Explore the pantheons

Sixteen-year-old son of Arjuna who knew how to enter the spiral battle-formation but not how to leave it, a lesson half-heard in the womb. Surrounded by six warriors at once, his death broke every rule of war and hardened the conflict past mercy.

Greatest warrior at Troy, son of the sea nymph Thetis, offered the choice of a long obscure life or a short one of everlasting glory. The Iliad is the story of his wrath, withdrawn from battle over an insult, returning only when it costs Patroclus's life.

The boundless mother of the gods, whose sons, the Adityas, include Varuna, Mitra, and Indra. In Puranic telling she is also mother of Vishnu's dwarf avatar Vamana.

The tasseled, dread-inspiring shield-cloak of Zeus, more often borne by Athena, fringed with terror and set with the Gorgon's head. To hold it aloft is to rout an army with fear alone.

Trojan son of Aphrodite, twice saved from death by the gods because his destiny lay elsewhere: to survive the fall of Troy. Roman tradition made him the ancestor of Rome, the one Trojan whose story is mostly told in Latin.

High king of the Greek expedition, who sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia for a sailing wind. He took Troy after ten years and came home to be murdered in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra, the curse of the house of Atreus closing over him.

The diminutive sage who drank the ocean dry to expose hiding demons, humbled the Vindhya mountains, and carried Vedic tradition south, Tamil tradition reveres him as the father of its grammar.

God of fire and the mouth of the gods, every offering poured into the sacrificial flame reaches heaven through him. Second only to Indra in Vedic hymns, he is witness to oaths and weddings to this day.

Wife of the sage Gautama, deceived by Indra in her husband's form and cursed to become invisible, in later tellings, a stone, until the touch of Rama's foot released her. Every era has retold her story to argue about her innocence.

The four-tusked white elephant who rose from the churning of the ocean of milk and became the mount of Indra, king of the gods. His trunk reaches into the underworld to draw up water that the clouds pour back as rain.

The towering "bulwark of the Achaeans," second only to Achilles, who fought Hector to a draw and shielded the ships alone. Denied Achilles' armor by vote, he went mad with shame, slaughtered flocks he took for the generals, and fell on his own sword.

The jeweled celestial city of Indra, filled with gandharvas and apsaras and cooled by the wish-granting trees of paradise.

Son of the slain Vali, made crown prince of the vanaras. He led the southern search party and delivered Rama's final ultimatum in Ravana's own court, planting his foot so firmly no demon could move it.

Daughter of Oedipus, who buried her outlaw brother in defiance of the king's decree, choosing divine law over human edict and death over obedience, the West's founding drama of conscience versus state.

Goddess of love and desire, irresistible to gods and mortals alike. Her very origin is contested: born from sea-foam in Hesiod, but a daughter of Zeus and Dione in Homer, two traditions the Greeks never reconciled.

Son of Zeus and Leto, god of the oracle at Delphi. Patron of music and healing who can equally send plague, his arrows open the Iliad by devastating the Greek camp.

Beautiful water-and-cloud nymphs of Indra's heaven, sent to charm ascetics from their penance; Menaka and Urvashi are among the most famous.

God of war in its raw slaughter, as against Athena's discipline, beloved by neither gods nor Greeks. His affair with Aphrodite, exposed in a golden net before the laughing gods, is his most famous appearance outside the battlefield.

Cretan princess whose ball of thread led Theseus out of her father's Labyrinth. He sailed off with her and left her sleeping on Naxos, where Dionysus found her, married her, and set her bridal crown among the stars.

Third of the Pandava brothers, son of Indra, the greatest archer of his age and Krishna's dearest friend. His collapse of will on the battlefield of Kurukshetra is the occasion for the Bhagavad Gita.

Virgin goddess of the hunt and twin of Apollo, armed with the silver bow. Protector of girls and wild things, and merciless to those who violate her, the hunter Actaeon saw her bathing and was torn apart by his own hounds.

Son of Apollo, taught healing by the centaur Chiron, so skilled he began raising the dead, for which Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt, then set him among the stars. His serpent-twined staff remains medicine's emblem.

The twin horsemen of the dawn, physicians of the gods who rescue sailors, restore youth, and heal the maimed. Divine fathers of the Pandava twins Nakula and Sahadeva.

Drona's son, who avenged his father by slaughtering the Pandava camp in its sleep. Cursed by Krishna to wander the earth immortal, wounded and alone, until the end of the age.

The huntress suckled by a bear, first to wound the Calydonian Boar, unbeaten in the footrace no suitor survived, until one raced her scattering irresistible golden apples, on Aphrodite's advice.

Goddess of wisdom and disciplined warfare, born fully armed from the head of Zeus. Patron of Athens, of heroes like Odysseus, and of weavers and craftsmen.

The great city that took Athena as its patron after her gift of the olive tree bested Poseidon's spring, home of the hero Theseus.

