These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses.

In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" (Greek: Νεφεληγερέτα, Nephelēgereta)[15] also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter.

[16] The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀇𐀸, di-we (dative) and 𐀇𐀺, di-wo (genitive), written in the Linear B syllabic script.

[29] In Hesiod's Theogony (c. 730 – 700 BC), Cronus, after castrating his father Uranus,[30] becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister Rhea, by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six.

[31] He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received a prophecy from his parents, Gaia and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father.

[62] The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases the Hundred-Handers, who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface.

[67] Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe.

[84] Typhon is wounded and retreats to Mount Kasios in Syria, where Zeus grapples with him, giving the monster a chance to wrap him in his coils, and rip out the sinews from his hands and feet.

[88] Nonnus, who gives the longest and most detailed account, presents a narrative similar to Apollodorus, with differences such as that it is instead Cadmus and Pan who recovers Zeus's sinews, by luring Typhon with music and then tricking him.

[92] According to a fragment likely from the Hesiodic corpus,[93] quoted by Chrysippus, it is out of anger at Hera for producing Hephaestus on her own that Zeus has intercourse with Metis, and then swallows her, thereby giving rise to Athena from himself.

[97] In Hesiod's account, Zeus's second wife is Themis, one of the Titan daughters of Uranus and Gaia, with whom he has the Horae, listed as Eunomia, Dike and Eirene, and the three Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

[115] According to a scholion on Theocritus' Idylls, Zeus, one day seeing Hera walking apart from the other gods, becomes intent on having intercourse with her, and transforms himself into a cuckoo bird, landing on Mount Thornax.

[117] According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica, Hera is raised by a nymph named Macris[118] on the island of Euboea when Zeus kidnaps her, taking her to Mount Cithaeron, where they find a shady hollow, which serves as a "natural bridal chamber".

According to a scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, Pherecydes states that when Zeus and Hera are being married, Gaia brings a tree which produces golden apples as a wedding gift.

[123] Eratosthenes and Hyginus attribute a similar story to Pherecydes, in which Hera is amazed by the gift, and asks for the apples to be planted in the "garden of the gods", nearby to Mount Atlas.

[125] According to Diodorus Siculus, the location of the marriage is in the land of the Knossians, nearby to the river Theren,[126] while Lactantius attributes to Varro the statement that the couple are married on the island of Samos.

According to Pausanias, Hera, angry with her husband, retreats to the island of Euboea, where she was raised, and Zeus, unable to resolve the situation, seeks the advice of Cithaeron, ruler of Plataea, supposedly the most intelligent man on earth.

[128] According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica, when Hera is angry with her husband, she retreats instead to Cithaeron, and Zeus goes to the earth-born man Alalcomeneus, who suggests he pretend to marry someone else.

According to a scholion on the Iliad (citing Hesiod and Bacchylides), when Europa is picking flowers with her female companions in a meadow in Phoenicia, Zeus transforms himself into a bull, lures her from the others, and then carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where he resumes his usual form to sleep with her.

[258] The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War and the battle over the City of Troy, in which Zeus plays a major part.

[271] In a satirical work, Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, Zeus berates Helios for allowing such thing to happen; he returns the damaged chariot to him and warns him that if he dares do that again, he will strike him with one of this thunderbolts.

[29] These epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority: The major center where all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia.

There is, however, the crucial detail that Lykaios or Lykeios (epithets of Zeus and Apollo) may derive from Proto-Greek *λύκη, "light", a noun still attested in compounds such as ἀμφιλύκη, "twilight", λυκάβας, "year" (lit.

Again under this new signification may be seen Pausanias' descriptions of Lykosoura being 'the first city that ever the sun beheld', and of the altar of Zeus, at the summit of Mount Lykaion, before which stood two columns bearing gilded eagles and 'facing the sun-rise'.

When the Odyssey was composed (circa 750 BC), divination was done there by barefoot priests called Selloi, who lay on the ground and observed the rustling of the leaves and branches.

Zeus was identified with the Roman god Jupiter and associated in the syncretic classical imagination (see interpretatio graeca) with various other deities, such as the Egyptian Ammon and the Etruscan Tinia.

[313] The Hellenistic period gave birth to Serapis, a Greco-Egyptian deity conceived as a chthonic avatar of Zeus, whose solar nature is indicated by the sun crown and rays the Greeks depicted him with.

[318] In Neoplatonism, Zeus's relation to the gods familiar from mythology is taught as the Demiurge or Divine Mind, specifically within Plotinus's work the Enneads[319] and the Platonic Theology of Proclus.

[321] The second occurrence is in Acts 28:11: the name of the ship in which the prisoner Paul set sail from the island of Malta bore the figurehead "Sons of Zeus" aka Castor and Pollux (Dioscuri).

The deuterocanonical book of 2 Maccabees 6:1, 2 talks of King Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), who in his attempt to stamp out the Jewish religion, directed that the temple at Jerusalem be profaned and rededicated to Zeus (Jupiter Olympius).