„Out of this strife she [Hera] bore a glorious son by her devices, without Zeus who holds the aegis, Hephaestus, who excelled all the sons of Heaven with his skilled hands. But far away from beautiful-cheeked Hera, he [Zeus] lay with the daughter of Ocean and beautifully tressed Tethys, having deceived Metis, even though she was very wise.” (Hesiod, Fragment 343)

Too bad that we aren't told what the reason for this quarrel between Hera and Zeus was. Looks like it was pretty serious stuff though since her reaction is to go „Screw you Zeus, I'll just have a child on my own.” and his is to leave and seek out another woman to sleep with, which isn't surprising on its own of course but we don't usually hear about Zeus fighting with Hera before he goes on to have an affair.

Xenophanes

Xenophanes was born in Colophon, a city in Ionia, during the sixth century BCE. The dating of his life is not exact however in his surviving fragments he referred to the Greco-Persian war as an event that occurred in his life while Heraclitus referred to him the past tense. This gives us a window of when he probably lived. Like other Ionic Greek speaking people, he would have been aware of the Milesian school and foreign sciences such as Egyptian geometry and Babylonian astronomy. However, these are not the topics he is known for addressing. When Xenophanes was relocated, he went to what is now Sicily and later to what is now southern Italy, Elea to be exact. This is rather similar to what Pythagoras did and Xenophanes did in fact live around the same time that he did. Despite these similarities, there is no reason to think that the two thinkers met. Pythagoras was famous within his own life time and it would be fair to argue that at least Xenophanes knew of him. It is also important to recall that the Orphic mystery religion was influential in this region at the time. Little is known about Xenophanes and there is some speculation as to why that is, Aristotle did not like Xenophanes and said he was more of a theological theorist rather than a student of nature. Despite the fact that Xenophanes’s fragments indicate his interest in topics such as nature. Aristotle basically said he wasn’t a philosopher and was incredibly dismissive of his ideas. Xenophanes was incredibly unpopular in his own time as well, when you consider what his main tenants were this does not come as a surprise.

Imagine rural Texas, a place where there are people who are quite religious and really enjoy sports such as football. The culture of some towns in rural Texas revolve around the church and the local sports teams. Now imagine the kind of person who not only mocks these beliefs but claims his beliefs are better. This is the kind of person that Xenophanes was, and I hope the analogy sheds light on just how breath takingly unpopular he was. Xenophanes was an ardent critic of Greek religion and in some respects, he was a critic of the Greek ideal and culture at large. Comparing Greek athletics to Texan’s love of football does not do justice to how much the Greeks valued athleticism. Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, was often considered the ideal person and he was a warrior as well as a talented athlete. Odysseus was also a remarkably gifted archer. The high value on athleticism went beyond the poems of Hesiod and Homer, by the time of Xenophanes the ancient Olympics had been occurring for over two hundred years. I cannot emphasize enough how important religion and sports were in Greek life. Xenophanes criticized all of this.

Although Aristotle would say that Xenophanes was not a philosopher, he would not contest that he was a theologian and a poet. Philologists have been able to accurately determine if a fragment is a quote directly from Xenophanes or merely a paraphrased segment because of his poetic writing style. Xenophanes tended to write in hexameters and iambic trimeters. Directly from the fragments we know that the chief criticism that Xenophanes had of the Greek mythos was that people’s gods look a lot like they do. The gods of the Ethiopians looked Ethiopian, the gods of the Thracians looked Thracian, and the Greek gods sure looked Greek. He went so far as to claim that if horses had gods that they would look like horses. The significance and meaning behind these statements were not lost to the Greek people of the day. They understood that Xenophanes was questioning the validity of their beliefs. It could even be argued that he meant the poems of Hesiod and Homer were not ancient truths but the ramblings of ordinary men.

Xenophanes himself is reported to have been a monotheist, and from this, contemporary scholars have concluded that his criticism of the epic poets was not rooted in a criticism in supernatural belief but particularly anthropomorphizing God. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that Xenophanes took particular issue with the gods being portrayed as profane and having flawed character like ordinary men. The idea that the supreme deity of the universe would cheat on his spouse and then lash out in anger at getting caught was especially profane. Xenophanes believed that God was good and above the flaws of humankind.

