Читать книгу The Mythology of Greece and Rome, With Special Reference to Its Use in Art онлайн

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Neither was the worship of Jupiter any less extensive in Italy. The most renowned of all his shrines was undoubtedly the temple erected by Tarquin on the Capitol at Rome. This, after being nearly destroyed by fire in the time of Sulla, was restored to more than its pristine splendour. The original earthen image was replaced by a statue of gold and ivory, the work of the Greek artist Apollonius, after the model of the Olympian Zeus.

Before proceeding to discuss the god as he appears in art, we must take a glance at his numerous family. The mythology of the Greeks stands in notorious contrast to that of the Romans, in attributing to Zeus a great number of mortal as well as immortal spouses, and an unusually numerous posterity. Here we must remark that, in spite of the occasional jokes of the comic poets on the numerous amours of the god, and the consequent jealousy of Hera, there was nothing farther from the intention of the Greeks than to represent the supreme deity of heaven as a sensual and lascivious being. The explanation lies partly in the great number of contemporaneous local forms of worship that existed independently of each other, and partly in the fact that the lively fancy of the Greek pictured every new production under the guise of procreation. In that part of mythology which teaches the genealogy of the gods, the earliest wife of Zeus was Metis (prudence), the daughter of Oceanus. Zeus devoured her, fearing lest she should bear a son, who would deprive him of the empire it had cost him so much to attain. It was soon after this that he produced Pallas Athene from his own head. His second goddess-wife was Themis, one of the Titans, by whom he became the father of the Horæ and the Mœræ (Fates). Dione appears as the wife of Zeus of Dodona, and the mother of Aphrodite; whilst Arcadian Zeus was wedded to Maia, by whom he had Hermes. By Demeter (Ceres) he became the father of Persephone (Proserpine, goddess of vegetation); by Eurynome, a daughter of Oceanus, of the Charites (Graces); by Mnemosyne, of the Muses; by Leto (Latona), of Apollo and Artemis. The youngest of all his divine wives, who was recognised by later mythology as his only legitimate queen, was his sister Hera. By her he became the father of Ares (Mars), Hephæstus (Vulcan), and Hebe.