears. Then childlike artist grown
He craved for form, and from the shapes around
Contorted fair the figure of himself,
Moulded his deities in wood and stone
Around his bed, his banquet board, his tomb
As yet a bungler, but when youth infused
Into the sap and marrow of his brain
The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed
Of gods as fair as he himself would be,
Majestic, abstract, yet with solid power
To make a goddess tremble; and behold,
Under the yearning passion of his thought
The embryonic marble sloughed its shell,
And gods of strength and beauty trod the earth,
Their foreheads high in heaven.”
—Alfred Austin.
Jupiter.
“The Father of Gods.”
“From the great father of the gods above
My muse begins; for all is full of Jove.”
—Milton.
STORY.
THE KING OF THE HEAVENS.
“When gods began with wrath,
And war rose up between their brows,
Some choosing to cast Cronus from his throne,
That Zeus might king it there, and some in haste,
With opposite oaths, that they would have no Zeus
To rule the gods forever.”
—E. B. Browning.
Cronus, the father of Jupiter, was in the habit of swallowing his children at birth, but when Jupiter was born his mother, Rhea, hid him in a cave and gave to the unnatural father a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes which he accepted, unaware of the deception.
Jupiter grew up under the care of the nymphs, and, after a mighty conflict, overthrew the dynasty of the old gods and took possession of the throne and dominion of Cronus. He was then supreme ruler of gods and men, but had viceroys of the sea and the regions of the dead in Neptune and Pluto. His lawful wife, Juno, reigned with him in equal sovereignty. Their children were Mars, Vulcan and Hebe. Although wedded to Juno, Jupiter as the deity of the visible heavens, had brides and children in many lands. The abode of this wisest and most glorious of the divinities was on Mt. Olympus in the unclouded ether.