Although many writers state that Xenophanes was a monotheist, this is a contested point in history. Despite the fact that it would have been unusual for a Greek to have been a monotheist, monotheism was not an unusual idea at this point in history. The Persians who were typically practitioners of the Zoroastrian religion were monotheists, and an Ionian like Xenophanes would have a higher likelihood of encountering their ideas. Also, the second temple era of the Jewish religion was developed at this point, the diaspora in Babylon ended with Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great’s reign, and the second temple period was prominently monotheistic. Some alternatives to the monotheistic view of Xenophanes would be that he supported a particular brand of Greek religion or that he was an atheist. I think that it is unlikely he was an atheist because later philosophers were atheists and writers of the time took significant note of it. The absence of mentioning that Xenophanes was an atheist would indicate that he is not an atheist.

Despite the contention in scholarship over the exact beliefs of Xenophanes it is clear that his outright criticism of Greek culture was new for his time and paved the way for future thinkers like Socrates or Epicurus whose beliefs went further in thinking critically about what people believed. The Milesian School, Pythagoreanism, and the beliefs of Heraclitus each marked a departure from normative thought in their day. But none of them went so far as Xenophanes.

One of my favourite instances of people trying to pass off their headcanons as actual fact has to be the claim that Zeus’s marriage with Hera is only a “rebound” from his twu wuv Metis, especially when this idea is used to “explain” his infidelity. It should be said that I’m not talking here about people making stuff up for their fanfics or whatever, that is something I couldn’t care less about; I’m talking about those who, with full confidence, argue that this is what Greek mythology is about.

Of course, the first thing I could say about this is that absolutely no ancient text whatsoever supports such a reading of the myths; I promise not even the most eccentric of scholars has ever put forward such an hypothesis and you know why that is? Because the Greek gods are not simply story characters you can impose your headcanons on. Honestly, if you genuinely believe that the myths show Zeus sleeping around specifically because he didn’t love Hera, or that he would have been portrayed as faithful and devoted if only he had a different wife, you are not mature enough to discuss Greek mythology and that’s that.

A second thing is that, historically speaking, Zeus’s connection with Hera is actually older than the one with Metis. Hera already appears in connection with Zeus in the Late Bronze Age (on Linear B tablet PY Tn 316), long before Hesiod. The fact that Zeus and Hera (and Drimios the son of Zeus) were grouped together in the same sanctuary doesn’t necessarily mean that the two of them were considered a married couple at that time, though it is a possibility. But even if they weren’t, be assured that Zeus’s wife before Hera was certainly not Metis (who makes her first ever appearance in Hesiod’s Theogony somewhere around 700 BCE), but his female counterpart Diwija, probably the later Dione.

Thirdly, as far as literature is concerned, we have a grand amount of one (1) source, again Hesiod’s Theogony, in which Metis is the wife of Zeus before Hera. Incidentally, this same source also happens to show Zeus taking several (five, to be precise) other divine consorts/wives after Metis and before Hera…those pesky details, better ignore them if they don’t fit in with your personal understanding of Greek mythology. Speaking of Zeus’s relationships in the Theogony, in “Hesiod’s Cosmos” scholar Jenny Strauss Clay concludes, after analysing the language Hesiod used to describe each of these unions, that if any of them was a love match  it was the one with Mnemosyne. Not necessarily meaningful, but it's interesting to note that the first four unions of Zeus don't even mention the generic "mingling in philotes".

Now there also happens to be a variant in which Zeus sleeps with Metis when he is already married to Hera, and as a matter of fact this version, unlike the previous one, is attested in more than one single source. In one account of the story (which is also attributed to Hesiod by the Stoic Chrysippos) Zeus impregnates Metis after Hera gives birth to Hephaistos;  and the variant Apollodoros uses in the Bibliotheke has common details with both variants, though it agrees with the fragment quoted by Chrysippos in placing Zeus’s affair with Metis in a time when he is already married to Hera. No need to let that interfere with your beliefs, though, so ignore that as well. Ignore, too,  the fact that the first marriage in Pherecydes of Syros’ theo-cosmogony takes place between Zeus and Chthonie/Ge/Gaia, that Themis is called Zeus’s first wife by Pindar, that in the Orphic text quoted in the Derveni Papyrus his first partner is his mother, and definitely ignore that Homer’s Iliad strongly implies  that Hera was his first one, as well as all the other sources suggesting or stating the same thing.  Sure,  Zeus’s marriage with Metis has no historical or religious basis, is attested in literally one single source (for all we know it was Hesiod’s own invention) and it was so irrelevant for other Greek authors that in those exceedingly rare occasions when they didn’t ignore Metis alltogether, they simply made her one of Zeus’s many mistresses. But I mean, What did the Greeks know?

