Gender and the divine
Apollo and adding another deferential son to the Olympian roster in Hermes’ Hymn . Zeus reintegrates the inconsolable goddess Demeter, with new honours but notably beneath himself, after witnessing the calamitous effects of her seclusion earlier in her Hymn . Moreover, his relationship with Aïdoneus is strengthened by accommodating his wish for a wife . In the Hymn to Aphrodite , Zeus prevents the collapse of his functioning cosmos with the punishment of a recalcitrant Aphrodite. By reining in the female goddes s’ callous usage of her powers, Zeus reinstitutes fundamental divisions which uphold his order and reclaims his unattainable position of superiority, questioned though it was by the now subjugated Aphrodite. Hence, both the Theogony and the Homeric Hymns leave us with this insight into Zeus’ cosmos: of gender’s great potential to divide the divinities and of the overarching figure of Zeus in the cosmos, powerful for his ability to create and react to sudden changes, manoeuvring circumstance to advance his inexorable will.
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