# In Defense of Zeus



## Gloranthan (Dec 12, 2022)

The uber-powerful showboater of Olympus can seem insanely petty and jealous, and that's pretty accurate to some of the stories. But the philosophers were already embarrassed by this behavior, and insisted that these were just stories people told. Because, by their view, Zeus Omnipotent was actually the god of hospitality, the avenger of strangers, all-knowing and justice incarnate. They argued that while Zeus was indeed powerful - in fact, the Stoics would credit Zeus with far more power than Hesiod - he didn't use his power to pull off ludicrous stunts for his own aggrandizement. I think a lot of modern people tend to treat Zeus as though he were a historical character when they judge the god, and not look at the fact that he was more like a comic book character who embodied whatever the writer found compelling. If the writer was, say, a bronze age aristocrat, that can include a lot of stuff we wouldn't approve of. But, more to the point, a lot of the writers didn't really bother trying to reconcile his actions with his divine attributes, and were basically just writing fiction that was to be entertaining and record the spirit of old legends about the gods.

Taken as a whole, there is plenty to criticize big Z for in the old stories, but of course _he doesn't have a biography_. These are just tales which happened to seize upon him to serve a certain plot role, probably because it was either about Olympus/cosmogeny, propaganda for some noble family, _or_ because they just needed a crazy powerful superhero to fill in and do some ridiculous, over-the-top macho stuff.

Zeus is reasonably popular in fiction which draws on mythology, especially Greek, but I also see a lot of people saying (when he comes up) "oh, what a monster!" I mean, yeah, except none of that crazy stuff ever happened. And his core attributes are not turning into swans or blowing people to smithereens for impersonating him in a very unconvincing way ("your chariot sounds like thunder!" "uh, what?"), they were being a super-duper scrupulous, intelligent, and just guy who, if you abused strangers and travellers, might personally show up and punch you into your floorboards. Which is pretty awesome.

This version of Zeus is obviously a big inspiration for Manwe, and a very interesting way to resolve the God-like Eru with a character who shares a lot of ascribed traits in common with God, Zeus. Manwe also seems to borrow elements of Michael (whose name means something like God-like or Appearance of God), and I've always loved the way Tolkien can take elements from Angelology and Biblical texts and use them to inform his 'paganish' mythological background.


----------

