Could the god of the Underworld beat the god that can shake the Earth to its core? Would the God of war stand a chance against the goddess of war? All will be revealed in today’s introduction to the great Greek masters of the universe.
20. Morpheus, the god of dreams. Ok, so when it comes to outright power, we’re sure some of you are going to disagree with us today on a few matters.
Nonetheless, it’s not as if the Greek gods were always busy having celebrity deathmatches. When it comes to who was boss, there’s room for debate. For instance, who was more powerful, old Morpheus who could get into your dreams and control them – that’s not a bad power if you want to mess with someone’s head.
Or, was his father, Hypnos, more powerful, since he was the sleep god, albeit a gentle kind of god? We guess Hynos wins. We mean, this God tricked Zeus not once but twice.
He put the King of the gods to sleep for god’s sake. That’s some accomplishment. His mother was also Nyx, and as you’ll see soon, she frightened everyone, including Zeus, who was reluctant to go near her.
On top of this, Hypnos' tricks affected the outcome of the Trojan War. So, with this in mind, his son Morpheus might not have been as powerful. Still, he didn’t just make people dream about their teeth falling out or milking blue cows.
He was important because he sent messages from other gods into people’s heads via their dreams. If you’ve seen the movie Inception, you’ll know this is a pretty good trick. We like Morpheus.
He was a good god. We’re not so sure about this next god. 19.
Tartarus, the God of the abyss. The underworld was a busy place and we’ll come back to it again today, but we’ll start with talking about a place below the underworld called Tartarus, which is the name for a god and also a place. Tartarus is actually one of humanity's first depictions of a kind of hell, a dark and gloomy place where you certainly don’t want to end up.
Some of the titans were sent there, and the wicked could find themselves condemned down there, too. In ancient Hebrew texts, Tartarus also pops up. It was the place where fallen angels ended up.
If you want to know where the place is, just look to Zeus, because he once said it was “as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth. ” To give you an example of how badass Tartarus was, just look at his son, a magnificent monster if ever there was one. That was Typhon.
Typhon was a winged serpent who wreaked havoc in the heavens and once almost knocked Zeus off the top spot in one of the great battles in Greek mythology. Zeus had his hands full, but he knocked Typhon flat on his winged back after blasting thunderbolts at him. Typhon went on to have a few monsters of his own, so we can say that this family line was trouble.
And it all started with the big man, Tartarus. Ok, so who else was so damn powerful that he could rustle up thunderbolts for Zeus to fire? 18.
Hephaestus, the god of the forge. When we tell you that we’re putting a blacksmith next on the list we’ll forgive you for wondering why the hell he gets to go above Tartarus. As we said, this is no regular contest, and also, he wasn’t just a regular horse-shoe-making kind of guy.
He was the son of Zeus, and by god, did he have some great powers. It was Hephaestus who fashioned the weapons that the gods used, and we mean a lot of them. He was basically the equivalent of all the world’s militaries meshed into one.
He sat in his palace on Olympus coming up with new ideas as to how to make the best weapons, which included Hermes' winged helmet, and Achilles' amazing armor (pity about the back of his ankle). As we said, he could make thunderbolts, too, but in most stories, it was the Cyclopes who first made them for Zeus. On top of that, he created the first human woman in Pandora.
You might have heard about her box. She opened that and released all the evils in the world. So, yes, this guy was no regular blacksmith.
There are different accounts, though, as to what happened to him. None of them are really very good. One of them consists of his own mother, Hera, throwing him out of the heavens because he was lame, physically lame.
Another account had Zeus throwing him down to Earth after Hephaestus tried to help his mom after Zeus came on a bit strong with her. Zeus was renowned for his wayward actions with women. The good news is that Hephaestus's exile didn’t last, and he eventually got back up to Olympus.
Another interesting part of his story is that he once had a relationship with the goddess of love and lust and beauty, Aphrodite. As could be expected with this goddess, she cheated on him numerous times with mortal men and also a god named, Ares, who we will feature soon. Now for the strongman of the gods.
17. Atlas, a very strong dude. There were the gods and there were the titans, and the titans were in fact gods, but they were there before the classical Greek gods we are mostly talking about today.
