Previously on Vlogs of Knowledge…
A long time ago, we humans had a very hard time understanding the world and everything
going on in it.
We were always trying to make sense of the things that we saw, and the reason for our
existence.
We created many stories, legends, and theories, all trying to explain the origins of life.
After a few thousand years of human progress and ideologies, the ancient Greeks got the
chance to tell their story of how the world began.
According to them, it all started with something called “Chaos”, whom was later personified
into a human-like god that could give birth.
And then, the first deity to be born was Gaia, the ruler of the earth.
Gaia was seen as the very first mother nature, and through her, all of the other gods were
born.
Uranus, one of Gaia’s children, became the supreme ruler until one of his own sons, Cronus,
cut off his testicles to prevent him from having any more children, and then removed
him from power.
Cronus’ rule wasn’t without its own set of problems.
A few years later, he gets told a prophecy that says he is destined to have the same
fate as his father did.
That is to say, his own children are destined to overthrow him from power, just like he
took the power from his father.
In fear, Cronus decides to eat each of his own children, to prevent them from ever taking
the throne.
When his wife, Rhea, found out about it, she was pregnant with yet another boy.
And that little boy, would become the boy that would ultimately fulfill the prophecy.
That little boy, was none other than Zeus himself.
If you’re new here, I’m Darius Cosden and this is Vlogs of Knowledge.
Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell, as I do upload every single Wednesday.
Welcome to the 2nd video in our series about the Greek gods and mythology.
Today, we’re talking about Zeus and if you haven’t seen the first video, I would strongly recommend
that you go and watch it because it really sets the entire tone for everything that I talk about in this video.
This is the Greek island of Crete.
It is the largest of the Greek islands, and to many, the most beautiful.
The people living on it are unaware that there is something very special going on right about
now.
Something that would end up completely changing the power dynamics of the first Greek pantheon.
Hidden deep inside the island, we find a little baby boy.
That boy is being kept hidden, and is being secretly raised by Gaia herself.
Mother Nature.
And when Mother Nature is personally taking care of a young boy, you can be sure that
this boy is important.
This boy, of course, was Zeus.
One of Cronus’ children.
He was kept hidden because the moment that Cronus would find out about his existence,
he would eat him up like he did to all of his other children.
Now, not all versions of the myth tell the same story.
For example, in one version, it is Gaia herself that takes care of Zeus.
In another version, he was raised by a goat.
Or, since Cronus was the ruler of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, one version says Zeus
was hanged from a rope, making him invisible to Cronus because he wasn’t touching the
Earth, nor the sea, nor the heavens.
Whichever version you know or have looked at, one point remains.
Zeus’s childhood was heavily protected.
I mean this was Zeus, after all.
The god who would eventually grow up to be the supreme ruler and the head of the Olympian
pantheon.
Zeus grew up slowly and peacefully, without Cronus ever knowing of his existence.
And Cronus was the ruler of the gods at the time.
He was happily secure with the peace of mind that he had, according to his knowledge, eaten
all of his children, and that none of them could take him over as was prophesied.
When Zeus eventually reached manhood, he got to know and understand everything that had
happened before his birth.
He learnt of all the horrible things that his father did, he learnt how his brothers
and sisters had all been eaten by him, and how he had escaped his doom by the help of
his mother Rhea.
Zeus then wanted his brothers and sisters back.
He didn’t like what Cronus had done.
I mean he thought it was unfair, and he thought that they should have been allowed to live.
But there was a small problem.
Cronus had swallowed the children a very long time ago.
Zeus had to find a way to get around that.
Once again, there are multiple versions of the story.
In one version, Gaia or another god called Metis helps Zeus by giving Cronus a poison,
causing him to vomit his children, in the reverse order by which they had been swallowed.
In another version, Zeus goes to Cronus and forcibly cuts off his stomach, releasing each
of his brothers and sisters one by one, again, in reverse order by which they had been swallowed.
And because of this, some people consider Zeus to be the eldest of his siblings, even
though he was the last to be born.
He also went ahead and released the cyclopses, whom remember Cronus had imprisoned in the
Underworld when he took the power from Uranus in the previous episode.
The cyclopses, thankful for being freed, forged Zeus his iconic thunderbolt weapon as a token
of their appreciation.
Now keep in mind that Cronus wasn’t alone.
He was the ruler of the first Greek pantheon, which was a set of 12 gods that are called
the Titans.
And he obviously wasn’t happy with what had just happened.
His ultimate plan of defying the prophecy was being challenged by Zeus.
Not only was he faced with the reality that he had missed one child when he tried to swallow
them all, but now all of his children had been freed by Zeus.
And I’ll let you make a guess here for a second.
I don’t think any child is going to be happy to find out they have been purposely swallowed
by their father.
Zeus and his siblings, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, as well as the Cyclopses and
a few other gods, got together, and waged war against the Titans in what we now call
the Titanomachy.
A great war between the old generation and the new generation of gods.
A war that lasted for 10 years.
The olympian gods eventually won, and Zeus imprisoned the Titans in the deepest part
of the underworld, successfully fulfilling the prophecy given by the oracle.
And since he was the one who freed his siblings, and was the one who led the battle successfully
against the Titans, Zeus was then given the leader’s position in the new Greek pantheon.
