Zeus (, : Ζεύς) is the and in and , who rules as on . His name is with the first syllable of his .
Zeus is the child of and , the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to , by whom he is usually said to have fathered , , , and . At the of , his consort was said to be , by whom the states that he fathered . According to the , Zeus' first wife was , by whom he had . Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including , , , , , , , , , and the .
He was respected as a who was chief of the gods and assigned roles to the others: "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence." He was with many foreign , permitting to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". Zeus' symbols are the , , , and . In addition to his , the classical "cloud-gatherer" (: Νεφεληγερέτα, Nephelēgereta) also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the , such as the .
