Aphrodite: (Roman name: Venus) goddess of love and beauty.
Apollo: (Roman name: Apollo) god of the sun, arts, and medicine; ideal of male beauty.
Ares: (Roman name: Mars) god of war.
Artemis: (Roman name: Diana) goddess of hunting and protector of wild animals.
Athena: (Roman name: Minerva) goddess of wisdom, warfare, and crafts.
Demeter: (Roman name: Ceres) goddess of grain, farming, and soil.
Dionysus: (Roman name: Bacchus) god of wine and revelry.
Hades: (Roman name: Pluto) king of the underworld.
Hephaestus: (Roman name: Vulcan) god of fire, volcanoes, and industry.
Hera: (Roman name: Juno) queen of the gods, protector of marriage and childbirth.
Hermes: (Roman name: Mercury) messenger of the gods, patron of travelers, merchants, and thieves.
Hestia: (Roman name: Vesta) goddess of the hearth.
Persephone: (Roman name: Proserpina) queen of the underworld.
Poseidon: (Roman name: Neptune) god of the sea.
Prometheus: giver of fire and crafts to humans.
Zeus: (Roman name: Jupiter) king of the gods, protector of justice and social order.
Demeter (pronounced di-MEE-ter; Roman Ceres), a sister of Zeus, was the goddess of grain, farming, and soil. She had a daughter, Persephone (pronounced per-SEF-uh-nee), by Zeus. Before merging into the Olympian pantheon, Demeter and Hera were aspects of a much older deity called the Great Goddess, an earth goddess worshiped by the agricultural Greeks.
Aphrodite (pronounced af-ro-DYE-tee; Roman Venus), the goddess of love, beauty, and desire, greatly resembled Near Eastern goddesses such as Ishtar (pronounced ISH-tahr) and Astarte (a-STAR-tee). Her husband was Hephaestus (pronounced hi-FES-tuhs; Roman Vulcan), god of fire, volcanoes, and invention. The other gods mocked Hephaestus because he was lame and also because of Aphrodite’s adulteries, such as her love affair with the god of war, Ares (pronounced AIR-eez; Roman Mars).
Two Olympian goddesses were virgins who resisted sexual advances from gods and men. Athena (pronounced uh-THEE-nuh; Roman Minerva), the daughter of Zeus and a female Titan, was the goddess of wisdom, military skill, cities, and crafts. Artemis (pronounced AHR-tuh-miss; Roman Diana) was the goddess of hunting and the protector of wild animals. She and her twin brother, the handsome young god Apollo (pronounced uh-POL-oh), were the children of Zeus and the Titan Leto (pronounced LEE-toh). Apollo functioned as the patron (official god) of archery, music, the arts, and medicine and was associated with the sun, enlightenment, and prophecy or predicting the future. He also served as the ideal of male beauty.
Hermes (pronounced HUR-meez; Roman Mercury) was the son of Zeus and yet another Titan. He served as the gods’ messenger and also as the patron of markets, merchants, thieves, and storytelling. Hestia (pronounced HESS-tee-uh; Roman Vesta), another sister of Zeus, was goddess of the hearth, and her identity included associations with stability, domestic well-being, and the ritual of naming children.
Other Major Deities Hades (pronounced HAY-deez; Roman Pluto), the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, was god of the underworld, where the dead could receive either punishment or a blessed afterlife. Hades dwelt in his underground kingdom and not on Mount Olympus. He controlled supernatural forces connected with the earth and was also associated with wealth.
Dionysus (pronounced dye-uh-NYE-suhs; Roman Bacchus), born as a demigod, became the god of wine, drunkenness, and altered states of consciousness, such as religious frenzy. Like plants that die each winter only to return in the spring, Dionysus is said to have died and been reborn, a parallel to Cretan and Near Eastern myths about dying-and-returning gods. Dionysus eventually took Hestia’s place on Mount Olympus.
World History
