The marriage of Zeus and Hera, The birth of Greek Mythology, photographer unknown, sculptor unknown.
Zeus and Hera are most commonly portrayed as the couple that rules Olympus and everything on earth beneath it. However, that is not the case. Zeus had had many wives before Hera.
When Zeus and his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, defeated Kronos, it left the three of them to rule separate parts of the world. Zeus, the god of the sky and land, Poseidon the god of the sea and Hades the god of the underworld. Zeus was so powerful that he was ruler over Olympus and naturally all of the other gods too.
Therefore, it left him to seduce every being as he pleased and no one or thing could resist him.
I looked into other Greek gods and goddesses that had their own love stories and problems and found many that are still being retold today as different things.
Beauty and the Beast 2017, photo courtesy of Disney, fashionista.com, costumes by Jacqueline Durran.
The story of Beauty and the Beast is in fact a retold version of the story of Cupid and Psyche.
Their story however follows a similar story line to the original storyline of Beauty and the Beast. Both women are sent or ‘exiled’ to a far away place, in Belle’s case it was the castle and for Psyche it was the mountain top. They both went up there because of their fathers, Belle went because her father was trapped and Psyche was dragged up by her father because he was told to do so by the gods, Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche’s beauty.
Psyche was told she was to be in love with a serpent-like man and then was taken to a house where she was to live with him in the dark without being allowed to see what he looks like. Belle was also left to live with the Beast, who she didn’t know had a true man living within. Despite the fact that both women didn’t know what their lovers truly looked like, they fell in love with them.
However this is when the two women differ a little. Belle had to break the spell she didn’t know about in order to live happily with the Beast but Psyche didn’t know what her lover looked like at all and, when she fell pregnant, she became curious as to what he looked like. When she found it was Cupid, it destroyed their chances of being together.
Psyche was determined and Aphrodite gave her a set of three impossible tasks to complete, which she completed up until the third task. She was too curious and fell into a sleep from one of the tasks. Cupid rescued her and persuaded his mother, Aphrodite, to change her mind about Psyche and the gods transformed her into an immortal.
The Uffizi museum in Florence has the famous statues of quite a few of the Greek gods and their children, including Cupid and Psyche, Perseus killing Medusa and Zeus in the woods with children.
By Monique Olowu