The titans fought with the classical gods over a period of ten years after which the gods won. The battle, or a series of battles, was called the Titanomachy. Many of the titans were then banished to that place you’ve already heard about, Tartarus.
That’s the short version of the story atleast. Atlas was one tough titan. He was also the brother of Prometheus, the titan that stole the fire from the gods and gave it to us humans so we could basically kick off civilization.
You have him to thank for this video today. Atlas wasn’t the most powerful titan by any means, but he was incredibly strong. That’s why he gets a mention here.
In fact, when that war was lost instead of being sent down to hell, he was forced to carry the celestial spheres on his back for eternity. Now that’s a lot of weight to carry. This next God is just cool, maybe the coolest god of them all.
16. Hermes, the herald of the gods. If the gods wanted news, and news was very important, they could rely on Hermes as a messenger to get it to them, hence he was the herald god.
He’s also been called the god of nature, farmers, travelers, merchants, human heralds, sailors, and even thieves. On top of that, he was said to be “the god of the road between the Under and the Upper world. ” He was a complicated god and there are many stories about him.
One of those stories includes him stealing some cattle from the mighty god Apollo, who we will also talk about later. Hermes, then just a kid, hid the cattle in a cave, and he turned the hooves of the animals into winged shoes that could take him any place at incredible speed. Apollo, of course, was less than pleased when he caught Hermes out.
He took the boy to Zeus to face the music and all Zeus did was laugh. He thought Hermes had been pretty smart and so didn’t punish him at all. Hermes kept those magic shoes, so he could easily move between Olympus, Hades, Tartarus, and Atlantis.
When news needed to get somewhere, he was the man to send it, and that included delivering messages from Earth to the heavens. He was kind of like media and social media in the godly realm, and as you know, media and social media are pretty powerful tools. He was tricky, too, just like any media magnate is today, sometimes using his trickery down on Earth, such as when he got behind the Greeks in the Trojan war.
As for his love interests, you won’t be surprised to hear that he had the hots for Aphrodite – didn’t everyone! She rebuffed his advances at first, so Hermes went to Zeus for some help. Zeus sent an eagle to steal Aphrodite’s sandal and it ended up in the hands of Hermes.
To cut a long story short, she went in search of the missing shoe and the outcome was some lovemaking and a later child named Hermaphroditus. It’s a cool story, but in other tales, Hermes certainly showed his dark side to women. This next god was perhaps a bit nicer.
15. Artemis, goddess of hunting, nature, and chastity. Artemis was the daughter of Zeus, the twin sister of Apollo, and she became the patron goddess of girls and all young females.
She was also a kind of protector to women during childbirth, which let’s face it, was very important back in those days. When she was just a kid you could say that she was pretty spoiled, being the daughter of the big man. One story says that when she was just three years old, Zeus had a chat with her and asked her what kind of things she wanted in her life.
Part of her reply went like this: “Pray give me eternal virginity; as many names as my brother Apollo; a bow and arrow like his; the office of bringing light; a saffron hunting tunic with a red hem reaching to my knees; sixty young ocean nymphs, all of the same age, as my maids of honor. ” She also asked for a bunch of rivers and all the mountains in the world. She then added, I’ll take some cities, too, but I’ll let you decide which ones.
She was given that bow, a silver one made by the cyclopes. If you don’t know who those guys were, they were one-eyed giants who were more than capable blacksmiths. With that great bow, Artemis became the goddess of the wild hunt, which again, was a big deal back then.
She helped the Trojans in the Trojan war, being mentioned in the Iliad as the “the archer goddess” and the “goddess of the loud hunt. ” She’s also notable for killing the giant hunter named Orion, after he either tried to force himself on her or possibly one of her followers. As you know, Orion ended up becoming a star constellation.
This goddess was so special that humans in real life built a massive temple for her which took a hundred years to finish and became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 14. Nike, the goddess of speed, strength, and victory.
Long before she came before the words Air Jordan, Nike was one hell of a goddess. During that ten-year fight with the titans we told you about, she was one of the first to give her support to Zeus. For that, she got to sit next to him on a throne.
