People forget that the old gods did evolve in how they were envisioned and that there was never a clear answer to what exactly the portfolio of a god was. The Greek Gods were never as “well defined” as we envision them today. Belief was always a cryptic and very individualized thing before churches that were bigger, more hierarchical and more encompassing than entire nations got to define how a god aught to be seen.
For this it is important to know that Zeus, also carries facets of a fertility god, a great procreator, from whose loins sprang the other gods and many a mortal hero. It is his literary role as the father god to father heroes and adventurers, as the male part of the Zeus-Hera parent-godhood to embody masculinity, as a ruler god to subjugate and conquer.
Zeus is not a real thing with discernible attributes, like all gods, he is a story that changes with the needs and wants of the narrator and listeners.
People forget that the old gods did evolve in how they were envisioned and that there was never a clear answer to what exactly the portfolio of a god was. The Greek Gods were never as “well defined” as we envision them today. Belief was always a cryptic and very individualized thing before churches that were bigger, more hierarchical and more encompassing than entire nations got to define how a god aught to be seen.
For this it is important to know that Zeus, also carries facets of a fertility god, a great procreator, from whose loins sprang the other gods and many a mortal hero. It is his literary role as the father god to father heroes and adventurers, as the male part of the Zeus-Hera parent-godhood to embody masculinity, as a ruler god to subjugate and conquer.
Zeus is not a real thing with discernible attributes, like all gods, he is a story that changes with the needs and wants of the narrator and listeners.