The Titan condemned after the Titanomachy to hold up the sky at the world's western edge. Heracles briefly shouldered the burden for him, and tricked him into taking it back.

One of the seven great seers, whose wife Anasuya's virtue humbled the wives of the gods. Through their austerities the couple received Soma, Dattatreya, and Durvasa as sons, partial births of the Trimurti.

The capital of the Kosala kingdom on the Sarayu river, ruled by the line of Ikshvaku, birthplace of Rama and the throne he returns to after fourteen years of exile. A byword for the ideal realm.

Son of Shiva and Vishnu-as-Mohini, raised by a Pandya king. His hilltop shrine at Sabarimala draws one of the largest pilgrimages on earth, a strictly regional tradition that entered no classical Sanskrit canon.

Krishna's elder brother, wielder of the plough, counted in most lists as an avatar of the world-serpent Shesha, though some traditions name him an avatar of Vishnu himself. He sat out the Kurukshetra war, refusing to fight either side.

Tamer of the winged horse Pegasus with Athena's golden bridle, slayer of the fire-breathing Chimera. He tried at last to fly to Olympus itself; Zeus sent a gadfly, Pegasus threw him, and he ended his days lame and shunned, the textbook of hubris.

One of the seven great seers, a tireless student of the Vedas, father of the warrior-teacher Drona, and the sage whose hermitage hosts Rama at the start of his exile.

The brother for whose sake Rama was exiled, who wanted none of it. Refusing the stolen throne, he ruled fourteen years as regent from a village outside the capital, with Rama's sandals on the throne.

Second Pandava, son of the wind god Vayu, strongest of men. He swore to tear open Dushasana's chest and shatter Duryodhana's thigh for Draupadi's humiliation, and kept both terrible vows.

Son of Ganga who swore lifelong celibacy so his father could remarry, receiving in exchange the power to choose his moment of death. Grandsire of both armies, he fought for the throne he was bound to, against the family he loved, and died on a bed of arrows.

The great sage who kicked Vishnu in the chest to test which god was worthiest, and judged him supreme when the god responded with concern rather than anger. Legendary author of astrological lore.

The great bow of Heracles, its arrows envenomed with Hydra's blood; prophecy held that Troy could not fall without it.

The creator god of the Trimurti, born from a lotus rising from Vishnu's navel. Though he shapes each cosmic cycle, he receives almost no worship, a fact the myths themselves explain through curses.

The most terrible of celestial weapons, invoked by mantra and answerable to Brahma, capable of laying waste to armies and lands. The epics warn that two loosed against each other could scorch the world barren.

Preceptor of the gods, who guides the devas in ritual and counsel. His rivalry with Shukra, teacher of the asuras, frames the endless war between gods and demons.

The winged staff twined with two serpents carried by Hermes, messenger of the gods, with which he guides souls to the underworld and lulls or wakes the eyes of mortals.

The nymph of Ogygia who kept the shipwrecked Odysseus seven years, offering him immortality to stay. He sat on her shore weeping for Ithaca; the gods themselves had to order his release.

Trojan princess granted prophecy by Apollo and cursed, when she refused him, never to be believed. She foresaw the horse, the fall, her own murder in Agamemnon's house, and was dismissed as mad each time.

A race half-man and half-horse, wild and wine-maddened save for the wise Chiron who tutored heroes; their brawl with the Lapiths was a favorite of Greek art.

The many-headed hound with a serpent's tail who guards the gates of the underworld, letting the dead enter but none return. Dragging him up to the daylight was the last and greatest of Heracles' labors.

The moon god, also called Soma, whose waxing and waning the myths explain as a curse for favoring one wife among the twenty-seven lunar mansions. Ancestor of the lunar dynasty of kings.

A fire-breathing monster, lion in front, goat in the middle, serpent behind, that ravaged Lycia until Bellerophon, mounted on the winged horse Pegasus, struck it down from the air.

The registrar of the dead who sits beside Yama, keeping a perfect ledger of every soul's deeds, read out at judgment. Patron deity of the scribe castes.

The witch-goddess, daughter of Helios, who turned Odysseus's crew to swine. Mastered only with the god-given herb moly, she became the voyage's ally instead, hosting Odysseus a year and charting his course past the Sirens and the dead.

The far eastern kingdom on the Black Sea where the Golden Fleece hung guarded, the destination of the Argonauts and home of Medea.

The island kingdom of King Minos, seat of the palace of Knossos, the Labyrinth, and the Minotaur.

Youngest Titan, who unmanned his father and swallowed his own children to dodge the same prophecy. Tricked into swallowing a stone in place of Zeus, he was overthrown in turn, in some tellings, to reign again over the blessed dead.

One-eyed giants; the elder Cyclopes forged Zeus's thunderbolt, while their savage cousin Polyphemus trapped Odysseus in his cave.

The master craftsman of the age: builder of the Labyrinth, and of the wings on which he and his son escaped it. His genius served tyrants and killed his boy, the myth of technology's double edge.

