46 THE MANY AFFAIRS OF ZEUS
was betrothed to Amphitryon, the
son of a Theban general. Zeus
assumed his guise to approach
Alcmene while her fiancé was away
avenging the deaths of her brothers.
King Acrisius of Argos was
particularly anxious to keep his
only daughter Danaë chaste. He
had been warned by an oracle that
she was destined to bear a son who
would one day slay him. To avoid
this fate, he placed her in a cell so
that no one could come near her.
However, Zeus took the form of a
shower of gold to pour himself
through her prison skylight. The
child of the encounter, Perseus,
would later unwittingly cause her
father’s death.Zeus as beast
Despite her name, Europa was
a child of Asia, a princess from
Phoenicia, a region covering parts
of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.
Smitten by her charms, Zeus tookon the form of a fine, white bull and
mingled among her father’s cattle.
Picking flowers, Europa noticed the
new bull and was struck by its
beauty and its seeming gentleness.
When she drew near to pet it, the
bull lay down and she climbed onto
its back. Suddenly, the bull leapt
up and sped away across the fields
and over the sea while the terrified
girl clung on for dear life. The bull
only stopped when it reached the
island of Crete, where Zeus at last
revealed himself and bedded his
young victim. Zeus rewarded
Europa by making her Crete’s first
queen. In time, she gave birth to
Minos, the island’s first king.
Scholars think the story of Europa
may have originated in Crete,
where the cult of the bull also
produced the story of Theseus and
the Minotaur.
For his assault on Antiope, the
daughter of Asopos, a river god
from Attica in central Greece,A fearful Europa rides the waves,
clinging to Zeus, who took the form
of a bull to abduct her. This powerful
image was painted in 1910 by the
Russian artist Valentin Serov.Zeus took the shape of a satyr—a
half-man, half-goat who roamed
the wild woods. Usually associated
with the idea of lechery, satyrs were
often depicted with erections in
ancient art; Zeus had disguised his
identity, not his lust.Hiding from Hera
In some stories, it was Zeus’s
quarry who had to take a different
shape. In the case of Io—the
daughter of the king of Argos, and
a priestess in the temple of Zeus’s
wife, Hera—Zeus transformed
himself into a cloud to make his
approach and conceal it from the
watchful Hera. Once he had raped
Io, he turned her into a beautiful
white heifer, to hide her from his
wife. Hera saw through the trick
and asked if she could have the
heifer as a gift. Zeus had no option
but to agree. Hera consigned Io to
the care of the hundred-eyed giant
Argus to watch over.
Maddened with frustration,
Zeus sent his son Hermes to slay
the all-seeing herdsman; the divine
messenger blinded Argus with aSuddenly, the bull, possessed
of his desire, jumped up and
galloped off towards the sea.
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ANCIENT GREECE 47
touch from his kerykeion, or staff.
As the giant lay there dead, Hermes
collected up his hundred eyes and
set them in a peacock’s tail: the
bird was sacred to Hera from that
time on.
If Zeus thought the way was
now clear for him to pursue Io, he
was wrong. Hera sent a fly to attack
her. Buzzing about, and biting her
again and again, the insect put Io
to flight and chased her across the
Earth. Io was never to find rest.The birth of Athena
Metis, Zeus’s cousin—and in some
accounts, his first wife—wrought
her own transformation in a bid to
shake off Zeus’s pursuit. Metis
assumed a series of different forms
to avoid him, but Zeus eventually
succeeded in catching her and
making her pregnant. Nevertheless,
Zeus was worried: Metis was
renowned for her sharp intellect
and wiliness, and an oracle had
told him that Metis was destined
to bear a child who matched her
strength and cunning. Zeus—a
usurper who had overthrown hisown father—was on his guard
against this child. Just before
Metis was due to give birth, Zeus
challenged her to a shape-shifting
match. She was vain enough to
agree. When Zeus told her that he
did not believe she could transform
herself into a tiny fly, she promptly
did—and was swallowed by a
triumphant Zeus.
It was a clever trick, but it did
not succeed. When Zeus developed
an unbearable headache, the Titan
god Prometheus swung an axe at
his head, splitting it wide open. Out
from the wound sprang Athena, the
goddess of war and wisdom, in a
full suit of armor. She became one
of the most important deities on
Olympus and the patron goddess of
the powerful city state of Athens.Both transformed
In some stories, both predator and
prey underwent changes. Zeus
again disguised himself as an
eagle to pursue Asteria, the Titan
goddess of shooting stars. Shetransformed herself into another
bird—the timid quail—in a
desperate bid to escape and finally
dove into the sea. There she
changed her shape again and
was preserved forever as an island,
later variously identified as Delos
or Sicily. It was on this island that
Asteria’s younger sister Leto was
to find sanctuary some years later,
after she, too, caught the lecherous
eye of Zeus. Here she gave birth to
twins: Apollo, the god of the sun
and of poetry, prophecy, and
healing; and the divine huntress
Artemis, goddess of the moon.
Mythology relates scores of
Zeus’s exploits, highlighting a
sexual appetite that apparently
drew little censure in ancient
Greece. Despite his countless acts
of rape, deception, and infidelity,
the king of the gods was not
seen as a villain. In his dialogue
Euthyphro, the ancient Greek
philosopher Plato declared, “Do not
men regard Zeus as the best and
most righteous of the gods?” ■Athena springs from a gash in Zeus's
head, in a scene decorating an amphora
(ca.500 bce) from Attica, Greece.
Behind Zeus, Prometheus holds the axe
that made the wound.Asteria in the form of
a quail flew across the sea,
with Zeus in pursuit.
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