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Zeus   /zus/   Listen
Zeus

noun
1.
(Greek mythology) the supreme god of ancient Greek mythology; son of Rhea and Cronus whom he dethroned; husband and brother of Hera; brother of Poseidon and Hades; father of many gods; counterpart of Roman Jupiter.
2.
Type genus of the family Zeidae.  Synonym: genus Zeus.



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"Zeus" Quotes from Famous Books



... in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian that I thought, Hey Zeus!—he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'd just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas. And I quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... Nature mixed with his profound religious feeling in the whole description of the stars, the seasons, etc. The expression of Ptolymaeos, that when he gazed at the stars he felt himself raised to the table of Zeus, is weak in comparison with Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed your gaze upon the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to thoughts of the artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has adorned the sky so wonderfully ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldean appellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Oriental name, had retained the right one in this case, as the Cretan inscription on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai Zan.—"Cyril contra Julian." (Here lies great Jove.)) significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or Zaun, was, with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but another ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... earth, Zeus of the Market place Sees Hercules's children kneeling down On his pure altar, strange, forlorn, thrice-orphan. Fearful the Argive sweeps on; ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... thy spacious heavens, Zeus, With clouds of mist, And, like the boy who lops The thistles' heads, Disport with oaks and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... most powerful of the gods was Juʹpi-ter, also called Jove or Zeus. To him all the rest were subject. He was the king of the gods, the mighty Thunderer, at whose nod Olympus shook, and at whose word the heavens trembled. From his great power in the regions of the sky he was ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... ready to the builder's hand, especially the rather soft, brown limestones which the Greeks called by the general name of poros. [Footnote: The word has no connection with porous] This material was not disdained, even for important buildings. Thus the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, one of the two most important religious centers in the Greek world, was built of local poros. The same was the case with the numerous temples of Acragas (Girgenti) and Selinus in Sicily. An even meaner material, sun-dried brick, was sometimes, perhaps ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with Zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. With this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, on an aerial journey. Eventually he reaches Olympus, ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... the servant bustled briskly about his work, Pratinas, for such was his lord's name, continued his monologue, ignoring the presence of his attendant. "Not so bad with me after all. Six years ago to-day it was I came to Rome, with barely an obol of ready money, to make my fortune by my wits. Zeus! But I can't but say I've succeeded. A thousand sesterces here and five hundred there, and now and then a better stroke of fortune—politics, intrigues, gambling; all to the same end. And now?—oh, yes, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... town of Herculaneum, built at its base, was named after him. So also, it is said, was the mountain itself, though in a more round-about way. Hercules, as you will doubtless learn, was feigned to have been the son of the heathen god Zeus and Alcmena, a Theban lady. Now one of the appellations of Zeus was Ves, which was applied to him as being the god of rains and dews—the wet divinity. Thus Hercules was Vesouuios, the son of Ves. How this name should have become corrupted into "Vesuvius," you ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... remember that the gods of the Greek were not all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good, as we believe our God to be. If you read their mythology you will find that with the power of the god much imperfection and weakness were mingled. They did not believe that Zeus had been the greatest god from the beginning, but that there was a time when he had no power. He was not omniscient nor omnipresent, and was himself subject to the decrees of Fate, as when he could not save his loved Sarpedon from death. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... came one day A deputation of tigers. "Mighty potentate," Thus spoke their Cicero before the monarch's throne, "The noble nation of tigers, Has long been wearied with the lion's choice as king. Does not Nature give us an equal claim with his? Therefore, O Zeus, declare my race To be a people of free citizens!" "No," said the god of gods, "it cannot be; You are deceivers, thieves, and murderers, Only a good people merits being free." [Footnote: "Marie Antoinette et sa Famine," ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... after the same supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a real resemblance, if not a ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... and Asia. It was on the terra-cotta objects dug up by Dr. Schliemann at Troy, and conjectured to date from 1000 to 1500 B.C." It is thought to represent in heathen use a revolving wheel, the