Zeus (Jupiter) was the supreme god of both Greek and Roman mythology. In our English literature on the subject the Latin names occur more frequently, are more familiar, and are used without further explanation.
Before Homer wrote the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” Jupiter had come to be regarded by the Greeks as the father of all gods and men, but he had not always that distinction. The earlier myths gave his descent, and according to some legends there was a time when Cronos, father of Jupiter, was supreme; but even he was not first in the order of the gods. The imaginary line of their descent stretched far back till lost in deepest mystery, but it led not to the Everlasting Self-existent One. According to Hesiod their highest gods were really earth born. The first beings were Chaos and Gea. The latter gave birth to Uranus—whence sprang a race of twelve Titans, six males—Oceanus, Cœus, Crius, Hyperion, Japetus, and Cronus; six females—Thia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phœbe, and Thetis.
The interpretation of these divinities is difficult, but they doubtless represented some real or supposed elementary forces of nature.
The different stories respecting things, not known but imagined, were often at variance, nor need we attempt to harmonize them, as each district or city had its own version. From other sources it would be possible to construct a different genealogy, but that here given was somewhat generally accepted.
Ouranos, or Uranus, is the heaven which is spread like a vail over the earth, and was much the same to the Greeks as the old Hindu god Varuna, whose name has a verbal root meaning to vail or conceal.
Having attributed some kind of intelligence and personality to the vast expanse stretching itself overhead, they represent this sovereign, Ouranos, as hurling the Cyclops with Bronte, Sterope (thunder and lightning), and other children of Gea, into the abyss called Tartarus; and that Gea, in her grief and anger, urged her other children to insurrection against their father, and to set Cronos instead on his throne.
When Cronos (time) became king he is represented as so voracious and cruel that all his children were devoured soon after each was born. The basis of this legendary fact is evident, as time swallows up the days and weeks, months and years, as they come each in its order, and thus “bears all its sons away.”
These acts of Cronos, the reputed cannibal among such as interpret the fable literally, connect with the history of Jupiter. Rhea, his wife, and the mother of Jupiter, anxious to save her child, having already lost five, determined to save her next son from a cruel fate by stratagem. A stone was given to the husband, wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed without examination or suspicion, and the little Jupiter, thus rescued, was reared by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Diete, or Ida, in Crete. He was nourished on goat’s milk, and the bees brought him honey to eat. That the cries of the child might not betray his presence, and the mother’s strategy, the Curetes, or attendant priests of Rhea, drowned his voice by the clashing of their weapons.
Jupiter thus remained hidden till he speedily became a young, but very powerful god. He then attacked and overthrew his father Cronos, whom he also compelled by a device of Gea, to bring forth the children he had already devoured. Some of the Titans, as Oceanus, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Hyperion, at once submitted to the dominion of the new ruler of the world. The others refused allegiance. But after a contest of years Jupiter, with the help of the Cyclops and Centimani, overthrew them. As a punishment they were cast into Tartarus, which was then closed by Poseidon with brazen gates.
Thessaly, which bears evident traces of having suffered much from natural convulsions, was supposed to have been the scene of this mighty war.