This girl was all about winning, and Zeus knew to keep her close. The Roman version of her was Victoria, from where we get the word victory. Her story is a bit complicated since over the years she’s been talked about as if she was the goddess Athena, but it seems at some point she became her own goddess.
Details are a bit scant as to what she exactly did besides making people win, but one text states she “will not live apart from Zeus, nor go except where the god goes before them, but they sit forever beside heavy-booming Zeus. ” It’s said that when Typhon was giving Zeus a really hard time close to the end of the Titanomachy, it was her who told him many of the gods had already given up and if Zeus wasn’t careful all the Gods could kiss goodbye to Olympus. She then told him to get those thunderbolts ready.
So, whether you were a god fighting or a mortal fighting, you really wanted the loyal Nike on your side. It’s not exactly clear what unique powers she had, but you definitely needed this goddess on your side in times of war. You also needed this next God.
13. Demeter, goddess of grain and agriculture. This is also a bit complicated, but we will try to condense it.
In short, a god we’ll talk about soon named Chronos had a bunch of kids. They were Chiron, Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon, and Zeus. Chronos ruled over everything, and things weren’t too bad in those days, hence his rule was called the Golden Age.
Still, he was told a prophecy that his sons would end up taking over one day. Not one to ignore a prophecy, Chronos thought that it was better to swallow his children rather than bring them up. He did that, but things backfired.
Part of this backfiring was Chronos having to throw up his kids, one of them being Demeter. She became exceptionally powerful because she was the giver of food or grain. She was the goddess of the harvest.
Without food, there’s no life, so Demeter had a lot of respect from mortals. One story says it was her who brought poppies to the world, and those things were certainly useful once humans had sucked out the opium pulp and fed it to an injured or sick person. It’s also said she spent a lot of time down in the underworld, and that could represent the end of harvests and the beginning of the winter.
The reason she was down in the underworld would take a long time to explain, but in short, it was because her daughter Persephone was stuck down there. Persephone’s father was Demeter’s brother, Zeus. The gods were very, very incestual.
When Demeter popped back up from the underworld every year, hey presto, she made food plentiful again. It seems she didn’t get too involved with the seedier side of Godly life, although it’s said she once lay with a mortal guy in a field, and then out of anger Zeus zapped the guy with a thunderbolt. There’s also a darker part of the tale in that her brother Poseidon once turned himself into a stallion and in that guise made her pregnant.
Now for everyone’s favorite god. 12. Dionysus, god of all things pleasurable and crazy.
Ok, so that isn’t his official title. He was the God of a lot of things, including the grape harvest, wine, i. e.
getting loaded, as well as fruits and orchards. But he had a dark side, just as recklessly drinking booze has a dark side, because he was also the god of lots of forms of insanity. He was the god of religious ecstasy, which can also be a double-edged sword at times in regards to going mad.
The Greeks had something called the Dionysian Mysteries. These were rituals where folks got off their heads on wine and perhaps psychoactive drugs. Historians aren’t too sure what drugs, but perhaps during those rituals people tripped, and they found a kind of religious ecstasy.
They were released for a few hours from their normal selves, just as what happens when people do certain spiritual ceremonies involving psychoactive substances. So, if you wanted to really feel elevated from the drudgery of everyday life, Dionysus was the guy. His back story is cool, too.
He was the son of Zeus, but Zeus as usual had been cheating on his wife, Hera. She got jealous and the upshot was the mortal woman with Zeus’s kid getting blasted with thunderbolts. Zeus saved Dionysus by storing him in his thigh until he got older.
Soon we’ll talk about the god that has been said to be the opposite of Dionysus, Apollo, but first, let’s talk about a very scary goddess. 11. Nyx, goddess of the night.
We guess you’ve already figured out that the philandering Zeus didn’t take crap from anyone. Sure, he had a few close calls when it came to fighting, but he was one tough son of a gun. Guess what, though, there was one god he was scared of.
That was Nyx. She was the mother of Hypnos, but she was also credited with being the mother of death, deceit, doom, destruction, and darkness. How’s that for a family tree!
Not that much was actually written about her, but the Greeks said she was so damn attractive and so unbelievably powerful that the mighty Zeus wanted nothing to do with her. For that reason, we could even put her in the top spot in this show. Still, we don’t think she earned that place because there just aren’t enough stories about her.
