Mortal-Like Drama Didn't Escape These 12 Powerful Greek Gods and Goddesses

Greek mythology often reads like a soap opera for deities. One moment Zeus condemns a traitor to have his liver pecked apart by vultures for eternity, the next he disguises himself as a swan so he can seduce women without drawing his wife’s attention.

It takes a special cast of characters to drive such a narrative, and the Olympian gods were the perfect fit. Many modern Americans met them in Disney form through 1997’s Hercules. But for sheer darkness and palace intrigue, the 2024 series Kaos comes closer to capturing their essence — immensely powerful, immensely flawed, humanity at its worst, but free of human limitations.

“The gods are in fact the most powerful work of art created by the Greeks,” wrote Ken Dowden, professor emeritus of classics at the University of Birmingham. And what makes them so compelling, even today, is how much of ourselves we can still see in them. Compared to most historical religions, Dowden wrote, the Greek gods were “exceptionally anthropomorphic – they were ‘shaped like people.’”

The canonical number of Olympians was 12, but sources disagree about who should be included. Over the centuries, some gods rose in popularity while others fell. Nevertheless, this list is close to a definitive pantheon.

One noteworthy absence is Hades. That’s because the Greeks distinguished between Olympian gods, who lived on Mt. Olympus, and chthonic gods, who lived in the underworld. Though Hades was the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, the most powerful Olympians, he himself ruled deep beneath Earth’s surface.

The hot-headed, thunderbolt-wielding, amorous overlord of Olympus. In some ancient epoch, he led his fellow Olympians to victory against the Titans, who originally controlled the world, overthrowing his father Cronus in the process. Zeus was more powerful than the rest of the gods combined, yet he could be deceived by them.

Despite his grandeur, he has an unsavory reputation for pursuing one mortal woman after another. As Edith Hamilton wrote in Mythology, we find him “descending to all manner of tricks to hide his infidelity from his wife.”

Zeus had good reason to keep these extramarital escapades on the downlow. Hera, his better half (also his sister), only comes with one setting: vengeful. We rarely see her doing anything other than punishing her husband’s unlucky paramours, not to mention their illegitimate offspring.

When Zeus took a liking to princess Io, Hera turned her into a heifer, then sent a gadfly – like a horse fly – to sting her constantly. When Alcmene gave birth (by Zeus) to Hercules, Hera sent two snakes to kill him in his cradle, though the infant strangled them with his bare hands. As Hamilton put it, “She never forgot an injury.”

Ruler of the sea and second only to his brother Zeus, Poseidon watched over all the maritime exploits of ancient Greece. He decided when storms would rise and recede, holding his famous three-pronged trident in one hand and the fates of sailors in the other.

He’s mostly remembered today as a seafaring deity, but he was also God of earthquakes, and was deeply honored for giving humanity the horse. Oddly enough, he even sired one: Pegasus, the winged steed of the hero Bellerophon.

Read More: The Origins of Cerberus, and What the Three-Headed Dog Represents

Zeus’s son and messenger, Hermes flew “as fleet as thought” on his winged sandals. He was the cleverest of the gods — on the day he was born he stole Apollo’s cattle, then invented the lyre and gave it to him as a peace offering.

Hermes wore many hats: protector of livestock, God of fertility, guardian of travelers, thieves and merchants. He was also a psychopomp, a figure who leads souls in their journey to the underworld. According to Hamilton, he shows up more often in Greek mythology than any other god.

As goddess of the harvest, Demeter’s story provided the Greeks with an explanation for why we have seasons. When she learned that her daughter, Persephone, had been abducted by Hades, her grief robbed the world of vitality.

“No seed sprang up,” Hamilton wrote. “It seemed the whole race of men would die of famine.”

Finally, Zeus ordered his brother to return Persephone. He agreed, but before releasing her he made her eat a pomegranate seed because — by mythological logic — he knew it would bind her to the underworld. Though she was free to return to Olympus with her mother, restoring Earth’s abundance, she had to come back to Hades for four months each year. During that time, which we call winter, Demeter grieves afresh.

