TFBT: The Seven Wives of Zeus, Part IV.

Seven Wives of Zeus, Their other Lovers

1.    Metis, no known other lover

2.    Themis in Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus is called the mother of Prometheus.  The Titan himself confounds his “mother” with her mother Gaia.  Maybe the Titan was delirious.  Regardless no other lover is ever mentioned.

3.    Eurynome and Ophion;"He [Orpheus] sang of . . . how, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Oceanus, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Cronus, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos; and how their successors ruled the happy Titan gods." Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 498 ff      Orphic myth never exactly explains who Ophion is, his genealogy or lists his descendatns.  Ophion might have ended up in Tartarus but not by Zeus’ jealous hand.

4.     Demeter had five recorded lovers including Zeus. Following Aaron Atsma;

·      “Zeus, the king of the gods and Demeter mated in the form of intertwining serpents. From this union the goddess Persephone was born.

·      Poseidon, the god of the sea, raped their sister Demeter while she was wandering around in a daze about the loss of Persephone.  They were both in the forms of horses at the time.  She bore him; the horse Areion and the goddess Despoine.

·      Carmanor, Lord of Tarrha on Crete and Purifier of Python-slaying Apollo bedded Demeter. She bore him a son Eubouleos and a daughter Khrysothemis.  Carmanor is of unknow ancestry, apparently pious, and long lived with many descendants

·      On the other hand Prince Iasion of Samothrake, brother of Dardanos,    who lay with Demeter in a thrice ploughed field during the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia was struck with a thunderbolt by the jealous Zeus. She bore him twin demi-gods Ploutos and Philomelos.

·      Mecon is another man loved by the goddess Demeter.  He was changed into a poppy flower. With apparently no issue.

5.    Mnemosyne with the beautiful hair, the possible love-match with Zeus had no other recorded lovers.

6.    Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis had no other recorded lovers.

7.    Hera his blooming wife, might have had a previous lover; the river-god Imbrasos.  On the island of Samos, before the PanHellenic poets promoted her to Olympus, Hera and Imbrasus were intimately connected nuimastically and ritually. And by Joan V. O’Brien says;  “The local river god may have been understood as her early Samian spouse” (The Transformation of Hera.)    Interestingly, Susan A. Stephens inCallimachus: The Hymns lists “Chesia” as a Samian epithet for Hera.  Atsma reports that the Samina Naiad Chesias bore a son to Imbrasus named Ocyrhoe.  Admittedly the epithet Chesia could mean that Hera a temple beside the free flowing stream.  But knowing Hera’s jealously it is hard to believe that she would allow some nymph to jump the bones of her offical companion.