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Long ago, the Greeks believed in the mighty gods of Olympus. 12 glistening thrones of gold at the top of the fabled mountain from where the gods oversaw the world. It was a time of strong belief and widespread oral traditions. Writing and keeping records did exist at the time, but a large number of stories and events were preserved via oral means. As you might have heard, stories tend to gain or lose characteristics as more orators recite them. It is believed that a similar thing happened with the story that we are about to read today.
Cronus, the king of the gods (or titans as they were called), was fierce, dominant, ruthless, and powerful. Under his reign,
humanity is said to have thrived, and most evils didn’t exist. Cronus, however, was very paranoid and devoured his children out of fear that they would overthrow him one day, just like he overthrew his father, Ouranos. His wife, Rhea, managed to trick him into eating a rock instead of their last son, Zeus.
Zeus was raised with the ideology of revenge. He wanted to free his siblings from his father’s belly and stake his claim to the throne of the world. As a result of his harsh upbringing, Zeus would grow to become a vengeful god. He would get angry at mortals over the smallest of things and punish them harshly if they as much as sneezed wrong in front of him.
However, Zeus would soon learn an important lesson that would change his view of the world. He was travelling through a forestry area near a local settlement, hoping to recruit soldiers who would help him build a kingdom in the mortal realm. As he was travelling, he saw a relatively fresh corpse, which looked like a woman, as he saw what appeared to be a frantic widower holding it and acting very anxious.
Instead of approaching, he decided to wait and see what was happening. He saw that the man guarding the corpse was fiercely protective of it and would crush even insects that came near the remains of his wife. Soon, a pack of wild dogs approached, as they smelled prey. Zeus saw the man fight bravely against the dogs to protect someone already dead. Not only that, but the way he disposed of the dogs after beating them was incredibly barbaric and ruthless.
This perplexed him, as he had no idea why this man would go to such lengths for someone who lost all life and sentience. He touched the earth and called for his grandmother, Gaia, the goddess of the earth. He asked her if she had seen what happened with this man and the woman he was guarding. Gaia saw everything that transpired on the earth, and she told him that the poor woman was attacked by a bear while her husband was away.
When he arrived, he didn’t find the bear, as it probably lost interest in eating her, but that was enough to drive him mad with revenge. Now he seeks revenge on any living being that seeks to cause even the smallest incision on her body. Zeus could not believe what he was hearing and denounced the mortal as an idiot. He said that it was meaningless to get so attached to someone who cannot take any action and has no agency of their own. He also condemned his ruthless pursuit of vengeance. Gaia smiled and told him that it was exactly what he himself was doing.
By not letting go of his siblings’ suffering, Zeus was going mad with the thirst for revenge. He would take his anger out on every mortal he encountered, no matter how insignificant they were to him. This changed how Zeus thought about the prospect of revenge, as even though his siblings were alive, they had no agency of their own. From then on, his sole objective was to free his siblings and create a better world rather than seek pointless revenge and waste his energy on matters that cannot be resolved.