symbol of the great sun-god, or to stand for the lightning wielded by the omnipotent deity, Manu, Thor, or Zeus. The Christians saw in it a cross concealed from the eyes of their heathen enemies. The fylfot is frequently found in the Greek Church on the vestments of the clergy. The Greek fret or key pattern, with which all are familiar, is a decorative ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... for the body of Hecor. "For thus have the gods appointed for mortal men; that they should live in vexation, while the gods themselves are untroubled. Two vessels are set upon the threshold of Zeus, of the gifts that he dispenses; one of evil things, the other of good; he who receives from both at the hand of thundering Zeus, meets at one time with evil, and at another with good; he who receives from only one, is a ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... Golden King," "The Silvern Ruler of the Air," and "The Father of the Heavens." He wields the thunder-bolts, striking down the spirits of evil on the mountains, and is therefore termed, "The Thunderer," like the Greek Zeus, and his abode is called, "The Thunder-Home." Ukko is often represented as sitting upon a cloud in the vault of the sky, and bearing on his shoulders the firmament, and therefore he is termed, "The Pivot of the Heavens." He ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... figures of painting and sculpture. This is the kind of imagination in virtue of which modern poets are best able to appropriate the classical mythology; but this modern imagination is already familiar to Homer, and that not only in direct description, as in the description of the majesty of Zeus, but also, more subtly, in passages where the character of the divinity is suggested by comparison with one of the human personages, as when Nausicaa is compared to Artemis,[14] a comparison that redounds not less to the honour of the goddess than ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... with its ruby and the images engraved on it AEson may know his son when they meet after many years and many changes. And another thing AEson bade me say to thee, O my lord Chiron: not presumptuous is he, but he knows that this child has the regard of the immortal Goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus." ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... finger on his early pranks. Stolen apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection. But even a village reputation fades. In time the sonnets and glorious battle have the upper place. But things went the other way with Pepys. Rather, his fate is like that of Zeus, who—if legend is to be trusted—was in his life a person of some importance whose nod stirred society on Olympus, but who is now remembered largely for his flirtations and his braggart conduct. A not unlike evil has fallen on the magnificent ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... thought of as independent of marriage, possible in it, generally outside of it; and it has often been thought of as improper and disgusting between husband and wife. There is a poetical suggestion in Homer that marriages are made in heaven. Zeus is said to select a man's wife with a view to the fate allotted to him.[1197] Achilles says that every wise and noble man cherishes his wife.[1198] Ulysses says, "Nothing is better or more conducive to prosperity than that husband and wife should live together in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... up facts and fancies. But why should her present servants deal with only one little special set of the variegated facts of life? It was not in her power to interfere. The Nine, by the terms of the charter that Zeus had granted to them, were bound to leave their servants an absolutely free hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading the works which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once or twice in the course of a century, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... not die alone," which in the earlier volume directly refers to the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson's late piece, The Death of OEnone. The whole poem brings to mind the glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric lines on the divine wedlock of Zeus and Hera. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... origin stands on a different plane, for it illustrates the Egyptian myth of Creation by the divine Potter, who may take the form of either Khnum or Ptah. Monsieur Naville points out the extraordinary resemblance in detail which Hatshepsut's myth of divine paternity bears to the Greek legend of Zeus and Alkmene, where the god takes the form of Amphitryon, Alkmene's husband, exactly as Amen appears to the queen;(3) and it may be added that the Egyptian origin of the Greek story was traditionally recognized in the ancestry ascribed to the ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... was grey, with a few stars above it. The moon had gone over the mountains to make it day in the mystic city of Zeus, and the sun was still lagging along the other side ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... well known, appears in the later Greek pantheon as the Goddess of Justice, but this is a modern and much developed idea, and it is in a very different sense that Themis is described in the Iliad as the assessor of Zeus. It is now clearly seen by all trustworthy observers of the primitive condition of mankind that, in the infancy of the race, men could only account for sustained or periodically recurring action by supposing a personal agent. Thus, the wind blowing was a person and of course a divine person; ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Nereids, bore his orders across the waves or frolicked around the