Twelve Gods

In Greek mythology there are twelve chief gods, known as Olympians. Olympians referred to the gods who resided on Olympus. The names within the Olympian pantheon varied from writer to writer.

One pantheon has Hades, god of the dead, in the list, but the most common tradition has Demeter, goddess of corn, as an Olympian deity. In my view, Hades was an Olympian when he fought alongside his brothers during the war against the Titans. The reason he wasn't seen as an Olympian was that Hades seldom left his Underworld domain, so his sister Demeter was an Olympian instead of him.

Of all the gods in the list, Hestia, goddess of the hearth, was the least known and the least active in mythology. According to the myth of Dionysus, Hestia stepped down in favour of the young god of wine.

Below, I have several lists of possible pantheons of Olympus.

The following deities were children of the Titans Cronus and Rhea: Hestia (eldest child), Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, Hera and Zeus (youngest). It is more than likely that these children of Cronus were the original Olympians.

As for the younger deities, most or all of them were children of Zeus. Only Ares is his son by his consort Hera, which we know with certainty. There is uncertainty over who was the father of the smith god, Hephaestus - that is, if he had any.

Hephaestus was sometimes said to be the son of Zeus and Hera, while others argued that Hephaestus had no father. The myth goes that Hera was jealous that Zeus had produced a child (Athena) without a mother, which is not exactly true.

From his first wife, the Oceanid Metis, Zeus was the father of Athena. Zeus had swallowed the pregnant Oceanid, when he heard from the prophecy that Metis could one day bear a son who would be mightier than the father. So Athena did have a mother; it was just that no mother gave birth to this goddess. Athena was born from Zeus' head. The point is that Hephaestus was thought to have had no father by some writers because Hera tried to emulate Athena's extraordinary birth.

Zeus was the father of Hermes by the Pleiad Maia. He was also the father of the twins, Apollo and Artemis, by the Titaness Leto.

There is uncertainty of parentage for the love goddess Aphrodite. Some authors, like Homer and Apollodorus, said that Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and the obscure goddess Dione. Others like Hesiod said that Aphrodite was born from the sea foam, formed by the severed genitals of the deposed Uranus. The second view is more interesting, for why else would part of her name aphros mean "foam"? (See the Creation about Uranus' castration and losing his power as supreme ruler of the gods to his son Cronus, and Aphrodite's wondrous birth.)

Dionysus was the only one of the twelve Olympians to be born from a mortal woman, Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia (though she was later transformed into a goddess in the Dionysus myth). Dionysus was a god who was born twice. According to the myth about Dionysus, Hestia was an Olympian, but she stepped down in favour of Dionysus when the young god came to live in Olympus. Several authors have also mentioned that Dionysus was a son of Zeus and Persephone (see the Orphic Creation).

(Please note that I had previously posted Demeter and Dionysus on the Minor Greek Deities page, but I have now moved them to this page. I have moved Hades to a new page called the House of Hades, mainly so that I can group the important Underworld deities together.)