There is one cool story in which Hera asked Hypnos to put Zeus to sleep. Zeus was mad as a hatter and was about to cast Hypnos into the sea, but Hypnos ran to his mom for protection. Yep, Zeus chickened out.
He wanted no part of Nyx. So yeah, she could have been higher on this list. As could this next goddess.
10. Gaia, goddess of Earth and life. This one is tricky, too, when it comes to comparing power, because Gaia, like Nyx, wasn’t one of the Olympian gods but one of the primordial gods.
First, there was Chaos, and Chaos gave birth to the Earth (Gaia), death, love, and sex (Eros), the sky (Uranus). Gaia and Uranus gave birth to the titans, and in turn, the titans gave birth to the Olympians. Stephen Hawking would probably disagree with this creation story, but let’s face it, it’s a much better narrative than the big bang theory.
Since the titans gave birth to the Olympians, we can say Gaia kicked off everything. She also advised Zeus so he could beat the titans, but on the other hand, it was her who gave birth to Typhon. It’s hard to really speak of her power, but seeing as she basically started everything, and we mean EVERYTHING, she can’t not be on this list.
Now for Apollo, the god the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said was the opposite of the beloved Dionysus. 9. Apollo, the god of law and order, music, art, and poetry.
He was also the God of healing and diseases. If Dionysus was the God of recklessness and pleasure, Apollo was kind of the God of restraint and reasonableness. He had the ability to bring plagues, but he also had the ability to bring healing to people.
He helped young folks get older and age with good health. He protected them, just as he protected the crops in the fields. If evil ever reared its ugly head, Apollo was the God to turn to.
In that regard, Dionysus might have been cool as hell and good for a bit of self-development, but Apollo was the stability that everyone needs in their lives. As for cool stories, we like the one that has Apollo fighting the python. The python was a kind of dragon-type thing that guarded the gate of the Oracle of Delphi.
An oracle, if you didn’t know, could counsel you and tell you about the future. Anyway, Gaia was the mother of the python and Apollo knew from birth that he had to kill it. Zeus’s wife Hera had sent the python to kill Apollo’s mom while he was still in her womb.
The legend has it that Apollo was still an infant when he slew the python. Gaia was less than pleased and asked for Apollo to be sent to Tartarus, but instead, Zeus just sent him into exile for a while and said purify yourself kid. There is a lot more we could say about Apollo, but we’ll leave it there.
He was a top God, no doubt about it. As was this next deity. 8.
Aphrodite, goddess of lust, passion, procreation, prostitutes, sex, and beauty. You could have all the power in the world, but still be a feeble loser in the face of impossible beauty. You could be as strong as Atlas, as wise as Zeus, as fast as Hermes, and still be manipulated by a woman whose charms you can’t resist.
For this reason, Aphrodite was one very powerful goddess. She has a pretty brutal back story, too. Someone we’ll soon talk about, Chronos, castrated his father.
The outcome was quite a lot of blood and the missing testicles being thrown into the sea. The bloody froth in the sea is what formed Aphrodite. She represents the sex drive, and it’s that drive that is the reason why we all exist.
We are here to procreate, in the fundamental sense anyway. That’s why some scholars have said she was behind all the wars. The Trojan War was partly down to her.
But as we said, she was the goddess of procreation, so she was responsible for death and also life. She was what made men love. She could also drive mortals, and Gods, insane with desire.
She drove lots of folks crazy, including the good-looking mortal, Adonis. So, like Nyx, there’s an argument that Aphrodite was as powerful as any God. She proved that, too.
Anyone who didn’t do what she said or for some reason was not concerned with her beauty, often ended up being cursed by her and suffering a terrible fate. Zeus actually once got angry at her, saying something along the lines of, “Hey, your specialty is love, not war, what the hell do you think you’re up to? ” She did her own thing, that’s for sure.
But now we’ll talk about a couple of goddesses who could probably have given Aphrodite a run for her money. 7. Athena, goddess of war and wisdom.
Her father was Zeus, and she had no mother. That kind of thing could happen in Greek mythology. She apparently grew out of Zeus’s forehead.
