his world order and then enter the temple to see what came to be one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, the huge enthroned Zeus by Pheidias, a statue which
changed the path of Greek art.
Greek gods may not be neatly packaged, but that helps them to provoke thought as
we bring together ideas from all the different places where we encounter them –
participating in cult, watching cult, seeing the myth depicted, hearing it acted out,
listening to it sung. You could only emerge humbled from the experience of Zeus.
The Twelve Olympian Gods, the ‘‘Pantheon’’
A pantheon (‘‘all-gods’’) is the set of gods that any individual culture possesses, and
because they are personal gods they will tend to form a family. In modern treatments
these tend to be formalized as thetwelveOlympian gods: Zeus and Hera, Poseidon
and Demeter, Apollo and Artemis, Ares and Aphrodite, Hermes and Athene,
Hephaestus and Hestia. Which unfortunately leaves out Dionysus – so sometimes
Hestia is relegated. Unfortunately again, this does not take account of Heracles, who
becomes an Olympian god (Herodotus 2.44), joining his new wife Hebe (‘‘Youth-
fulness’’) on Olympus – so she was an Olympian too. It also leaves out deities such as
the Muses and Graces who are assuredly Olympian goddesses:
Mousai Olympiades, kourai Dios aigiochoio
‘‘Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus’’
HesiodTheogony 52It is therefore not a straightforward matter of fact that there were twelve Olympian
gods. The Greek gods of cult and of mythology were quite numerous and various.
Nonetheless, the attempt to create a twelve-strong pantheon began as early as the
sixth century BC at both Olympia and Athens.
First, Olympia. The ‘‘Homeric’’Hymn to Hermes(500 BC, plus or minus) sets
Hermes on the banks of the river Alpheius, evidently at Olympia, where he divides a
sacrifice into twelve portions for the gods (line 128; cf. Cassola 1975:174). And in an
ode to be sung at Olympia Pindar recalls Heracles sacrificing by the Alpheius to the
‘‘Twelve Lord Gods’’ (Olympian10.49) as he founded the cult site of Olympia.
Herodorus of Heracleia, an author of around 400 BC, gave more detail:
When he [Heracles] came to Elis, he founded the shrine at Olympia of Zeus Olympios
and named the place Olympia after the god. He sacrificed to him there and to the other
gods, setting up altars, six in number, shared by the twelve gods: first the altar of Zeus
Olympios, whom he had share with Poseidon; second of Hera and Athene; third of
Hermes and Apollo; fourth of the Graces and Dionysus; fifth of Artemis and Alpheius;
sixth of Cronus and Rhea. (Herodorus of Heracleia,FGrH31 F34a)This is an influential story, as can be seen from its (brief) incorporation into Apollo-
dorus’Library of Mythology(2.7.2). Archaeology has not revealed these altars, but
there is no reason not to believe in them. This gives us yet another selection of twelve,
including a couple of gods from the earlier generation (Cronus and Rhea). Whether
Olympian Gods, Olympian Pantheon 43