Zeus will cheat a lot. In fact, go back up to the Brief Rules and Tips for Overall Safety and add another rule. Yeah. Go ahead. Get your nice pen and write it Rule, what, Six?
Rule Six: Zeus cheats a lot. Hera will be pissed a lot. Get used to it.
Did you do it? Ok good. Because you'll need it. Onwards!
So, Zeus got a little tired of Hera, but he was sick of divorcing women. So, he decided that he would just stop getting married to every woman he saw! Instead, he'd just cheat on Hera and have loads of side chicks!
Also, remember when he said he was sick of dating Titan women? Well...he's just really into older women, ok? Don't judge. So, a little after he married Hera, he met two nice Titan women, named Leto and Maia, respectively. (Technically Maia was a nymph, but just go along with it) Zeus ended up getting both of them pregnant, and Leto gave birth first to twins. However, there's an entire story before she could actually give birth.
When Hera found out about her husband's infidelity, she was too scared to actually confront Zeus about it, so she took out her anger on Leto. (This will be a recurring theme.) She cursed Leto in her ninth month of pregnancy so that Leto could never give birth if she was either on rooted land or if the sun touched the place where she was standing. Pretty terrible conditions ngl. Everywhere Leto went, Hera was cursing her and got really angry.
Leto wanted to go to Delphi (remember that's where Kronos threw up the rock he ate) because it had been a sacred spot of prophecy, which ran somewhere in the family. However, during the time between her ancestors and her labor, some giant serpent called Python had taken over Delphi and tried to eat Leto, pregnancy bump and all.
Leto was so tired, and finally, another god helped her out. Poseidon felt really bad for Leto, so he created a new island using his trident and commissioned Zephyr, a wind god, to blow Leto to the island, which was named Delos. During her labor, Poseidon created a giant bubble of water over the island so that technically, Delos was not a place that the sun touched.
Leto only had palm trees next to her, which is what she grabbed during her labor. No husband or partner to grab onto or scream at. She actually couldn't even give birth for a while because Hera prevented Eileithyia from leaving Olympus to help Leto. The other Olympians had to give Hera a beautiful necklace that was like twenty-four feet long to get her to let Eileithyia help Leto. Finally, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis.
Straight out of the womb, Artemis decided that she hated men and would be a feminist. She went straight to Daddy Zeus and asked to be able to hunt and be a virgin forever. Meanwhile, Apollo immediately started singing and dancing and shooting arrows and loving women. Artemis also liked shooting arrows.
Apollo ended up claiming being the god of a lot of things but mainly like music and arts and poetry and healing and disease and archery and prophecy and sometimes the sun (we'll get to that later). Artemis ended up claiming hunting, the wilderness, young girls, freedom, and sometimes the moon (we'll get to that later).
Apollo also immediately went to go kill Python and shot the snake with a thousand silver arrows. Pretty cool. Then, Apollo reclaimed Delphi as a magical prophetic site and put the Pythia (an oracle later) in charge.
That was a really long explanation, but you need it for the basics. I could go so much harder, but this is Mythology for Dummies so I can't. Be grateful.
Right. Maia! Remember her? She literally only appears in this one myth and never again so bear with me. Basically, she and Zeus got it on, and he abandoned her in Mt. Cyllene, which was somewhere near Parnassus, which was where the Delphic oracle would be. Maia gave birth to a healthy son and named him Hermes!
Straight from the womb, Hermes was a pretty squirmy kid and wanted to be mischievous. So, when Maia fell asleep, Hermes was hungry and wanted to steal his food rather than earn it. Pretty neat, right? (Please do not try this at home)
Remember Apollo? You should. Well, by this point, he had tried his hand at cattle herding and quite liked it! He had a special herd of cows, and Hermes decided to snatch them! As a baby, mind you. (Beat that, overachiever) Hermes managed to steal the cattle and also wove these cool flipper shoes and attached them to the cows and himself. Basically, I'm not going into the details because it's a little complicated, but Hermes made it so that his and the cattle's footprints looked like they were walking backward while also stopping suddenly in a riverbed. Make sense? It shouldn't, not because it's a power scheme but because I chose not to explain it well.
Anyway, at some point, some farmer named Battus (you don't really need to remember him because he literally never comes up again in mythology) saw Hermes, and Hermes, a little baby, was like, "Sup dude. If you're quiet about this, I'll repay you. Otherwise, you're gonna die, little man." Battus agreed. And so life went by.
Hermes basically sacrificed half the cows and ate half the cows (as a baby), which is a pretty impressive feat. Then, he was bored (he probably had severe ADHD) and tortured a little tortoise. He saw a cute tortoise and immediately killed it. After he killed it, he dissected it and created a beautiful musical instrument, called the lyre. (Lyre lyre, pants on fire)
"This is really nice, you know? Apollo didn't even find out about his missing cows!" said Hermes.
Spoiler alert: Apollo found out about his cows. Double spoiler alert: He was pissed. Triple spoiler alert: Apollo tracked down Battus, got him to narc, and met up with Hermes. Hermes didn't really care, but he liked bartering. So, he bartered with Apollo and gave him the lyre in exchange for the cattle, winged shoes, and a caduceus (a magic stick with snakes on it). Quadruple spoiler alert: Apollo and Hermes became besties, and Hermes turned Battus the rat into a rock. Fun times!
We're not done yet though. So, according to some poets, by this point, Metis had given birth to Athena, goddess of wisdom and warcraft and smart things, inside Zeus' brain, and Athena wanted out so she literally split out of his skull. This led to Hera being jealous and masturbating and getting pregnant with Hephaestus, god of volcanoes and forging and metalwork and etc. However, according to other poets, Hera was already pissed at Zeus and gave birth to Hephaestus, who was deformed and blah blah blah (not to be rude but I'll go over their origins later). Then, Athena wanted out of Zeus' head, and Hephaestus split Zeus' head open with a hammer or an ice pick or whatever. Another difference: doesn't matter which but in one version, Hera loves Athena, and in the other, she hates Athena.
Ok. Good recap. Now we're ready for humans part two!
