The God Jupiter or Zeus

by Augusta Stylianou

Title

The God Jupiter or Zeus

Artist

Augusta Stylianou

Medium

Painting - Photograph-painting

Description

This is a close up photo of my painting Cyprus History.
Predominance of the twelve Olympian Gods. Simultaneously with the Goddess Venus we have the God Zeus (in the centre) as the Father of all Gods.
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus (play /ˈzjuːs/ ZEWS;[3] Ancient Greek: Ζεύς; Modern Greek: Δίας, Dias) is the "Father of Gods and men" (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, patēr andrōn te theōn te)[4] who rule the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father rule the family. He is the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.

Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he is married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort is Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione.[2] He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.[5]

As Walter Burkert points out in his book, Greek Religion, "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence."[6] For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. As Pausanias observed, "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men".[7] In Hesiod's Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.

His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.
From Wikipedia.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;

Uploaded

April 22nd, 2012

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