The princess who chose the mortal Nala over the gods themselves, recognizing him because he alone cast a shadow. When ruin scattered them, it was her wit, announcing a second swayamvara no true husband would allow, that drew him back.

King of Ayodhya, bound by two old boons to his wife Kaikeyi that exiled his beloved Rama. He died of grief within days, fulfilling an old curse that he, who had once killed a hermit boy by accident, would die bereft of a son.

The sanctuary of Apollo on the slopes of Parnassus, seat of the Pythia whose prophecies shaped the fate of heroes and cities. Marked by the omphalos, the stone the Greeks called the navel of the world.

Goddess of the harvest, whose grief-strike over her abducted daughter Persephone left the earth barren until a compromise was struck, the myth the Greeks told to explain winter, and the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Krishna's birth mother, imprisoned by her brother Kamsa, who killed six of her newborns to cheat a prophecy. Her seventh and eighth children, Balarama and Krishna, escaped him.

Physician of the gods who rose from the churned ocean of milk carrying the pot of amrita, the nectar of immortality. Regarded as the divine source of Ayurveda.

The blind king of Hastinapura whose inability to check his son Duryodhana, seeing every wrong and preventing none, makes him the epic's study in culpable weakness. He hears the entire war through Sanjaya's divine sight.

The five-year-old prince turned away from his father's lap by a jealous stepmother, who marched into the forest and meditated until Vishnu himself appeared. He was set in the sky as the Pole Star, the fixed point that never wavers.

Twice-born god of wine, snatched from his dying mother Semele and carried to term in Zeus's thigh. His ecstatic cult dissolved the boundaries of self, sex, and city, and from his festivals Greek theater itself was born.

Born full-grown from a fire altar, wife of all five Pandavas. Her public humiliation in the dice hall, saved from disrobing by Krishna's grace, becomes the moral engine of the entire war.

Brahmin master of arms who trained both Pandavas and Kauravas, and fought for the Kauravas out of obligation. He laid down his weapons only when told, deceptively, that his son Ashwatthama was dead.

King of Panchala, humiliated in a feud with his boyhood friend Drona. From his vengeance sacrifice rose Dhrishtadyumna, destined to kill Drona, and Draupadi, destined to change everything.

The warrior goddess formed from the combined radiance of all the gods to slay the buffalo demon Mahishasura, whom no male god could defeat. In Shakta tradition she is not an emanation of the gods but the supreme power behind them.

The irascible sage born of Shiva's anger, whose hair-trigger curses drive plot after plot: it is his curse that makes Shakuntala forgotten, and his gift that lets Kunti summon gods as fathers.

Eldest of the hundred Kaurava brothers, whose refusal to yield the Pandavas so much as five villages made the war inevitable. Even his enemies granted him courage and generosity, to everyone but his cousins.

Duryodhana's brother who dragged Draupadi by the hair into the assembly and tried to strip her. Bhima kept his vow: he tore open Dushasana's chest on the battlefield and drank his blood.

The island-city Krishna builds in the western sea as his kingdom, said to have sunk beneath the waves at his passing.

The tribal prince Drona refused to teach, who mastered archery before a clay image of the guru, and surpassed Arjuna. Drona demanded his right thumb as teacher's fee. He gave it without hesitation.

The blessed fields at the world's edge where the favored dead and heroes enjoy an eternal, effortless summer.

Rosy-fingered dawn, sister of sun and moon, cursed with insatiable love for mortal men. She asked Zeus for immortality for her lover Tithonus, but forgot to ask for eternal youth, and he withered forever.

Brother of Prometheus, Afterthought to his Forethought, who ignored the warning to accept no gift from Zeus and welcomed Pandora, jar and all, into the world of men.

Goddess of discord who, uninvited to a wedding, rolled a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest" among the goddesses, the quarrel that led to the Judgment of Paris and the Trojan War.

Desire itself. In Hesiod he is primordial, arising with Earth at the beginning and loosening the limbs of gods and men; later tradition makes him Aphrodite's arrow-shooting son, two irreconcilable pedigrees for the same force.

The earth herself, first to arise from Chaos, mother and grandmother of Titans, gods, and monsters alike. She armed Cronus against Uranus and later turned against Zeus, the ground beneath every succession war.

Wife of the blind Dhritarashtra, who bound her own eyes for life in solidarity. When all hundred of her sons lay dead, her grief-curse struck Krishna himself: his clan too would destroy itself in thirty-six years. It did.

Heavenly singers and musicians of Indra's court, masters of sacred music and often paired with the dancing apsaras; in the epics they can be warriors and lovers as readily as performers.

The unbreakable bow given to Arjuna by the fire-god Agni, sounding like thunder and never failing in battle. Inseparable from its hero, it wins the war at Kurukshetra and is surrendered only when his age is done.

