Every Greek God and What They're the God Of

More gods worth knowing

Beyond the Olympians and the best-known minor deities, Greek religion was full of gods who had small but real roles in myth and cult. These are the ones who come up most often in the ancient texts.

Gods of the household and life's milestones

• Eileithyia: goddess of childbirth and daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hera holds her back to delay births she resents: Leto's labour with Apollo, and in the Iliad the birth of Heracles. She had an ancient cave sanctuary at Amnisos on Crete, mentioned by Homer.
• Hebe: goddess of youth, cupbearer to the gods before Ganymede, and wife of Heracles after he became a god.
• Hymenaios: god of the wedding procession, whose name is the refrain of wedding songs. Various writers make him a son of Apollo or of Dionysus and Aphrodite.
• Hygieia: Health, daughter of Asclepius, often shown feeding a snake from a bowl. Her name gives us "hygiene".
• Harmonia: daughter of Ares and Aphrodite and wife of Cadmus of Thebes. Her cursed necklace caused trouble for generations.

Groups of goddesses

• The Horae (Hours or Seasons): in Hesiod, Eunomia, Dike and Eirene (Good Order, Justice and Peace), daughters of Zeus and Themis. In Athens they were Thallo and Karpo, goddesses of growth and fruit. They also guard the cloud-gates of Olympus.
• The Charites (Graces): Aglaea, Euphrosyne and Thalia, goddesses of charm, festivity and beauty. At Orchomenos in Boeotia they were worshipped as three ancient stones said to have fallen from the sky.
• The Muses: nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the source of poetry and knowledge.
• The Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who spin, measure and cut each life.

Gods of sea and sky

• Nereus: the Old Man of the Sea, truthful and wise, father of the fifty Nereids. Heracles held onto him through every transformation to learn the way to the Hesperides.
• Proteus: another shape-shifting sea elder, the herdsman of seals. In the Odyssey Menelaus wrestles him on the island of Pharos off Egypt to learn the way home.
• Amphitrite and Triton: Poseidon's queen and their son, who calms the waves with a conch shell.
• Leucothea: originally the mortal Ino, who leapt into the sea with her son Melicertes and became a goddess. He became Palaemon. In the Odyssey she gives the shipwrecked Odysseus her veil to keep him afloat.
• The winds: Boreas (north), Zephyrus (west), Notus (south) and Eurus (east). Aeolus, who ties them up in a bag for Odysseus, is in Homer a king dear to the gods whom Zeus made keeper of the winds, not yet the full wind-god of later tradition.

Gods of the countryside

• Aristaeus: son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, who taught people beekeeping, cheese-making and olive growing. In Virgil's Georgics he loses his bees because he pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a snake while fleeing him.
• Priapus: a fertility god of gardens and vineyards from Lampsacus on the Hellespont, son of Aphrodite and usually Dionysus. His statues guarded orchards from thieves.

Who counted as the twelve Olympians

Greeks agreed that there were twelve gods but not on which twelve. Herodotus says that Homer and Hesiod were the ones who gave the Greeks their gods' family trees, names, honours and shapes. Even so, local lists differed. In Athens, the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Agora, set up in the late 6th century BC by the younger Peisistratus, served as the city's central milestone, and distances were measured from it. Plato's Phaedrus has Zeus leading the gods across the heavens while Hestia alone stays at home. Dionysus is the god most often counted in her place, but the popular story that Hestia gave up her throne to make room for him is modern, not ancient. Hades, who lived below the earth, was usually not counted at all. A fuller treatment is on the Olympian gods list.

Corrections to some popular labels

Apollo and Artemis as sun and moon. In Homer, Hesiod and most cult, the sun is Helios and the moon is Selene, both separate gods. The equation of Apollo with the sun and Artemis with the moon appears from the 5th century BC onward, mostly among poets and philosophers, and became widespread only in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

One god, many faces. Greeks worshipped gods through epithets that changed their meaning almost completely. Zeus Xenios protected guests, while Zeus Ktesios guarded the household storeroom and was pictured as a snake. Athena Polias protected the city of Athens, Athena Nike was a goddess of victory, and Athena Hygieia was a healer. Artemis Orthia at Sparta was honoured with the ritual whipping of boys. Local cult often mattered more to people than the overall Olympian picture.

Hades and wealth. Hades rules the dead, not riches in general. His link to wealth comes through his title Plouton, "the wealthy one", connected with grain and with the riches beneath the earth. Wealth itself had its own god, Plutus.

Ancient sources

• Hesiod, Theogony: the main genealogy of the gods, including the Horae, Charites, Muses, Moirai and the sea-gods descended from Pontus.
• Homeric Hymns: individual hymns to Demeter, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Pan, Hestia and others, with each god's birth and powers.
• Herodotus, Histories 2.53: says Homer and Hesiod gave the Greeks their gods' genealogies, epithets, honours and forms.
• Thucydides, History 6.54: records the younger Peisistratus dedicating the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora.
• Plato, Phaedrus 246e–247a: Zeus leads the procession of gods through the heavens while Hestia stays alone in the house of the gods.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece: a regional guide to local cults, epithets and sanctuaries, such as the Charites at Orchomenos and Artemis Orthia at Sparta.

Frequently asked questions

How many Greek gods are there?

There is no fixed number. Hesiod alone names several hundred divine beings, counting nymphs, rivers and personifications. Local cults added many more, so "every" god really means the ones that mattered across the Greek world.

Who is the most powerful Greek god?

Zeus rules the cosmos, but even he is wary of Nyx (Night), and in some passages he defers to Fate. See the gods ranked for the arguments.

Was Hades one of the twelve Olympians?

Usually not. He was Zeus's brother and one of the three rulers of the world, but he lived in the underworld, not on Olympus, and is rarely included in lists of the twelve.

Is Apollo the god of the sun?

Not originally. Helios is the sun god in early Greek myth. Apollo was gradually identified with the sun from the 5th century BC onward, and by the Roman era the identification was common.