THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Zeus, youngest child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, rules the sky and wields the thunderbolt as king of the Olympian gods. Cronus, fearing overthrow, swallowed each of his children at birth; Rhea saved the last by handing her husband a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes and hiding the infant in a cave on Crete. Grown to strength, Zeus forced his father to disgorge his siblings and led them through a ten-year war against the Titans, armed with thunderbolts forged by the Cyclopes, until the elder gods were cast into Tartarus.
After the victory the three brothers cast lots: Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld. From his seat on Mount Olympus he punishes oath-breakers and enforces the order of gods and men, while his many transformations — bull, swan, shower of gold — fathered heroes across Greece, Heracles and Perseus among them. His sanctuary at Olympia held Phidias's gold-and-ivory statue, completed around 435 BCE and counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, and the games held there every four years were celebrated in his name.