The elephant-headed son of Parvati and Shiva, invoked at the start of every undertaking. Beheaded by Shiva in a tragic misunderstanding and restored with an elephant's head, he became the remover of obstacles and lord of beginnings.

The river Ganges as a goddess, brought down from heaven by King Bhagiratha's penance, her fall broken by Shiva's matted hair. Mother of Bhishma, and purifier of the living and the dead.

The king of birds and mount of Vishnu, born of Kashyapa and Vinata. He stormed heaven itself to steal the nectar that freed his mother from slavery, and won Vishnu's friendship by asking nothing for himself.

The sage whose wife Ahalya was seduced by Indra in disguise. His curse turned her to stone and covered Indra with a thousand marks of shame, a story every version retells differently.

Half-rakshasa son of Bhima and Hidimbi, a giant master of night-illusions. His death was a sacrifice by design: Karna was forced to spend on him the divine spear he had saved to kill Arjuna.

The embroidered girdle of Aphrodite that makes its wearer irresistible; Hera borrows it to beguile Zeus in the Iliad.

The gleaming fleece of a flying golden ram, hung in a sacred grove and guarded by a sleepless dragon. Jason and the Argonauts sailed to the edge of the world to win it and reclaim a throne.

A creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, guardian of gold in the far north and sacred to Apollo.

Eldest brother of Zeus and lord of the underworld, which he received when the three brothers divided the cosmos. Feared but not evil, a stern warden of the dead rather than a devil figure.

The vanara (monkey) hero who leaps the ocean to find Sita and burns Lanka with his flaming tail. In Valmiki he is a mighty ally; in later Bhakti tradition he becomes a god in his own right, the embodiment of selfless devotion.

The king who gave up his kingdom, sold his wife and son, and worked as a cremation-ground keeper rather than break his word, tested to the point of demanding a fee to cremate his own child. The gods restored everything; his name became the byword for truthfulness.

Winged spirits of sudden storm-winds who snatch away food and people; they tormented the blind seer Phineus until the Argonauts drove them off.

The Kuru capital on the Ganga, throne of the blind king Dhritarashtra and prize of the dice-game that dooms his house.

Goddess of witchcraft and the crossroads, honored by Zeus above all in Hesiod, torch-bearer in the search for Persephone. She walks the night with hounds and the restless dead, invoked at every threshold between worlds.

Crown prince and shield of Troy, the Iliad's great figure of duty, fighting a war he knows is lost, for a brother's fault, leaving wife and infant son at the gate. Killed by Achilles and dragged behind his chariot, ransomed at last by his old father's tears.

Daughter of Zeus and Leda, the most beautiful woman in the world, whose flight, or abduction, to Troy launched a thousand ships. The tradition never settles whether she was cause, captive, or pretext; in one version she never went to Troy at all.

The sun as a god, driving his four-horse chariot across the sky each day and seeing everything below, it is Helios who reports Persephone's abduction and the affair of Ares and Aphrodite. His cattle, eaten by Odysseus's crew, cost them their homecoming.

The helm of Hades, forged by the Cyclopes, that renders its wearer unseen. Lent to gods and heroes, it shrouded Perseus as he escaped the surviving Gorgons.

The lame smith god, cast from Olympus in infancy, who returned to build the gods' palaces, Achilles' shield, and Pandora herself. In Hesiod, Hera bears him alone in retaliation for Athena, one of the traditions' pointed disagreements.

Queen of the Olympians, sister and wife of Zeus, guardian of marriage. Proud and implacable, she relentlessly persecutes Zeus's lovers and their children, most famously Heracles.

The greatest of Greek heroes, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Driven to madness by Hera, he atoned through twelve impossible labors, and after death was raised to Olympus as a god.

Messenger of the gods and guide of souls to the underworld, inventor of the lyre on the day of his birth, which he spent stealing Apollo's cattle. Patron of travelers, merchants, thieves, and everyone who lives by wit.

Eldest child of Cronus and goddess of the hearth, who renounced marriage and Olympian quarrels alike. Every household and city fire was hers; she has almost no myths because she never leaves home, and that is the point.

The rakshasa woman who fell in love with Bhima the night he killed her brother, and won him for a season. Mother of Ghatotkacha, whom she raised alone and sent to die for his father's people.

The demon emperor whose boon made him unkillable by man or beast, by day or night, indoors or out, by any weapon. He tortured his own son for worshipping Vishnu, and every clause of his boon was turned against him by the man-lion at twilight on the threshold.

Hiranyakashipu's brother, who dragged the earth to the bottom of the cosmic ocean. Vishnu took the form of the boar Varaha, lifted her out on his tusks, and slew him after a thousand-year duel.

Son of Daedalus, who escaped Crete on wings of wax and feathers. Warned to fly the middle course, he rose toward the sun in sheer exhilaration; the wax ran, and the sea that took him bears his name.

