Twelve Olympians
In ancient
Greek religion and mythology, the twelve Olympians are the major deities of
the Greek pantheon, commonly considered to be Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus.[2] They were called Olympians because,
according to tradition, they resided on Mount
Olympus.
Although Hades was a major ancient Greek god and was the brother of the first generation of Olympians (Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia), his the realm was the underworld, far from Olympus, and thus was not usually considered to be one
of the Olympians.
Besides the twelve Olympians, there were
many other cultic groupings of twelve gods.
Olympians
The Olympians were a race of deities, primarily consisting of a third and fourth generation of immortal
beings, worshipped as the principal gods of the Greek pantheon and so named because of their residency atop Mount Olympus. They gained their supremacy in a ten-year-long war of gods, in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over the previous
generation of ruling gods, the Titans. They were a family of gods, the most important consisting of the
first generation of Olympians, offspring of the Titans Cronus and Rhea: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, along with the principal offspring of Zeus: Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite,[3] Hephaestus, Hermes, and Dionysus. Although Hades was a major deity in the Greek pantheon and was the brother of Zeus and the other first generation of
Olympians, his realm was far away from Olympus in the underworld, and thus he was not usually considered to be one of the
Olympians.[4] Olympic gods can be contrasted to chthonic gods[5] including Hades, by mode of sacrifice, the latter receiving
sacrifices in a bother (βόθρος, "pit") or megaron (μέγαρον, "sunken chamber")[6] rather than at an altar.
The canonical number of Olympian gods was
twelve, but besides the (thirteen) principal Olympians listed above, there were
many other residents of Olympus, who thus might be considered to be Olympians.[7] Heracles became a resident of Olympus after his apotheosis and married another Olympian resident Hebe.[8] According to Hesiod, the children of Styx: Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Cratos (Power), and Bia (Force), "have no house apart from Zeus, nor any
dwelling nor path except that wherein God leads them, but they dwell always
with Zeus."[9] Some others who might be considered Olympians, include
the Muses, the Graces, Iris, Dione, Eileithyia, the Horae, and Ganymede.[10]
Twelve gods
Besides the twelve Olympians, there were
many other various cultic groupings of twelve gods throughout ancient Greece.
The earliest evidence of Greek religious practice involving twelve gods (Greek: δωδεκάθεον, dōdekátheon, from δώδεκα dōdeka,
"twelve" and θεοί theoi, "gods") comes no
earlier than the late sixth century BC.[11] According to Thucydides, an altar of the twelve gods was established in the agora of Athens by the archon Pisistratus (son of Hippias, and the grandson of the tyrant Pisistratus), inc. 522 BC.[12] The altar became the central point from which distances from
Athens was measured and a place of supplication and refuge.[13]
Olympia apparently also had an early tradition of twelve gods.[14] The Homeric Hymn to Hermes (c. 500 BC) has the god Hermes divide a sacrifice of two cows he has stolen from Apollo,
into twelve parts, on the banks of the river Alpheus (presumably at Olympia):
"Next
glad-hearted Hermes dragged the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a
smooth, flat stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot,
making each portion wholly honorable."[15]
Pindar, in an ode written to be sung at
Olympia c. 480 BC, has Heracles sacrificing, alongside the Alpheus, to the "twelve
ruling gods":[16]
"He
[Heracles] enclosed the Altis all around and marked it off in
the open, and he made the encircling area a resting-place for feasting, honoring
the stream of the Alpheus along with the twelve ruling gods."[17]
Another of Pindar's Olympian odes
mentions "six double altars".[18] Herodotus of Heraclea (c.
400 BC) also has Heracles founding a shrine at Olympia, with six pairs of gods,
each pair sharing a single altar.[19]
Many other places had cults of the twelve
gods, including Delos, Chalcedon, Magnesia on the Maeander, and Leontinoi in Sicily.[20] As with the twelve Olympians, although the number of gods was
fixed at twelve, the membership varied.[21] While the majority of the gods included as members of these
other cults of twelve gods were Olympians, non-Olympians were also sometimes
included. For example, Herodotus of Heraclea identified the six pairs of gods
at Olympia as Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the
Graces, and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus, and Cronus and Rhea.[22] Thus while this list includes the eight Olympians: Zeus,
Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysus, it also contains
three clear non-Olympians: the Titan parents of the first generation of
Olympians, Cronus, and Rhea, and the river god Alpheus, with the status of the
Graces (here apparently counted as one god) being unclear.
Plato connected "twelve gods" with the twelve months, and
implies that he considered Pluto one of the twelve in proposing that the final month be
devoted to him and the spirits of the dead.[23]
The Roman poet Ennius gives the Roman
equivalents (the Dii Consentes) as six male-female complements,[24] preserving the place of Vesta (Greek Hestia), who played a crucial role in Roman religion as
a state goddess maintained by the Vestals.
List
There is no single canonical list of the
twelve Olympian gods. The thirteen gods and goddesses most commonly considered
to be one of the twelve Olympians are listed below.
|
Greek |
Roman |
Image |
Functions and attributes |
|
|
King of
the gods and ruler of Mount Olympus; god of the sky, lightning, thunder,
law, order, and justice. |
||
|
|
Queen of
the gods and the goddess of marriage, women, childbirth, and family. |
||
|
|
God of
the seas, water, storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and horses. |
||
|
|
Goddess
of the harvest, fertility, agriculture, nature and the seasons. She presided
over grains and
the fertility of
the earth. |
||
|
|
Goddess
of wisdom, handicraft, and warfare.[25] |
||
|
Apollo / |
|
God of
light, the sun, prophecy, philosophy,
archery, truth, inspiration, poetry, music, arts, manly beauty, medicine,
healing, and plague. |
|
|
|
Goddess
of the hunt, the wilderness, virginity, the moon, archery, childbirth,
protection and plague. |
||
|
|
God of
war, violence, bloodshed, and manly virtues. |
||
|
|
Goddess
of love, pleasure, passion, procreation, fertility, beauty, and desire. |
||
|
|
Master
blacksmith and craftsman of the gods; god of the forge, craftsmanship,
invention, fire, and volcanoes. |
||
|
|
Messenger
of the gods; god of travel, commerce, communication, borders, eloquence,
diplomacy, thieves, and games. He was also the guide of dead souls. |
||
|
Most lists of the "twelve
Olympians" consist of the above eleven plus either Hestia or Dionysus |
|||
|
|
Goddess
of the hearth, fire and of the right ordering of domesticity and the family;
she was born into the first Olympian generation and was one of the original
twelve Olympians.
|
||
|
|
God of wine, the grapevine, fertility, festivity, ecstasy, madness, and resurrection. The patron god of the art of theatre. |
||
0 Comments