She was also behind a lot of heroes, being the goddess of heroism. Did you ever watch those old movies, Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts? They were based on the legends of Perseus and Jason, monster-killing men who embodied heroism.
In Homer’s great book, The Odyssey, Athena is the goddess that counsels the hero Odysseus. She was also one of the three goddesses behind the Trojan War with Aphrodite and Hera. For this reason, it’s hard to say who was the most powerful of these goddesses.
They were all pretty tough, to be honest. She might have been a war goddess, but her kind of war was just, and she fought her wars with great wisdom. Remember that all those heroes she was behind had to use not just brawn but the brain.
Her brother, Ares, was quite the opposite. He was more about outright violence and bloodshed. In terms of power, we can’t really separate them, either.
That’s why he’s next on the list. 6. Ares, god of war.
If Athena said in war, to win this we must strategize, take our time, and the least amount of blood will be spilled in our victory, Ares might have said: if you are courageous and fearless and fight like a lunatic you might just win this, even if you’re the last man standing. That’s why the Greeks said Ares was more in tune with the savage. For this reason, he was often mocked in Greek mythology for being a bit of a jock, a reckless god who always tried to settle things with his fists.
He once slept with Aphrodite as she cheated on the great toolmaker Hephaestus, so Hephaestus wrapped them both in a net and make them both look pretty stupid. This is what Ares's father, Zeus, once said to him: “Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar. To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympus.
Forever quarreling is dear to your heart, wars, and battles. And yet I will not long endure to see you in pain, since you are my child, and it was to me that your mother bore you. But were you born of some other god and proved so ruinous.
” Was this savage more powerful than his sister? We think not. They can share the same place on the list.
We’d love to tell you that in the real world the Athenas are more prominent than the Ares, but we’d be lying. Brute strength has outdone wisdom many, many times. 5.
Hera, goddess of marriage, family, women, and childbirth. Hera was the sister and wife of Zeus, so even if you doubt her power, she was married to arguably the most fearsome god of them all – but we’ll come to that matter soon. As the stories go, she fell in love with her brother at a young age, but Zeus wasn’t exactly a faithful sort of guy and we’re not sure the Greek gods had anything close to a prenuptial.
Zeus cheated on her time and again, with other gods and with mortals. His offspring was pretty impressive, to say the least. But this made Hera very jealous, and also very vindictive towards the people Zeus got it on with.
To be fair to them, turning Zeus down was never an easy option. Hera herself was far from kind at times. When her stepson, the hero Heracles, was still in the womb she sent witches to prevent the birth.
That didn’t work out, so she sent serpents to kill the baby, but Heracles made short work of them. He strangled them and then played with their dead bodies as if they were toys. He’s only not on this list because his mom was a mortal, but suffice to say, Heracles was a handful when it came to scrapping.
Hera doesn’t come across as being the most powerful of gods, but you sure wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her. She was very cunning, and if she plotted against you, it was trouble. Now let’s talk about her very tough father.
4. Chronos, leader of the titans. We’ve mentioned this chap a bunch of times already because he plays a very important part in Greek mythology.
Before Zeus ruled the roost, Chronos was in charge. Chronos was jealous of his father, the god of the sky, Uranus. His mom was Gaia.
It’s a long story, but what you need to know is that Gaia told Chronos and his brothers to attack Uranus. Only Chronos did, and he did it with a sickle, castrating him. From the blood and ooze, Aphrodite and others were formed.
Uranus was understandably a bit peeved by this and so he called his sons titans. Chronos then married his sister, Rhea, and the two ruled the heavens and Earth together. But as you know, he was told that one day he’d be overthrown by his own kids, so, he did what anyone would do and swallowed them.
When Rhea had her last kid, Zeus, Chronos said, “Alright, hand him over, it’s swallowing time. ” Rhea wasn’t keen on this idea and instead handed him a stone covered in swaddling. It seems Chronos, as powerful as he was, was also a bit stupid because he fell for that and swallowed the stone thinking it was the baby.
Zeus grew up in a cave and when he got a bit older, he gave something to Chronus to make him throw up. Out came Zeus’s brothers and sisters one by one. In time, his brother, Poseidon, got his trident, and his brother, Hades, got his helmet of darkness.