King of the gods in the Vedic age, wielder of the thunderbolt vajra and slayer of the dragon Vritra. In later Puranic literature his stature shrinks: he remains king of heaven but is repeatedly humbled by Vishnu, Shiva, and even mortals.

Ravana's son Meghanada, called Indrajit for defeating Indra himself. Fighting invisible from the clouds, he twice felled Rama and Lakshmana with serpent-arrows; only Lakshmana, exploiting the one gap in his ritual armor, could kill him.

The splendid city the Pandavas raise from a wilderness, whose hall of illusions provokes Duryodhana's envy and the fatal dice-match.

The rugged western island that is the home and kingdom of Odysseus, the goal of his ten-year wandering and the stage for his return in disguise to reclaim his wife and hall.

The immortal king of bears, present since the churning of the ocean. It is he who reminds Hanuman of his forgotten powers before the leap to Lanka, and he who fought Krishna for the Syamantaka jewel and gave him his daughter in marriage.

King of Mithila who found the infant Sita in a furrow while ploughing, and raised her as his own. Celebrated in the Upanishads as the model of the king who rules while inwardly renounced.

Emperor of Magadha, twice-born from two half-bodies joined by a demoness, and killable only by tearing him apart again. He besieged Mathura seventeen times; Bhima finally split him in a fourteen-day wrestling match at Krishna's prompting.

Leader of the Argonauts on the quest for the Golden Fleece, which he won only through Medea's magic and betrayed love. He broke his oath to her at Corinth and lost everything, killed at last, in one tradition, by the rotting stern of his own famous ship.

The aged vulture king who threw himself against Ravana's chariot to stop Sita's abduction and was mortally wounded. He lived just long enough to tell Rama what had happened, and received funeral rites from Rama's own hands.

King of Sindhu who held the gap that trapped Abhimanyu to his death. Arjuna vowed to kill him by the next sunset or burn himself alive, and Krishna briefly hid the sun to make it happen.

Dasharatha's favorite queen, who once saved his life in battle and held two unspent boons. Poisoned by her maid Manthara's counsel, she spent them to crown her son and exile Rama, and lived to be forgiven by the very stepson she wronged.

The black goddess of time and dissolution, garlanded with severed heads, who springs from Durga's brow in battle. Terrifying to demons but a mother to her devotees, in Shakta and Tantric traditions, the ultimate reality itself.

The many-hooded serpent whose venom poisoned the river Yamuna until the boy Krishna danced upon his hoods and banished him, sparing his life at the pleading of the serpent's wives.

The avatar yet to come: a rider on a white horse with a blazing sword who will end the dark age of Kali Yuga, destroy the corrupt, and begin the cycle of ages anew.

God of desire whose sugarcane bow fires five flower arrows. Burned to ash by Shiva's third eye for daring to interrupt the great god's meditation, then restored, bodiless, as love that pervades everything.

The divine cow of plenty who yields whatever is desired, kept by the sage Vasishtha. A king's attempt to seize her from him ignites one of the great rivalries of the sages.

The tyrant of Mathura, warned that his sister's eighth child would kill him. He imprisoned her, murdered her infants, and sent demon after demon against the escaped child, who returned at sixteen and threw him from his own throne.

Son of Surya and Kunti, abandoned at birth and raised by a charioteer. Scorned by the princes, befriended by Duryodhana, he fought his own brothers out of loyalty and died when his chariot wheel sank, the epic's great tragic figure.

The six-faced war god, son of Shiva born to destroy the demon Taraka, commander of the armies of heaven. Worshipped in Tamil tradition as Murugan, where he remains one of the most beloved of all gods.

The primeval sage from whose many wives descend nearly everything that lives, gods from Aditi, demons from Diti, serpents from Kadru, birds from Vinata. Grandfather, in effect, of the whole contending cosmos.

The mighty mace of Vishnu, one of his four emblems along with the discus, conch, and lotus.

Eldest queen of Dasharatha and mother of Rama, whose quiet endurance of her co-wife's coup and her son's exile makes her the epic's figure of dignified sorrow.

The headless trunk of the severed asura Rahu, made an immortal shadow-planet. In astrology he signifies loss, moksha, and detachment from the material.

Half-human, half-bird celestial beings famed for music and devoted love, dwelling in the Himalayan realm of Kubera.

Preceptor of the Kuru princes alongside Drona and one of the war's handful of survivors on the Kaurava side. Counted among the immortals who live on into the next age.

The eighth avatar of Vishnu: cowherd, prince, and counselor. As Arjuna's charioteer in the Mahabharata he delivers the Bhagavad Gita. In Bhakti traditions he is worshipped not as an avatar but as the supreme god himself.

Lord of wealth and king of the yakshas, guardian of the north. Original ruler of Lanka until his half-brother Ravana seized it, along with the flying chariot Pushpaka.

Ravana's colossal brother, tricked by the gods into sleeping six months at a stretch. Woken for the war, he told Ravana plainly that he was wrong, then fought and died for him anyway, because he was his brother.