ships, splashing in the faces of the rowers the foam tossed up by their arms. But the sons of Father Time, on conquering the giant, had reapportioned the world, determining its rulers by lot. Zeus remained lord of the land, the obscure Hades, lord of the underworld, reigned in the Plutonic abysses, and Poseidon became master of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... romance of what we call the middle ages, no fairy story taken down from the lips of ancient folk, and dressed for us in modern shape and tongue, that we do not find, in some form or another, in these Eastern poems. The Greek gods are there—Zeus, the Heaven-Father, and his wife Hera, "and Phoebus Apollo the Sun-god, and Pallas Athene, who taught men wisdom and useful arts, and Aphrodite the Queen of Beauty, and Poseidon the Ruler of the Sea, and Hephaistos the King of the Fire, who taught men to work in metals."[2] There, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... Polydeuces and Castor, skilled to guide swift-footed steeds; these her dearly-loved sons she bare at one birth in the house of Tyndareus; nor did she forbid their departure; for she had thoughts worthy of the bride of Zeus. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... of history. What might have gladdened and elevated poor suffering and blinded humanity as a wonderful masterpiece of art, like the book of Hiob, or the Iliad, or Prometheus Vinctus, or the Athene of the Parthenon, or the Zeus of Olympus, showing how man in the creations of the artist rises highest above personal pettiness and weakness, how the genius in fiction creates the highest perfection, such as has never been seen in flesh and blood, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... deliverer; and in order to strengthen his dominion here, he restored all the old customs and religious institutions of the country, and founded Alexandria in the beginning of 331 B.C. Thence he marched through the Libyan Desert, in order to consult the oracle of Ammon, whose priest saluted him as a son of Zeus; and he returned with the conviction that he was indeed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... who after his defeat became ruler of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like other analogies with Greek mythology, is misleading. He also equates Bres, as temporary king of the Tuatha De Danann, with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold. Kronos, again, slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson Lug. Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god equivalent to Kronos.[193] Yet their personalities are quite distinct. Each race works out its ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... inevitably be some auto-erotic manifestations during waking life, a careful study of the facts compels us to believe. There can be no doubt, also, that, under the same conditions, the occurrence of the complete orgasm during sleep with, in men, seminal emissions, is altogether normal. Even Zeus himself, as Pausanias has recorded, was liable to such accidents: a statement which, at all events, shows that to the Greek mind there was nothing derogatory in such an occurrence.[231] The Jews, however, regarded it as an impurity,[232] and the same idea was transmitted to the Christian ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of the gods, creator of the world, possessing greatest power and wisdom, holds the position in Scandinavian mythology that Zeus does in the Greek. Like the Olympian Jupiter, he held the thunder bolts in his hand; but differed from the more inert divinity of Greece in that, arrayed in robes of cloud, he rode through the universe on his marvelous ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... clasping his hands, and throwing his fine i's up to the chandelier, 'the curse of Pwomethus descends upon his wace. Wath and punishment pursue them from genewation to genewation! Wo to genius, the heaven-scaler, the fire-stealer! Wo and thrice-bitter desolation! Earth is the wock on which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his withing wictim;—men, the vultures that feed and fatten on him. Ai, ai! it is agony eternal,—gwoaning and solitawy despair! And you, Yellowplush, would penetwate these mystewies; you would waise the awful veil, and stand in the twemendous ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... would go along in the sunlight, past the little homes where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the straggling stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the office of the weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe now and the squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere. Mallon's Hardware Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with its pillars of twisted handkerchiefs, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... claimed that this temple was devoted to the worship of Viracocha, a great deity, the Jove or Zeus of the ancient pantheon. It seems to me more reasonable to suppose that a primitive folk constructed here a temple to the presiding divinity of the place, the god who gave them this precious clay. The principal industry of the neighboring village is still the manufacture of pottery. No better clay ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... himself occupying the place of Zeus, holding in his hand the lightnings of heaven, flitted through the minister's mind. He smiled faintly. Elizabeth evidently caught what was in the young man's mind, for she met his glance ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... Zeus, that oft would make a mist and smother Some swain beset, and screen him from the crowd, I prayed for vapours; but his mind was other: Yet was I answered, though the god was proud, For, anyhow, I