The Representation of Zeus in Three Texts

• Posted by Olivia Adamson April 28, 2021 Filed in Other #history  #mythology  280 views
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  The Representation of Zeus in Three Texts

  This essay compares and contrasts the representation of Zeus in Hesiod’s Theogony, Apollodorus’ Library, and Plato’s Symposiu. Evidently, dissimilar representation of Zeus in these texts is caused by differences between those epochs when the texts were written and by the authors’ intentions concerning the subject. Thus, Zeus is described in the analyzed texts as a wise and just sovereign who governs the world and tries to keep everything in balance.

  The main common feature between Zeus’ representations provided by Plato, Apollodorus, and Hesiod is the god’s might and power connected with wisdom and justness. Zeus, the highest Greek god, appears as a ruler who judges all living beings and implements his solutions into the reality. Plato claims that when Zeus cut people into two halves in order to prevent their competition with the gods, he pitied those separated incomplete people and thus provided them remedy in the form of love (GHM, p. 408). As a result, according to Plato, Zeus made just judgment and tried to avoid any unneeded oppression. Apollodorus also provides the same just connection of wise pitifulness and punishing power, claiming that after the flood that killed all the people except Deukalion and Pyrrha, Zeus allowed the survived man to ask all what he wished. The brightest description of these qualities of Zeus are described by Hesiod who calls the god “the very powerful son of Kronos,” “mighty,” and “father Zeus”, underlining his wisdom and contraposing him to Kronos as a harmonic principle to an unbalanced one. Thus, the main characteristics of Zeus include wisdom, power, and justness.

  Furthermore, there are also some differences between Zeus’ representations. For example, while Plato does not provide much information concerning Zeus’ personality or his path to the reign, thus describing him as a sovereign whose power is undoubted, Hesiod and Apollodorus demonstrate different examples of contradictions between Zeus and other gods. For Apollodorus, it is the conflict between Prometheus (who saves Deukalion and Pyrrha) and Zeus (who primarily wanted to eliminate all existing people but spared the survived couple after the flood). As for Hesiod, he provides an in-depth description of titans governed by Zeus’ unjust father Kronos and gods headed by Zeus himself. Thus, Hesiod explains why Zeus rules the world and how he achieved this position because of his personal qualities. In other words, Plato describes Zeus as a ruler with absolute power; Apollodorus demonstrates the conflicts between Zeus and Prometheus; and Hesiod provides the most dynamic description of Zeus’ personality and specifics of his reign. Another important difference concerns the specifics of conflicts between Zeus and others. For Plato, the competitors of Zeus are people, who actually have only delusion of power (and of competition at all), as Zeus without any problem judges and cuts them. According to Apollodorus, the competitor of Zeus is Prometheus, who has enough power to trick Zeus in some cases (as in case of Deukalion and Pyrrha’s survival) but not so much to withstand him. Lastly, Hesiod’s Zeus struggles against powerful titans who reigned the world before him. Thus, Plato, Apollodorus, and Hesiod involve Zeus in conflicts with adversaries who had different amounts of power.

  Through the analysis, it seems that Hesiod and Apollodorus express in their descriptions of Zeus their considerations concerning the personality of a ruler, while Plato’s Zeus is mere a poetic image that helps explain the author’s concept of love. Moreover, Hesiod and Apollodorus wrote their texts on mythology in a form close to chronicles and described Zeus dynamically as a person who successfully achieves and keeps his power through struggle against some opponents. For Hesiod, who lived in ancient Greece in which all the cities were small monarchies, Zeus had to oppose forces as powerful as he is. In turn, for Apollodorus, who lived in the Roman Empire, the amount of Zeus’ power is close to totality and can be partly limited only by trickery. As for Plato, whose subject is not mythology at all, he describes Zeus as an abstract supreme god whose function is to serve merely as a cause of love’s existence.

  I am Olivia Adamson and I am a great fan of writing! I work at fresh essays where writers help those people who have some problems with composing their papers. I am very porud of fact that I can help someone who wonders how to write an interview paper or what are the essential tips of writing a good term paper, or just how to start an article review on book or film and many others. My pleasure is also reading, my favourite book is "Three Comrades" by Erich Maria Remarque, I should say that I like classic literature. I can recommend you to read more books, cause this hobby helps to enrich your speech as well as your writing.