Every Greek city honoured Zeus — sky-father, thunder-wielder, king of Olympus — because not honouring him was meteorologically unwise. Ephesus honoured him too, with altars, offerings and his month on the calendar. But this city presents the rare comedy of divine politics: here, the king of the gods was the second most important deity in town. The Lady came first.
His résumé needed no local embellishment. Youngest child of the Titan Kronos — who swallowed his children to dodge a prophecy — Zeus was hidden at birth in a Cretan cave, raised on goat’s milk and honey (bees again; the Aegean loves its bees), and returned to make his father regurgitate the siblings, war down the Titans, and divide the cosmos by lot: sea to Poseidon, underworld to Hades, sky and sovereignty to himself.
What Zeus was for
Beyond weather, Zeus ran the moral infrastructure: oaths were sworn in his name, kings ruled by his sanction, and — the duty travellers still appreciate — he was Zeus Xenios, protector of guests and strangers, the divine enforcement behind Aegean hospitality. Every act of open-handedness to a visitor on this coast, ancient or modern, has his old job description behind it.
His famous weakness — the affairs, the disguises as swan, bull, shower of gold; the permanent counter-operations of his queen Hera — kept the poets employed and produced half the heroes of mythology, including two with Ephesian pages of their own: Hercules and, by some genealogies, the city founders themselves. In myth as in history, everything in Ephesus is related to everything.
His grandest image stood elsewhere: the colossal gold-and-ivory Zeus at Olympia, by Phidias, was a fellow member of the Seven Wonders — meaning father and daughter each anchored one of the seven. No other family in mythology can say the same.