Mother of the Pandavas, who could summon any god to father a child. Her secret firstborn, Karna, abandoned in a basket on the river, grew up to fight his own brothers.

The tortoise avatar of Vishnu, whose shell bore the weight of Mount Mandara so that gods and demons could churn the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality.

The sacred plain north of Delhi where the eighteen-day war of the Mahabharata was fought, and where Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna between the armies. Called the "field of dharma" in the epic's first line.

Twin of Lava, raised by Valmiki, taught to sing his father's story before his father's court. The two boys' recital reveals their identity and brings the exiled Sita's story to its end.

The inescapable maze built beneath the palace of Knossos by the craftsman Daedalus to hold the Minotaur, from which even its maker barely escaped, on wings, with his son Icarus.

Rama's younger brother and shadow, who chose fourteen years of exile rather than be parted from him, and is said never to have slept through them. Regarded as an incarnation of the serpent Shesha.

Goddess of fortune and abundance who emerged from the churning of the cosmic ocean and chose Vishnu as her consort. She incarnates alongside his avatars, as Sita with Rama, as Rukmini with Krishna.

The gold-walled island citadel of the rakshasa king Ravana, where Sita was held captive. Once Kubera's, seized by his half-brother, and burned by Hanuman before Rama's army crossed the sea to storm it.

Twin son of Rama and Sita, born in Valmiki's forest hermitage after Sita's banishment. With his brother Kusha he sang the Ramayana before Rama himself, the epic containing its own first performance.

The venomous water-serpent of Lerna that grew two heads for every one severed. Heracles overcame it as his second labor, cauterizing each stump, and dipped his arrows in its blood to make them ever after lethal.

The Titaness whom jealous Hera barred from every land when she was pregnant by Zeus, until the floating island of Delos gave her refuge to bear the twins Apollo and Artemis, whose first acts were to defend her.

The tortoise-shell lyre invented by the infant Hermes and traded to Apollo, who made it the instrument of music and poetry.

The demon king so virtuous his rule rivaled heaven, undone not by sin but by boundless generosity, granting the dwarf Vamana his three paces. Pressed to the netherworld by Vishnu's foot, he was granted one return a year: Kerala's Onam festival welcomes him still.

The buffalo demon whose boon, that no man or god could kill him, left one fatal omission. He drove the gods from heaven and fell to the goddess Durga, shifting shapes to the last: buffalo, lion, elephant, man.

A composite sea-creature, part crocodile, part fish, part elephant, that serves as the vehicle (vahana) of the ocean-lord Varuna and the river goddess Ganga, and as the emblem on the banner of the love-god Kamadeva.

Ravana's chief queen, wise and blameless, who begged him to return Sita. Counted among the five perfect women of tradition, married to its most infamous abductor.

Kaikeyi's hunchbacked maid, whose whispered fears, planted the night before Rama's coronation, turned a queen's love to panic and set the entire epic in motion. Literature's case study in the power of a counselor.

The first man and lawgiver of this age, warned by Vishnu's fish avatar of the coming deluge. His ship, moored to the fish's horn, carried the seeds of all life over the flood, humanity are his descendants, the manavas.

The demon who became the golden deer that lured Rama from the hermitage, under Ravana's death-threat, having once already survived Rama's arrow. Dying, he cried out in Rama's voice to draw Lakshmana away too.

The boy sage destined to die at sixteen who clung to Shiva's linga as Yama's noose fell; Shiva slew Death himself to save him, granting him eternal youth. He alone survives the dissolution of the cosmos to see Vishnu as a child on a banyan leaf.

Vishnu's fish avatar, who warned Manu of the coming deluge and towed his ship to safety over the flood, saving humankind, the sages, and the Vedas themselves.

Granddaughter of Helios who betrayed everything for Jason, homeland, brother, kin, and made his quest succeed. When he discarded her for a princess, she killed the bride with a poisoned crown, and her own sons with her hands, and left in the sun's dragon chariot.

The one mortal Gorgon, serpent-haired, whose gaze turned onlookers to stone. In Ovid she is a victim first, a beautiful woman transformed by Athena after Poseidon violated her in the goddess's own temple. From her severed neck sprang the winged horse Pegasus.

King of Sparta and Helen's husband, for whose sake the hundred kings sailed. He survived the war, wandered seven years, took Helen home, and, as Zeus's son-in-law, was promised the Isles of the Blessed instead of death.

The Titaness whose name means cunning itself, who mixed the potion that made Cronus vomit up his children. Zeus swallowed her while she was pregnant to forestall a prophesied usurper, and Athena was born from his head.

The Phrygian king granted his exact wish: that all he touched turn to gold. His food turned metal in his mouth, his daughter, in later telling, to a statue in his arms, until he begged to be rid of the gift and washed it into the river Pactolus.

King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa, master of the Aegean, who commissioned the Labyrinth to hide his queen's monstrous child and exacted Athens' tribute of youths to feed it. After death, he judges the dead in the underworld.