Zeus got his thunderbolts. It was time to fight. As you know, Chronos lost the war.
He may also have been castrated by Zeus, but that’s debatable. He did get sent to Tartarus. But Chronos still deserves to be in this place.
He ruled over everything for a time and that ten-year war was no walk in the park for Zeus and the others. Still, he lost, so let’s move on. 3.
Poseidon, god of the sea, storms, and earthquakes. The ancient Greeks knew very well that the one thing that could shatter everyone’s life was the Earth itself. When it quaked, it destroyed, and it was Poseidon that could shake the Earth.
He also ruled the seas, which the Greeks also feared, especially when Poseidon decided it was storm time. You can’t really get any more powerful than that. He was also the god of horses and created the great winged horse named Pegasus.
Still, we should mention that when he once went to battle with Athena, he lost, so we’ll forgive you for telling us we’re wrong here. However, being an earth-shaker is just such a good superpower. Like Zeus, Poseidon had more kids than he could count, many of them monsters and savages.
That was probably a genetic thing because catch Poseidon on the wrong day, and he could be a complete psychopath. Annoy him, and you could forget your ship ever getting to its destination. Then again, the way the Greek gods acted they were all a bit mentally unhinged by today’s standards.
All in all, Poseidon could pretty much destroy the land and make the water deadly, so we are leaving him at number three. As for two, here goes. 2.
Hades, god of the underworld. If you’re going to give credit to the devil for having a fair bit of power, you have to give credit to Hades, too, since they both ruled over the underworld. Still, bear in mind that the Greek underworld wasn’t hell; that was Tartarus.
When that war with the titans was over, Zeus got the sky, Poseidon got the sea, and Hades got what’s down below. In fact, sometimes he was referred to as the Zeus of the underworld. This makes all three of them very powerful.
Hades wasn’t a bad god even though we tend to think of the underworld as a bad place, but he was feared because he took no crap from anyone. Once you went down to see him, you weren’t getting back, not usually. For this reason, the Greeks were incredibly scared of Hades and didn’t even like to mention his name.
If anyone tried to cheat death, they would feel Hades’s wrath, and by god, no one wanted that. Sisyphus tried it, and he ended up having to push a ball of rock up a slope for eternity. That’s why we now called futile things Sisyphean, a hard, never-ending task like moderating Twitter.
Hades could be one powerful dude if he wanted to be. It was written that if he felt like it, he could split the Earth in half. If you don’t believe us, here is some ancient text about him: “Hades splitting open the Earth to reach Persephone crashed towers and shook towns to their foundation.
It amazed Hephaestus and frightened the Cyclops. It shocked Athena, Artemis, and Persephone and frightened Aphrodite. It frightened the sky and caused the stars to move out of their courses.
” Seriously, would anyone mess with that? All we are going to say now is that if for some reason Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus got in a fight there would be nothing left except chaos. Why then, do we have Zeus in the number one spot?
1. Zeus, the king of the gods and the sky. There’s actually some ancient Roman poetry that has Zeus saying, “‘My Zeus rank is no greater than Hades.
I hold court in the sky; another rules the sea and one the void. ” Humans and the Gods were all scared of Hades and were happy about the fact he spent his time down below. Zeus understood his power, but Zeus at the end of the day just had more influence on the goings-on in the world and in the heavens.
Still, Zeus was hardly a moral character, sleeping around with just about everyone and anything, and sometimes coming down too hard on people. You could argue that Hades was a better God, but at the end of the day, Zeus was pretty just at times, and he was supremely intelligent. If things really went to hell, you could rely on Zeus to sort things out.
Hades and Poseidon meanwhile might sit back and just let things happen. As we said, the Greeks did fear this kind of fight. If those three fell out it would mean the end of everything.
But an all-out fight wouldn’t happen, because Zeus would know better. He was the king for a reason. His rulership was contested from time to time by other Gods, but Zeus remained on the throne.
Poseidon had some run-ins with him, but in one text he admitted, “I’d wish none of us to quarrel with Zeus, the mightiest of us by far. ” Now you need to watch “Was Jesus Actually Resurrected.