trod on Miss Pritt's mother And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... instead of "Joshua." A gymnasium was built in Jerusalem where Jewish lads learned to exercise and play games after the Greek style. Many of them tried to hide the fact that they were Jews, and too often they ceased to worship Jehovah, the God of their fathers, and offered sacrifices to Zeus and ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... That night, while all are sleeping, Zeus sends a deceptive dream to Agamemnon to suggest the moment has come to attack Troy. At dawn, therefore, Agamemnon calls an assembly, and the chiefs decide to test the mettle of the Greeks by ordering a return home, and, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... that they would win the victory if they stood on the defensive and did not attack. Aristeides sent to Delphi, and received a response from the oracle, that the Athenians would conquer if they prayed to Zeus, to Hera of Kithaeron, and to Pan and the nymphs Sphragitides, and if they sacrificed to the heroes Androkrates, Leukon, Peisander, Damokrates, Hypsion, Aktaion, and Polyidus, and if they would fight in their own territory, in the plain of Demeter of Eleusis ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... the modern calendar, as many an ancient holiday has gradually been lost in the whirligig of time. No long procession now awaited the patroon's pleasure, when it should suit him to receive the tribute of guilders, corn or meal; the day might have been as obsolete as an Hellenic festival day to Zeus, for all the observance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... Religion—must be classed amongst the creeds of Hindostan; by the side of which there stand many kinds of simple philosophy; just as was the case in ancient Greece, where, in one and the same city, there were the philosophers of the Academy and the believers in Zeus. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... The Temple of Karnak The pyramids Babylonian architecture Indian architecture Greek architecture The Doric order The Parthenon The Ionic order The Corinthian order Roman architecture The arch Vitruvius Greek sculpture Phidias Statue of Zeus Praxiteles Scopas Lysippus Roman sculpture Greek painters Polygnotus Apollodorus Zeuxis Parrhasius Apelles The decline of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... no heroes and heroines of the mythical period of their history to the sky, and the deified Csars never entered that lofty company, but the heavens are filled with the early myths of the Greeks. Herakles nightly resumes his mighty labors in the stars; Zeus, in the form of the white "Bull,'' Taurus, bears the fair Europa on his back through the celestial waves; Andromeda stretches forth her shackled arms in the star-gemmed ether, beseeching aid; and Perseus, in a blaze of diamond armor, revives his heroic ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... other chiefs, to each of whom the title Basileus is applicable as well as to himself: his supremacy has been inherited from his ancestors, and passes by inheritance, as a general rule, to his eldest son, having been conferred upon the family as a privilege by the favour of Zeus. In war, he is the leader, foremost in personal prowess, and directing all military movements; in peace, he is the general protector of the injured and oppressed; he offers up moreover those public prayers and sacrifices which are intended to obtain for the whole people the favour of ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... family started for the country, and only as many gods could go as could be pasted in the book. Miss Stone had decreed it and what Miss Stone said must be done.... Betty Harris looked anxiously at Poseidon, and laid him down, in favour of Zeus. She took him up in her fingers again, with a little flourish of the paste-tube, and made him fast. Poseidon must go, too. The paste-tub wavered uncertainly over the maze of gods and found another and stuck it in place, and ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... were carried out here. Professor Koldeway found inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Sardanapalus and thereafter inscriptions of Babylonian Kings. Herodotus calls the group of buildings 'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of Nabopolassar relate how the god Marduk commanded him 'to lay the foundation of the Tower of Babylon ... firm on the bosom of the underworld while its ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... precision, and smoke a cigarette in the most approved style, but I never heard any of the boys express a wish to become that sort of man. Had there occurred a meeting, on the campus, between him and Zeus he would have been offended, I am sure, if Zeus had failed to set off a few thunderbolts in his honor. We used to have at home a bantam rooster that could create no end of flutter in the chicken yard, and could crow mightily; but when I reflected that he ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... uncountable woes that were heapt on the host of Achaia; Whence many valorous spirits of heroes, untimely dissever'd, Down unto Hades were sent, and themselves to the dogs were a plunder And all fowls of the air; but the counsel of Zeus was accomplish'd: Even from the hour when at first were in fierceness of rivalry sunder'd Atreus' son, the Commander of Men, and the noble Achilleus. Who of the Godheads committed the twain in the strife of contention? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... not have Miriam, he would be King of France. It is thus that history is made, for those who make it are only men. And Clio, that greatest of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cluster all the famous names of the makers of this world's story, has, after all, only had the reversion of the earth's great men. She has taken them after some forgotten woman of their own choosing has had ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... most remarkable. It was of Phrygian origin and of a mixed religious, military, and mimetic character; the performers were armed, and bounded about, springing and clashing their arms and shields to imitate the Corybantes endeavouring to stifle the cries of the infant Zeus, in Crete. The Pyrrhic (fig. 13), a war dance of Doric origin, was a rapid dance to the double flute, and made to resemble an action in battle; the Hoplites of Homer is thought to have been of this kind. The Dorians were ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous

... opinion it is not Zeus but Prometheus who has created men," answered the Sophist. "But Zeus gave unfinished man two imperishable gifts—the sense of ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... of polytheism being chiefly derived from Greece and Rome, we understand by it a certain more or less organized system of gods, different in power and rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a Zeus or Jupiter. The Vedic polytheism differs from the Greek and Roman polytheism, and, I may add, likewise from the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the Polynesian, the American, and most of the African races, in the same manner as a confederacy of village communities differs from a ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... officials, who now led us across the vast apartment and to the foot of a kind of throne which stood directly under the great clock face. Then, for the first time, we recognized Ala, seated on the throne. Beside her was a person of majestic stature, with features like those of a statue of Zeus, and long curling hair of snowy whiteness. The severity of his aspect struck cold to my heart, but Ala's countenance was smiling and full of encouragement. As we were led to our places a hush fell upon the throng ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... puts into the mouth of Protagoras. He first describes the arts with which men contrived barely to sustain themselves, in a condition no better than the beasts which preyed on them in their helplessness. It is then that through the gift of Zeus they are rescued from their degradation and invested ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... dull roar of the German bull-horns and the war-cry of the Goths. Instead of the red cloak of the Sophists, and the dark hoods of the Philosophers, the skin-coats of the barbarians fluttered in the breeze. Wodan and Donar had gotten the victory over Zeus and Athene. ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... expense, by M. Constantin Carapanos, a native of Arta. In his monograph, Dodone et ses Ruines (Paris, 1878, 4to), M. Carapanos gives a detailed description of the theatre, the twofold Temenos (I. L'Enceinte du Temple, II. Temenos, pp. 13-28), including the Temple of Zeus and a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and of the numerous ex voto offerings and inscriptions on lead which were brought to light during the excavations, and helped to identify the ruins. An accompanying folio volume ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... knowledge and the volition of the "wise man" made their Divinity (for logical thinkers) a subject for compliments, rather than a power to be reckoned with. In Hindu speculation the "Arahat," still more the "Buddha," becomes the superior of Brahma; the stoical "wise man" is, at least, the equal of Zeus. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... have been as significant and unforgettable a figure as Apollo or his sister, as Zeus, Athena, and the other greater gods. If ever, while that phase of religion lasted, his character had been obscured and his features dimmed, he would have been recreated by every new votary: poets would never have tired of singing his praises, or sculptors of rendering his ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... of asteroids. Beyond this was still another belt. And on the other side of the double asteroid belt was the fourth planet, a fifty-thousand-mile-in-diameter methane-ammonia giant which Morey named Zeus in honor ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... how Zeus was lodged once more By Baucis and Philemon; The text said, "Not alone of yore, But every day at every door Knocks still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... its earliest use, perhaps to its origin, among the people who lived about the AEgean Sea, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find that at first gold coin was issued under the patronage of Apollo, that silver bore the stamp of Zeus, and that copper coins were dedicated to Aphrodite, as the nearest representative among Greek divinities of that Phoenician goddess who presided over trade in the ports and markets of the East. But among the coins that remain—and some of these are shown to be of early ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... the figure of the goddess. Now she is manifest in her Hellenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known where all are fair" (Odyssey, vi.). Again, Artemis appears more thoughtful, as in the sculpture of Jean Goujon, touched with the sadness ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... though enthroned too high To fear assault of envious Gods, His beloved Argive seer would Zeus ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... of a child with a flower, or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but something in us appears to save us from the punishing comet of Zeus. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod! Mindful were the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... pp 243 and 256. Parkman's Discovery p. 246—and Carver's Travels, p. 67 [b] The Dakotas like the ancient Romans and Greeks think the home of the winds is in the caverns of the mountains, and their great Thunder bird resembles in many respects the Jupiter of the Romans and the Zeus of the Greeks. The resemblance of the Dakota mythology to that of the older Greeks and Romans ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... serve us inwardly only to such degree as our spiritual nature can ally itself with them and find expression in them. It is simply impossible for any man to associate the idea of divinity with the conception of selfishness; but he may associate the notion of Zeus or Allah or the like with that or any other conception of baseness, and out of the result may form a sort of crust over his spiritual intelligence, which shall either imprison it utterly, or force it to oblique ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Washington has not lost in brilliancy since he passed from the world in which he acted such a providential part. Like the Phidian Zeus his proportions are all the more majestic for the distance which rounds over any venial defect. His example is as valuable to the American Republic of the present as his life-work was to the America of a century ago. As water never ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... Amaltheia, nurse of Zeus in Crete, there were plenty of legends. Atticus is making in his house something like what Cicero had made in his, and called his academia or gymnasium. That of Atticus was probably also a summer house or study, with garden, fountains, etc., and ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... now to a picture which represents a scene in one of the most beautiful stories of ancient Greece. There was a king of Thessaly called Admetus, with whom the god Apollo served for a time as herdsman. Apollo had offended Zeus, the Father of the gods, by killing the forgers of the thunderbolts with which Zeus had ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick

... Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is Crete, and the three interlocutors—Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger—have joined company on a pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not only his parentage but much parental instruction. Now the day being hot, even scorching, and the road from Cnossus to the Sacred Cave a long one, our three pilgrims, who have ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... important testimony, which, indeed, I believe you read when with me. Think of me and do not forget that you represent a disinterested artist in opposition to a niggardly family. How gladly do men withhold from the poor artist in one respect what they pay him in another, and there is no longer a Zeus with whom an artist can invite himself to feast on ambrosia. Strive, my dear friend, to accelerate the tardy steps of justice. Whenever I feel myself elevated high, and in happy moments revel in my artistic sphere, circumstances drag me ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... O Father Zeus, only save thou the sons of the Acheans from the darkness, and make clear sky and vouchsafe sight to our eyes, and then, so it be but light, slay us, since such is thy good pleasure. (Iliad, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... of the legend told that a certain Pamylis of Thebes having gone to draw water had heard a voice proceeding from the temple of Zeus, which ordered him to proclaim aloud to the world the birth of the great king, the beneficent Osiris. He had received the child from the hands of Kronos, brought it up to youth, and to him the Egyptians had consecrated the feast of Pamylies, which resembled ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... passing of Calabria spring had leaped into the softness of full summer, and the breezes were gentle as those that long ago fanned the cheeks and hair of Io, beloved of Zeus, as she flew southwards toward the Nile. The passengers, less lovely than that fair daughter of Argos, and with the unrest of thinner adventure in their blood, basked lazily in the sun; but the sea was not less haunted for those among them whose hearts could travel. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... Christ" can be seen, for instance, upon a monument of Isis, the Virgin Mother of the Sun-God, which dates from the second century before our era.[51] Also upon the coins of Ptolemaeus; on one of which is a head of Zeus Ammon upon one side, and an eagle bearing the {image "monogram3.gif"} in its claws upon the other.[52] The symbol in question also appears upon Greek money struck long before the birth of Jesus; for instance upon certain varieties ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... The python was a monstrous serpent which arose from the mud left after the flood in which Deucalion survived. The python lived in a cave on Mount Parnassus and there Apollo slew him. Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha were saved from the flood because Zeus respected their piety. They obeyed the oracle and threw stones behind them from which sprang men and women ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... herself by the unmarried mother goddess." Nor were the early Greeks much better. Some of their religious festivals were sensual orgies, some of their gods nearly as licentious as those of the Hindoos. Their supreme god, Zeus, is an Olympian Don Juan, and the legend of the birth of Aphrodite, their goddess of love, is in its original form ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would be shocking, since that which it vindicated, in the mind of the victim either did not exist, or ought not. The ancient Greek who withheld from the sacrifices to Showery Zeus because a thunderbolt destroyed his hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slaves because a god took the life of his eldest son, was neither a ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... to his mind, as he drew near the waiting, sneering Kamrou, that brave old war-cry of the Greeks of Xenophon as they hurled themselves against the vastly greater army of the Persians—"Zeus Sotor kai Nike!