He became the supreme god, the one to rule every other god from this generation, and
the ones that would follow, as long as he nobody took him over.
He and his brothers Hades and Poseidon drew lots on what parts of the universe they would
each control, resulting in Zeus getting the sky, Poseidon getting the sea, and Hades getting
the underworld.
However, nobody had the right to get the earth.
Since it belonged to, and was Gaia herself.
Mother nature.
It was a sacred element.
And speaking of Gaia, I hope that you’ve noticed that she likes to switch sides a lot.
And this situation was no different.
Right after having helped Zeus defeat the Titans, she then turned against him.
The reason she did that was that she wasn’t ok with how Zeus had imprisoned the Titans.
They were also her children.
That’s one of the disadvantages of being the mother of all gods, you want to save each
and every one of them, but you often can’t.
So Gaia of course went on to challenge Zeus.
But..
Zeus is Zeus.
He won and reigned supreme, ushering in a new era of Greek mythology.
One that would become so popular that we are still talking about it thousands of years
later.
So now that we got the myth out of the way, let’s actually go back look at Zeus in more
detail, as well as what his significance was to the Greeks of the time.
As we’ve seen, Zeus was the supreme god.
As such, he was given the utmost importance in Greek mythology.
He was omnipresent, seeing everything, and being involved in everything.
All issues and disputes were mediated by him, and all conflicts were influenced by his decisions.
For example, he was considered as “the great punisher”.
And he loved to punish other gods.
In the Titanomachy, he punished Atlas, a titan, for his role in the war by sentencing him
to uphold the sky for eternity.
Another titan he punished was Prometheus, who was sentenced to having his liver eaten
each and every single day.
Later on, he punished Sisyphus for his trickery by condemning him to roll a huge rock up a
hill in the underworld forever.
And in some versions, he is said to have punished Apollo and Poseidon by having them build the
walls of Troy, after an act of impiety against Zeus.
Now, despite the terrible punishments he could make he was also a peacemaker, famously reconciling
Apollo and Hermes when they fought over the first lyre.
He also mediated a conflict between Hercules and Apollo over the tripod at Delphi, and
also convinced his brother Hades to leave with Persephone for a certain time each year,
to end a horrible draught.
As for the humans, Zeus was fair-minded.
He dealt with human affairs in fairness, and distributed both good and bad things equally
to the human people.
He also had something called “the scales of fate”, in which he would fairly weight
the fate of each human soul.
Something very interesting about the Greeks was that they worshipped each god in different
areas.
Which meant that each Greek god eventually became associated with a certain Greek city.
For example, the city of Athens worshipped Athena, Sparta worshipped Artemis, and Corinth
worshipped Apollo.
Zeus however, was different.
Since he was considered omnipresent, and ever-all seeing, he never got a city to himself.
Nor did he get that many temples of worship.
Instead, he was mostly worshipped in the privacy of people’s homes in the form of an altar
dedicated to him.
He did however have an oracle at Dodona, a sanctuary at Olympia, where the olympic games
were held every 4 years, and also a beautiful gold statue of him that was considered one
of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Still, not that bad for the new father of all Greek mythology.
Now here’s something that we haven’t really touched upon yet.
Zeus’s children.
I say this, because Zeus was kinda special in that respect.
In fact, that’s something he is really known for.
His insane amounts of children, and the way that he went about to get them.
Zeus was infamous for his adulterous affairs, during which he often transformed himself
into various incarnations to bed with his prey.
For example, he got his child Athena by Metis after swallowing her in fear a son would take
over his position.
However, that didn’t stop Athena from being born.
Instead, she came out from his head, and became his favourite child.
He also had Perseus when he appeared to Danae in the form of golden rain, at one point he
transformed himself into a white bull and had Minos, a bull-like god, and he also had
the nine Muses, after having slept with a woman for nine consecutive nights.
Safe to say that Zeus, liked to have fun.
As a result, you can most definitely expect Zeus to be involved in most of Greek mythology.
And we’re going to be seeing lots of him in the coming episodes.
We’ll be able to finally make sense of this crazy, remarcable story that the Greeks are
most well known for.
And honestly, I am very excited!
And that concludes our second video on the Greek gods and mythology!
I really hope that you’ve enjoyed this video and if you did, please leave it a big thumbs
up, make sure to subscribe, make sure to hit the notification bell, join #TeamKnowledge, and be notified
whenever I release a new video.
And now it’s time for questions.
What do you think of Zeus and the fact that he is the head of all the Greek gods?
What is the craziest thing that you’ve heard him do?
Please do leave me a comment I would love to read and answer them all, and bonus points
for you if you do leave a comment you might get featured in next week’s video as a fan
of the week!
As you know and say at the end of every video, I haven’t talked about everything regarding
the Zeus and his mythology.
That’s actually ok.
I'm doing this on purpose because I want you guys to go out and research more on your
own.
Because I believe in research and I believe in getting you guys educated on a subject.
It’s the whole reason why I do this show.
So for those that want to learn more, as always, you’ll find links in the description where
you can start!
With that being said, my name has been Darius Cosden, it’s been an absolute pleasure you
can follow me on social media the links will be in the description, thank you so much for
watching, thank you for giving your time to this video and I’ll see you all next Wednesday!