“Finally, the Derveni author quotes the fourth line in DP 19.10. Agreeing with West’s exempli gratia reconstruction in all but the third line, Bernabé puts these four lines together in OF 14 B:Zeus was born first, Zeus last, god of the bright bolt; Zeus the head, Zeus the middle, and from Zeus all things are made; Zeus the breath of all, Zeus was the fate of all; Zeus the king, Zeus the ruler of all, god of the bright bolt.

By swallowing the previous creation, Zeus becomes the last deity to be born in the original creation, but the first one to exist in the new creation. It is from him that “all things are made,” with the use of τεύχω (“made”) implying that this was a skilled, intentional act. It is by this re-creation that the sovereignty of Zeus is solidified, as promised by the prophecies of Night at the beginning of the poem. The emphasis of this mini-hymn to Zeus in the Derveni poem is not the cosmogony itself, but the role cosmogony played in making Zeus the “ruler of all.” From here, the Derveni poem went on to narrate Zeus’ act of re-creation and the births of other deities. . . .  There must have been one or more lines in the poem saying that Zeus gave birth to Ouranian Aphrodite, Peitho, Harmonia, and perhaps other deities. The Derveni author is reminded of a line “in the Hymns” (22.11)—whether he means another Orphic hymn circulating at the time, or this one—that lists six goddesses, all of whom he believes to be the same goddess: “Demeter, Rhea, Ge, Meter, Hestia, Deio” (22.12). Since he cites this line of “the Hymns” in order to draw a comparison with the Derveni poem, perhaps Aphrodite and her companions were introduced in the Derveni poem in a catalogue of this sort. One is reminded of Hesiod’s Theogony, which includes catalogues of deities, some of whom are personifications like Peitho and Harmonia. Hesiod also tells the story of the birth of Aphrodite from Ouranos’ dismembered genitals, and similarly in the Rhapsodies Aphrodite is born twice: once from Ouranos as in Hesiod, and a second time from Zeus and Dione. Having failed to seduce Dione, Zeus ejaculates in the sea and the second Aphrodite is born from the foam. The narrative of this in the Derveni poem need not have been as detailed as it was in the Rhapsodies, but likely there were a few lines describing how Zeus brought back to life some of the deities who had existed before him, while in the process of giving birth to others. Bernabé argues that “it is without doubt Zeus who ejaculates the goddess,” for Aphrodite’s birth is “necessary” in a cosmic sense so that sexual reproduction can occur. Whatever the case, the syncretism of Aphrodite with Peitho and Harmonia is most likely the Derveni author’s interpretation. More fragments of the episode of re-creation appear in columns 22–24. From the mention of Ocean in DP  23.3–7, and from the verb ἐμήσατο (“he designed”), together with the phrases “great strength” and “broadly flowing,” West reconstructed a lost line that has found wide acceptance. Combining this with the line quoted in DP 23.11 and a few other conjectures, Bernabé puts together four lines in OF 16 B: And he also designed both Gaia and wide Ouranos above, and he designed the great might of wide-flowing Ocean. And he placed therein the sinews of silver-eddying Achelous, from which the whole sea . . . Zeus continues with the re-creation of the universe by re-creating Gaia, Ouranos, Ocean, and the “sinews” of Achelous, which are typically taken to mean rivers and streams. Then he creates the Moon “of equal limbs” (DP 24.2  = OF 17.1 B)—probably a reference to the horns of the crescent moon, “who shines for many mortals on the boundless earth” (DP 24.3 = OF 17.2 B).110 The end of the episode of re-creation is marked by a formulaic phrase (αὐτὰρ ἐπεί) that is familiar from Homer and Hesiod in lines that mark the transition from one scene or set of actions to the next. Combining this line in DP 25.14 with words quoted on column 26, scholars have reconstructed the final extant fragment of the Derveni poem (OF 18 B): But when the mind of Zeus designed all things, he wanted to mingle in love with his own mother. Bernabé takes Zeus’ mother in this passage to be Rhea, whom he identifies with Demeter in the Rhapsodies.”

 - Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods by Dwayne A. Meisner