—Zeus ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... six armed bearers, and contained no "silver-bodied damsels with musky tresses," but only steel-clad warriors, who, upon arrival in the Moslem camp, sprang from their concealment as surprisingly as Pallas from the head of Zeus. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... last they came to Crete, and to Cnossus, beneath the peaks of Ida, and to the palace of Minos the great king, to whom Zeus himself taught laws. So he was the wisest of all mortal kings, and conquered all the AEgean isles; and his ships were as many as the sea-gulls, and his palace like a marble hill. And he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... entered with a peculiar enthusiasm. As the Jews, following the impulses of a holier faith, went up to Jerusalem to celebrate as one family their sacred rites; so the Greeks repaired to hallowed shrines of Zeus or Apollo, assembling from afar on the plain of Olympia and at the foot ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... most of these identifications have now been abandoned. But a few names and figures seem to be found among both the Asiatic and European Aryans and to point to a common stock of ideas. Dyaus, the Sky God, is admittedly the same as Zeus and Jupiter. The Asvins agree in character, though not in name, with the Dioscuri and other parallels are quoted from Lettish mythology. Bhaga, the bountiful giver, a somewhat obscure deity, is the same ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor. "Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all the same."[187] The fortitude of that is for ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... no analogy between these counterfeits or myths and the "true God," save that remote power of God which is divided up and parceled out among them. Their morals were the worst. The whole mythical system is simply one grand demonstration of human apostacy from the "true God." Homer introduces Zeus in love, and bitterly complaining and bewailing himself, and plotted against by the other gods. He represents the gods as suffering at the hands of men. Mars and Venus were wounded by Di-o-me-de. ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... White-armed Nausicaae led their sport; and as the huntress Artemis goes down a mountain, down long Taygetus or Erymanthus, exulting in the boars and the swift deer, while round her sport the woodland nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, and glad is Leto's heart, for all the rest her child o'ertops by head and brow, and easily marked is she, though all are fair; so did this virgin ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... master painters have spread out the whole legendary story of the capture of Troy and of the defeat of the Amazons; likewise the more historical tale of the battle of Marathon. Yet another promenade, the "Stoa of Zeus," is sacred to Zeus, Giver of Freedom. The walls are not frescoed, but hung with the shields of ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... ultimate line of celestial beauty, the angle within which moves what is inferior, beyond which what is portentous. From the head conclude to the proportions of the neck, the limbs, the extremities; from the Father to the race of gods; all, the sons of one, Zeus; derived from one source of tradition, Homer; formed by one artist, Phidias; on him measured and decided by Parrhasius. In the simplicity of this principle, adhered to by the succeeding periods, lies the uninterrupted progress and the unattainable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... ages has now passed into history—or, classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred. To this day a popular tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the gods to save them from the deluge. But the "Father" expelled them from the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the mountain, in the valleys, and by the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... newspapers' Zeus—thou weekly, monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger! Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a suite of thine own ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... twin deities, the sons of Zeus (or Jupiter). Their birthplace was Sparta, in Greece, and there ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... anticipation, the evils which they will suffer in the land of the Greeks. 'In the city of Pallas, of Athena, on the beautiful seat in the woven peplus I shall yoke colts to a chariot, painting them in various different coloured threads, or else the races of the Titans, whom Zeus, the son of Kronos, puts to sleep in fiery all-surrounding flame.' The names of those Athenians who had been eminent for military virtue, were also embroidered on it. This will explain the following allusion in the Knights of Aristophanes, where ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... mile or more to the south-east, on the banks of the Ilissus, stood a magnificent structure dedicated to Olympian Zeus—one of the four largest temples of Greece, ranking with that of Demeter at Eleusis and that of Diana at Ephesus. Its foundations remain, and sixteen of the huge Corinthian columns belonging to its majestic triple colonnade. One of these is fallen. Breaking up into the numerous disks of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... origin of the Pythia, for example, contains points not without resemblance to certain passages in our own early sacred history. The Son of God is at enmity with the serpent; the serpent pursues a woman, and is trodden under foot by the Son. Zeus is the god of the Greeks; Apollo is his son; Leto—or Latona—is pursued by Python, the serpent, and is slain by Apollo. To commemorate this deed a temple was erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia. Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... the sun. For this, I promise on thy festival To pour libation, looking o'er the sea, Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak Thy great words, and describe thy royal face— 40 Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most, Within the eventual ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... there is no movement which starts up full grown from the brain of any one man, or even from the mind of any one generation of men, like Athene from the head of Zeus. The historical epoch which marks the crisis of the given change is, after all, little beyond a prominent landmark—a parting of the ways—led up to by a long preparatory development. This is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the Reformation ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus? ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... heathens had the same thought and the same word; the old Greeks and Romans, for instance, who many thousand years ago spoke the same tongue as we did then, called him Zeus or Deus Pater; Jupiter; the heavenly Father, Father of gods and men; using the same word as our Tuisco, a little altered. And that same word, changed slightly, means God now, in Welsh, French, and Italian, and many languages in Europe and ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... catch sight of it, is entangled with Greek religion. We are accustomed to think of Greek religion as the religion of art and beauty, the religion of which the Olympian Zeus and the Athena Polias are the idols, the poems of Homer the sacred books. Thus Cardinal Newman speaks of "the classical polytheism which was gay and graceful, as was natural in a civilised age." Yet such a view is ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... told[37] that man shifted his belief from the earth to the sky, the sun was found to be the source of energy and worship was transferred to the Heavens. Just as formerly the female deity was identified with the earth, so the male deity was identified with the sun, Zeus and Apollo being two examples of the latter type from ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... antiquity that the will of the gods and a knowledge of future events might be learned at certain shrines, of which the most famous were those of Apollo at Delphi, of Zeus or Jupiter at Dodona, and of Hammon in Egypt. Hammon was really an Egyptian god, represented as having the horns of a ram, but he was identified by the Greeks with Zeus and by the Romans ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... comparison of the value of the letters of the different alphabets. But, to continue our subject, we shall add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the derivation of thein. If we suppose Deus to be derived from the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you, and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle. (See note p. 143). Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of the second order, appears ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... "thy gift has been bestowed upon thee to little purpose. Say not, at least, that thou usest the speech of the Gods to blaspheme them. Thou art surely yet a votary of Zeus?" ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... with the smell of Turkish tobacco and golden pekoe and hot-house violets and Houbigant's Quelque-fleurs all tangled up together. Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave of wild flowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte and the tumbling pillars of the Temple of Olympian Zeus lying time-mellowed in the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... was much the more moved to complaining by this, namely that his son was slain by the man whom he had himself cleansed of manslaughter. And being grievously troubled by the misfortune he called upon Zeus the Cleanser, protesting to him that which he had suffered from his guest, and he called moreover upon the Protector of Suppliants 37 and the Guardian of Friendship, 38 naming still the same god, and calling upon him as the Protector of Suppliants because when he received the guest into his house ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... before sentence was passed against me, if I have not been convicted of having done any of those things whereof my accusers accused me? It has not been proved against me that I have sacrificed to novel divinities in place of Zeus and Hera and the gods who form their company. I have not taken oath by any other gods, ...
— The Apology • Xenophon

... serpents. "Niobe" a famous statue, in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (a Roman copy of a lost Greek original attributed to Scopas), of Niobe — in Greek mythology the daughter of Tantalus whose children were slaughtered by Zeus and who was transformed into a weeping image ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the "blameless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various



Words linked to "Zeus" :   Greek mythology, Zeidae, family Zeidae, Greek deity, Zeus faber, John Dory, fish genus



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