The bull-headed man born to the queen of Crete and hidden in the Labyrinth, fed on youths sent as tribute from Athens, until Theseus followed Ariadne's thread to its heart and killed it.

Vishnu's female form, the enchantress who beguiled the asuras out of the nectar of immortality at the churning of the ocean. Her union with Shiva, in southern tradition, produces the god Ayyappa.

The silver Himalayan peak that is the earthly seat of Shiva and Parvati and the axis of the world in Hindu cosmology. Also revered as the paradise from which the treasure-god Kubera rules the north.

The golden world-mountain at the center of the cosmos, around which sun and stars revolve and on whose slopes the gods dwell.

The highest mountain in Greece and the cloud-wrapped court of the Olympian gods, where Zeus presides over the divine assembly above the reach of wind and weather.

The mountain from which the Titans waged the ten-year Titanomachy against the Olympians on Mount Olympus.

Fourth Pandava, twin son of the Ashvins by Madri, famed as the most beautiful man of his age and a master of horses and swordplay.

The king of Nishadha, peerless charioteer and cook, possessed by the spirit of the fallen age into gambling away his kingdom. Disfigured and in exile, he was won back to himself by Damayanti's stratagem, the epics' great romance of loss and reunion.

Chief of the cowherds of Gokul and Krishna's foster father, entrusted with the infant smuggled across the river on the night of his birth.

The white bull who is Shiva's mount, doorkeeper, and foremost devotee. Every Shiva temple seats a stone Nandi facing the shrine, gazing eternally at his lord.

The wandering celestial sage with his veena, moving freely between gods, demons, and mortals. Devotee of Vishnu and cosmic gossip, his well-timed provocations set half the great stories in motion.

The many hells where Yama's servants punish the wicked before rebirth, catalogued in vivid detail in the Puranas.

The demon king who stole the earrings of the mother of the gods and imprisoned sixteen thousand princesses. Krishna, with Satyabhama beside him, stormed his fortress and freed them; his death is celebrated as Diwali's Naraka Chaturdashi.

The man-lion avatar who burst from a pillar at twilight, neither man nor beast, indoors nor out, to disembowel the demon king Hiranyakashipu on his own threshold, exploiting every loophole in the tyrant's boon of invulnerability.

A creature assembled from nine different animals, with the head of a rooster and limbs of many beasts, in which Krishna revealed himself to Arjuna, a lesson that the divine exceeds any single form the mind can hold.

A monstrous lion whose hide no weapon could pierce; Heracles strangled it as his first labor and wore its skin ever after.

The goddess who restores balance, visiting ruin on excessive pride and unearned fortune. It was she who led Narcissus to the pool where he fell in love with his own reflection.

Shumbha's brother and general, slain by the goddess in the battles that precede her final duel with the demon king, the Devi Mahatmya's escalating war against the goddess herself.

Night herself, born directly from Chaos, mother of Sleep, Death, Strife, and the Fates. So ancient and dread that even Zeus, in the Iliad, checks himself rather than displease her.

King of Ithaca and hero of the Odyssey, famed for the wooden horse that ended the Trojan War. His ten-year voyage home, past the Cyclops, Circe, and the Sirens, is the archetypal tale of wit against adversity.

King of Thebes who solved the Sphinx's riddle and doggedly investigated a plague's cause, only to find it was himself: the man who had unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. He put out his own eyes with her brooches.

The musician whose lyre moved stones and beasts, who sang his way into the underworld to reclaim his dead wife Eurydice. She was his on one condition, that he not look back before the light. He looked back.

The goat-legged god of flocks and mountainsides, player of the reed pipes he made from the transformed nymph Syrinx. The sudden terror he sends on those who disturb the wild noonday still bears his name: panic.

Krishna's conch-shell trumpet, won from a slain sea-demon, whose blast opens the war of the Mahabharata.

The first woman, crafted by Hephaestus at Zeus's order as beautiful vengeance for stolen fire. Her jar, mistranslated for centuries as a box, loosed every evil into the world, with hope alone left under the lid.

The great jar, later mistranslated a "box," that Pandora opened, loosing every evil upon the world and leaving only hope within.

Father-in-name of the Pandavas, cursed to die if he ever embraced a woman, which is why his sons were fathered by gods. He died as the curse foretold.

The battle-axe given by Shiva to Parashurama, the "Rama with the axe," with which he cleared the earth of tyrant kings.

The axe-wielding warrior-sage avatar who annihilated the kshatriya warrior class twenty-one times over to avenge his father's murder. An immortal who later appears as a teacher in both epics.

The Trojan prince asked to judge which goddess was fairest. He chose Aphrodite, who paid him with Helen, another man's wife, and doomed his city. The archer whose shot (guided by Apollo) found Achilles' one mortal spot.

