Antioch in SELEUKIS AND PIERIA 47BC Rare Ancient Greek Coin ZEUS Tripod i31128

In the
ancient Greek

religion
, Zeus


zews



zooss
;
Ancient Greek
: Ζε�ς;
Modern
Greek
: Δίας, Dias) was the “Father of Gods and men” (πατὴÏ�
ἀνδ�ῶν τε θεῶν τε)
who ruled the Olympians of
Mount
Olympus
as a father ruled the family. He was the
god of sky

and
thunder
in
Greek mythology
. His
Roman
counterpart is
Jupiter
and
Etruscan
counterpart is
Tinia
.

Zeus was the child of
Cronus
and
Rhea
, and the youngest of his siblings. In most
traditions he was married to

Hera, although, at the oracle of
Dodona
, his consort was
Dione
: according to the
Iliad
, he is the father of
Aphrodite
by Dione.
He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic
offspring, including
Athena
,
Apollo
and
Artemis
,
Hermes
,
Persephone
(by
Demeter
),
Dionysus
,
Perseus
,
Heracles
,
Helen of Troy
,
Minos
, and the

Muses (by
Mnemosyne
); by Hera, he is usually said to have
fathered Ares
,
Hebe
and
Hephaestus
.

As
Walter Burkert
points out in his book, Greek
Religion, “Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as
Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.”
For the Greeks, he was the
King of the Gods
, who oversaw the universe. As
Pausanias
observed, “That Zeus is king in
heaven is a saying common to all men”.
In Hesiod’s Theogony
Zeus assigns the various gods
their roles. In the
Homeric Hymns
he is referred to as the
chieftain of the gods.

His symbols are the
thunderbolt
,
eagle
,
bull
, and

oak.
In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer”
also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the
Ancient Near East
, such as the
scepter
. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek
artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt
leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.

Etymology

 

The Chariot of Zeus, from an 1879 Stories from the Greek
Tragedians by Alfred Church

A sacrificial tripod was a type of

altar
used by the

ancient Greeks. The most famous was the

Delphic

tripod
, on

which the Pythian

priestess
took her seat to deliver the

oracles
of the

deity. The seat was formed by a circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which

a branch of

laurel

was deposited when it was unoccupied by the priestess. In this sense,

by Classical times the tripod was sacred to

Apollo
. The

mytheme
of

Heracles

contesting with Apollo for the tripod appears in vase-paintings older than the

oldest written literature. The oracle originally may have been related to the

primal deity, the Earth.

Another well-known tripod was the

Plataean Tripod

, made from a tenth part of the spoils taken from the

Persian

army after the

Battle of Plataea

. This consisted of a golden basin, supported by a

bronze

serpent

with three heads (or three serpents intertwined), with a list of the

states that had taken part in the war inscribed on the coils of the serpent. The

golden bowl was carried off by the

Phocians
during

the

Third Sacred War

; the stand was removed by the emperor

Constantine

to

Constantinople

(modern

Istanbul
),

where it still can be seen in the

hippodrome

, the Atmeydanı, although in damaged condition, the heads

of the serpents disappeared however one is now on display at the nearby Istanbul

Archaeology Museums. The inscription, however, has been restored almost

entirely. Such tripods usually had three ears (rings which served as

handles) and frequently had a central upright as support in addition to the

three legs.

Tripods frequently are mentioned by

Homer
as prizes

in

athletic games

and as complimentary gifts; in later times, highly decorated

and bearing inscriptions, they served the same purpose. They also were used as

dedicatory offerings

to the deities, and in the dramatic contests at the

Dionysia

the victorious

choregus

(a wealthy citizen who bore the expense of equipping and training

the chorus) received a crown and a tripod. He would either dedicate the tripod

to some deity or set it upon the top of a marble structure erected in the form

of a small circular temple in a street in

Athens
, called

the street of tripods, from the large number of memorials of this kind.

One of these, the

Choragic Monument of Lysicrates

, erected by him to commemorate his victory

in a dramatic contest in

335 BC
, still

stands. The form of the victory tripod, now missing from the top of the

Lysicrates monument, has been rendered variously by scholars since the

eighteenth century.

The scholar

Martin L. West

writes that the sibyl at Delphi shows many traits of

shamanistic

practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian

practices. He cites her sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her

prophecies, her being in an ecstatic trance state, similar to shamans, and her

utterings, unintelligible.

According to Herodotus (The Histories, I.144), the victory tripods were not

to be taken from the temple sanctuary precinct, but left there for dedication.