Zeus: King of the Gods

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Zeus: King of the Gods

Zeus, Lord of the Skies, King of the Gods, was the last sibling of the Titan Kronos and the Titaness Rhea. He would have suffered the same fate as his other five Olympian siblings, Demeter, Hestia, Poseidon, Hades, and Hera, being swallowed alive, if it had not been for his mother hiding him and tricking Kronos into eating a large stone instead. He was raised in a cave with nine spirits, the Kouretes, and a goat, Amaltheia, that nursed him with her milk and the bees of the mountain provided honey. As a baby, adding on to the fact that his voice was booming, being the thunder god, he was quite boisterous and would have attracted the attention of his father, but the Kouretes banged their shields in order to drown out the child’s cries (Atsma) (Atsma).
Zeus grew up and had prepared to fight his father but he could not do it alone. There are two historical accounts that either Zeus himself sliced his father’s stomach open to free his siblings or that the Nymph Metis slipped Kronos an emetic so that he would puke out the gods and the false Zeus stone . But both accounts agree that once the other gods were freed, the Titan War had begun. Zeus led the offensive and freed the Cyclopes, the Hundred-Handed Ones, and the Hecatonchires from Tartarus. He and the other gods fought alongside these giant humanoids and the Cyclopes and their brethren taught Zeus how to craft lightning bolts. The war was devastating but the gods prevailed over the Titans and imprisoned them in Tartarus with the Hundred-Handed Ones being their jailors ("Zeus"). A few were pardoned for their participation, such as Metis, Mnemosyne, and Themis (Camfield). With the war over, the gods claimed Mount Olympus as their new sort of headquarters and...

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