Often described as “the most Greek of all the gods,” Apollo was something of a Renaissance man. He entertained Olympus with his lyre, taught humankind the art of medicine, and had no rival in archery. Yet he’s best known as the god of light, hauling the sun across the sky in his chariot each day.

He was also one of the most important gods in day-to-day life. If you had a big question — about whether to go to war, say, or about whom to marry — you asked Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. In this way, Hamilton wrote, he served as “a direct link between gods and men, guiding men to know the divine will.”

Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister, was goddess of the hunt. In paintings and sculpture, she’s almost always depicted with a deer or hunting dog at her side. Later, Greek poets also identify her with Selene, the personification of the moon, likely because her brother Apollo was by then conflated with the sun god Helios.

As one of the three virgin goddesses (along with Athena and Hestia), she never married and had rather severe notions about chastity. When a young hunter named Actaeon saw her bathing naked, she transformed him into a deer and his hunting dogs tore him to shreds.

Read More: Myths of the Moon Shaped Ancient Cultures and Modern Cultures of Today

It’s fitting that Athens (the cultural center of the Greek universe) bears Athena’s name, because she was first and foremost the venerated protector of cities. Usually depicted in full battle armor, she put her tremendous wisdom and practical reason to work in defending civilization. She was something of an urban counterpart to outdoorsy Artemis.

Athena was Zeus’s favorite child, and unique among his children in that she had no mother — instead, she sprang full-grown from his forehead. She carried his aegis, a shield made from the hide of a gorgon (one of those monsters with snakes for hair).

A ravishing goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite is the ultimate sex symbol — so irresistible, Hamilton wrote, that she “stole away even the wits of the wise.”

Some authors call her a child of Zeus, but others say she arose from the foam produced by the severed testicles of Uranus, which were cast into the sea by his son Cronus. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Aphrodite could be terribly jealous, particularly when she learned that her temples were being neglected because people had started offering gifts to a stunningly beautiful mortal named Psyche. She sent her son Eros to make Psyche fall for some hideous monster, but he accidentally wounded himself with one of his arrows, and he fell in love with her himself.

Ares doesn’t show up often in mythology, except as an impersonal symbol of war. He’s described as murderous, a plague upon humanity. Unlike his sister Athena (who was associated with military strategy and other relatively civilized aspects of warfare), Ares represented pure savagery. Neither the Greeks nor his fellow gods cared much for him.

In an unlikely twist, one of the few stories about Ares involves a long-term affair between him and Aphrodite, despite her marriage to Hephaestus. How this bloodthirsty black sheep wooed the most beautiful being in the universe is anyone’s guess.

It’s just as much a mystery how Aphrodite wound up with Hephaestus, a creature so ugly he was cast out of Olympus by his parents, Zeus and Hera. That said, he was well respected among mortals as the god of fire, a blacksmith who forged weapons and other military equipment. Olympus eventually welcomed him back, and he was honored there too for his fine craftsmanship.

Besides being unsightly, Hephaestus was lame and also had the misfortune of an unfaithful wife. But he used his considerable smithing skills for revenge — after catching Aphrodite and Ares in the act, he bound them in unbreakable chains and dragged them before the rest of the pantheon for a good old public shaming.

The final seat in Olympus has two contenders: Dionysus, God of wine and ecstasy, and Hestia, goddess of the family hearth.

Dionysus, though actually a demigod with a mortal mother, was one of the most important of all divine figures. The Greeks held an annual festival in his honor, during which they staged tragedies and comedies and got rip-roaring drunk. He also had a literal cult following, centered on sex, intoxication, and brutal sacrifice.

Hestia doesn’t have much of a personality and plays no part in myth. But nevertheless, as a symbol of home and family, she was near to the Greek heart.

“Every meal began and ended with an offering to her,” Hamilton wrote. Cities, too, had public hearths devoted to Hestia, and her followers ensured their fires never went out.

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• Edith Hamilton. Mythology

• Ken Dowden. University of Birmingham

Cody Cottier is a contributing writer at Discover who loves exploring big questions about the universe and our home planet, the nature of consciousness, the ethical implications of science and more. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and media production from Washington State University.