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.
LibraryUS_042-047_Affairs_of_Zeus.indd 47 05/12/17 4:15 pm