Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Demeter is the goddess of grains, known for traveling the world and coaxing barren places to grow and thrive. One day, Zeus decides that he must wed Demeter, so he follows her around a field until Demeter turns into a snake and hides in a hole. However, Zeus too can change shape, so he turns into a snake and follows her. Months later, Demeter gives birth to a daughter, Persephone. After a similar encounter with Poseidon and a dalliance with a human that ends when Zeus incinerates him, Demeter swears off men and dedicates herself to protecting nature.

One day, a prince and his friends storm a grove of trees, intending to cut them down. Demeter appears as a human and warns them away because the grove is under Demeter’s protection. The prince scoffs that he isn’t “afraid of a silly crop goddess” (86). Demeter grows to the size of Godzilla and curses the prince to eat for the rest of his days but never satisfy his hunger. After that, Demeter decides to live a more relaxed life and just enjoy time with Persephone, which doesn’t go at all as she hoped.

Persephone’s most outstanding quality is her beauty, and Demeter vows to make sure that her daughter isn’t taken advantage of like she was. Despite this, Hades is taken with Persephone and frequently uses his war helmet to turn himself invisible and watch her. One day, he goes to Mount Olympus to ask Zeus for Persephone’s hand in marriage. Zeus grants it but knows that getting Persephone away from Demeter will be a problem. Hades suggests talking to Demeter and Persephone, but Zeus says that being honest with women never works and suggests that Hades kidnap Persephone instead. Zeus lures Persephone away from her nymph caretakers so that Hades can grab her, and the only witnesses are the Titans Hecate and Helios.

With Hecate’s help, Demeter searches for Persephone but doesn’t find her. Exhausted after days of looking, Demeter stumbles into a nearby town, where the people take her in and promise to help her search. As payment, Demeter cares for the visiting queen’s newborn, feeding him nectar and blessing him to make him immortal. Before she can complete the process, however, word comes from the search party that Helios saw Persephone’s kidnapping. Demeter confronts the Titan and learns that Hades is the culprit. Next, she confronts Zeus, who admits his part in the kidnapping and says it’s too late to get Persephone. Demeter refuses to believe this, vowing that nothing will grow on Earth and that “every single living creature will share my pain until you do the right thing and return Persephone” (110). True to Demeter’s word, grain can’t be grown for months. Eventually, Zeus tires of hearing the humans begging for help and sends Hermes to the Underworld to retrieve Persephone.

Meanwhile, Persephone is trapped in the Underworld. At first, she throws tantrums and refuses to eat, yelling for Hades to go away whenever he visits. After some time, though, Persephone finds it a little romantic when Hades tells her how much he loves her. One day, she learns how Demeter is starving Earth to force Zeus to retrieve her. Persephone asks that Hades return her immediately, but Hades refuses, saying he would “let the dead flood back into the world rather than release you” (115).

Persephone runs and finds a beautiful garden full of plants from Earth. A gardener offers her a pomegranate, and though Persephone knows she mustn’t eat anything from the Underworld if she wants to leave, she can’t help herself. Soon after, Hermes arrives to take her back but can’t because Persephone ate the fruit. The news nearly sends the gods into war, but Hestia suggests that since Persephone only ate a third of the pomegranate, she should spend a third of the year with Hades and the rest with Demeter. The gods all agree, but while Persephone is with Hades, Demeter grows angry, which makes the land cold, so nothing will grow.

Like her sisters, Hera is beautiful, but unlike them, she has a cruel attitude and is mean to everyone. After seeing what happened with Demeter, Hera swears she’ll only get married to a god who will be faithful and true to her, though she can’t help but find Zeus’s good looks and humor charming. Zeus likewise finds Hera alluring and offers a deal. If he can get her to say she loves him, she’ll agree to marry him. Hera agrees, saying, “I can only promise because IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN” (124). A few nights later, a wounded cuckoo bird flutters through Hera’s window. She nurses the bird back to health, telling it she loves it. At once, the bird transforms into Zeus, who reminds Hera of their deal. Hera says she’ll marry him if he promises to stay faithful. Zeus agrees.

In their first 300 years of marriage, Zeus and Hera have three children, including Ares. After that, Zeus starts seeing other women and having children. Hera is angry that Zeus is having children without her, so she vows to have a child on her own—without any man—and gives birth to Hephaestus, who is misshapen. Embarrassed by the child, Hera throws him off Mount Olympus.

Sometime later, the gods invite Ixion, one of Zeus’s demigod children, to Mount Olympus, impressed that he killed someone with weapons rather than by throwing rocks. Ixion makes a pass at Hera, but when she tells Zeus, he refuses to take action without proof that Ixion actually meant to dishonor Hera. Zeus creates a cloud replica of Hera, whom Ixion spends the night with. In the morning, Ixion brags about sleeping with Hera, and Zeus punishes him by making him immortal, lashing him to a burning wheel, and hurling him into the sky.

Despite the Ixion incident, Zeus continues to be unfaithful, and Hera takes out her anger on his girlfriends. In one case, Hera tells a princess that she needs to make sure her lover is actually Zeus by making him swear on the River Styx to show himself in his true godly form. When Zeus does, his lightning-fire blaze vaporizes the princess, but her unborn baby survives. Zeus sticks the baby in his thigh so that it can keep growing, and the baby becomes the god Dionysus.

Before Hades becomes the god of the Underworld, it’s a mess. Five rivers, including the River Styx, lead into the place, confusing and destroying spirits. Once in the Underworld, no reinforcement exists to determine which spirits would go to the Fields of Punishment, Elysium, or the Fields of Asphodel. When Hades takes over, he installs three dead kings as judges for souls and the Furies as enforcers to make sure that each spirit goes to the right place. In addition, Hades spreads word among the humans to honor burial rights if they want to be allowed into the Underworld, including that every human must be buried with a silver coin under their tongue to pay the River Styx ferryman.

Hades finds creative ways to punish particularly evil humans. One example is King Tantalus, who wants to bring nectar and ambrosia back to Earth after dining on Mount Olympus. When the gods refuse, Tantalus invites them to his palace for stew made from his son. Zeus blasts him to pieces, and Hades punishes Tantalus by forcing him to stand under a fruit tree on which the fruit forever remains just out of reach. In another case, a mortal named Sisyphus repeatedly tries to cheat death. When he’s finally caught, Hades gives him a boulder and puts him at the bottom of a hill, telling him “as soon as you manage to push this rock to the top of that hill, you can go” (164). No matter how Sisyphus tries, he can’t get the boulder to the top and remains trapped forever pushing the rock up the hill.