Zeus: An Autobiography

Aside from my part in Odysseus’ journeys, I have some pretty interesting tales of my own. We can start with my family. I guess you can say I get around. Technically, my wife is Hera, but I believe that I should get my choice of other women too. Now before I go on, I really didn’t have a choice in marrying my sister. Because gods are only supposed to marry other gods, I really didn’t have that many choices, because there were only about 10 of us. Being the head god is a pretty hard job. I need to have some fun sometimes too. I have about 70 kids with about 20 different women. Some of my children were Gods, like Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Hermes. One of these births happened in a very strange way. Hera had gotten mad at me again, and she decided that she would make ME have a baby. Athena was then born, but not in the usual way. She sprang out of my head fully dressed in armor. This hurt quite badly, but Hephaestus mended my head pretty well. Some of my children were very special mortals though, like Hercules, who was the greatest of all human heroes, or my grandson, the king Menelaus.

One of my more famous habits is that I tend to alter the form of people who I really like, or just don’t like at all. I turned a man to stone for trying to steal the golden dog that watched over me in the cave that my mother hid me in. I turned a nymph into a turtle when she refused to attend my wedding, and, I once killed a man for pretending to imitate me, while riding around in a chariot making loud noises that he seemed to think resembled thunder. On the other hand, after he had died, I turned a righteous man into and eagle, which, if you haven’t figured out by now is my special bird. My special tree is the oak tree, because it is so big and powerful, like me.

My main temple is in Olympia. It is now just ruins, but at one time it stood over forty feet tall. It was made out of beautiful pillars that had very intricate designs and mysterious symbols on them. The best part of the temple though, was the statue of me. It was even considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, before it burned to the ground.

As you can see, I am a rather important god. It is difficult being in charge of everything that ever happens, but it has its benefits. If it wasn’t for me, Odysseus would probably still be stuck on that island with my grand-daughter Calypso.