Daughter of the mountain Himavan who won the ascetic Shiva through her own fierce austerities. Mother of Ganesha and Kartikeya, she is the gentle face of the same great Goddess whose fierce forms are Durga and Kali.

The most destructive of Shiva's weapons, granted to Arjuna after his mountain penance; it may never be loosed against a lesser foe.

Achilles' beloved companion since boyhood, who put on Achilles' own armor to save the burning ships and drove the Trojans back, until Apollo struck him and Hector finished it. His death brings Achilles back to battle, and dooms them both.

The immortal winged horse sprung from the blood of Medusa, tamed with Athena's golden bridle. He carried Bellerophon against the Chimera and, in the end, was stabled among the stars.

Odysseus's queen, who held Ithaca against a houseful of suitors for twenty years, weaving a shroud by day and unraveling it by night. Her cunning matches her husband's: she tests even him, at the end, with the secret of their immovable bed.

Daughter of Demeter, abducted by Hades to be queen of the dead. Having eaten pomegranate seeds below, she divides each year between the underworld and the living earth, dread queen and returning spring at once.

Son of Zeus by Danae, sent for the Gorgon's head as an impossible errand. Armed by the gods with winged sandals and a mirror-bright shield, he beheaded Medusa, rescued Andromeda from a sea monster, and founded the line that produced Heracles.

The great bow of Shiva; the breaking of such a bow at her bridegroom-contest wins Sita for Rama.

Ghoulish flesh-eating spirits of darkness and disease in the epic-Puranic demonology, haunting battlefields and cremation grounds.

Brother of Zeus and lord of the sea, the earth-shaker whose trident stirs storms and splits the ground. His decade-long grudge against Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus drives the Odyssey.

Son of the demon emperor Hiranyakashipu and devotee of Vishnu from the womb. Thrown from cliffs, trampled, poisoned, and burned for his faith, he emerged serene from every attempt, the archetype of the devotee whom God protects.

Last king of Troy, father of fifty sons, most of whom the war devoured. His night journey alone through the enemy camp, to kiss the hands of Achilles, killer of his son, and beg Hector's body back, is the Iliad's final mercy.

The Titan who sided with Zeus in the Titanomachy, then defied him by stealing fire for humankind. Punished by being chained to a mountain where an eagle devoured his ever-regenerating liver.

A flying palace-chariot that moves at its owner's will, originally Kubera's, seized by Ravana, and flown home by Rama across all of India after the fall of Lanka.

The demoness sent by Kamsa who came as a beautiful nurse with poisoned breasts. The infant Krishna suckled out her life instead, and because she had held him as a mother would, she was granted a mother's salvation.

The cowherd girl of Vrindavan whose love for Krishna became Bhakti tradition's supreme symbol of the soul's longing for God. Almost absent from the early texts, she rises in medieval devotion to be worshipped beside, even above, Krishna.

The asura who sneaked a sip of the immortality nectar; beheaded by Vishnu's discus mid-swallow, his undying head now chases and swallows the sun and moon, the mythic cause of eclipses.

The demon whose every drop of spilled blood birthed a duplicate of himself, drowning the battlefield in his own copies, until Kali spread her tongue across the earth and drank every drop before it fell.

Prince of Ayodhya and seventh avatar of Vishnu, hero of the Ramayana. Exiled for fourteen years, he rescues his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Held up as the ideal of dharma, the perfect son, husband, and king.

The ten-headed rakshasa king of Lanka, antagonist of the Ramayana. Not a simple villain: a master of the Vedas, a formidable ruler, and a devout worshipper of Shiva whose boons made him nearly invincible, undone by abducting Sita.

Sister-wife of Cronus who, tired of watching her children swallowed, hid the infant Zeus in a Cretan cave and handed her husband a swaddled stone instead.

Princess of Vidarbha and chief queen of Krishna, who wrote asking him to carry her off on the eve of her forced wedding. Regarded as an incarnation of Lakshmi.

Youngest Pandava, twin of Nakula, the quiet scholar of the brothers. He knew the future through astrology but was bound, or chose, never to reveal it unasked.

Charioteer-counselor to the blind king, granted divine vision by Vyasa to see the entire war from afar. The Bhagavad Gita reaches us as his live report to Dhritarashtra.

Goddess of wisdom and the arts, consort of Brahma, depicted with the veena and a white swan. She begins as a sacred river in the Rig Veda and becomes the patroness of all learning.

Krishna's fiery queen who rode to war beside him against the demon Narakasura. Her pride, famously weighing Krishna against her wealth in the Tulabharam story, is the counterpoint to Rukmini's humility.

The fisher-girl whose price for marrying King Shantanu, that her sons inherit, cost Bhishma his throne and his line. Mother of Vyasa before her marriage; matriarch whose choices shape the entire epic.

The princess who married Satyavan knowing he had a year to live, then followed Yama himself as he carried off her husband's soul, and argued the god of death, boon by careful boon, into giving him back.

The moon as a goddess, sister of Helios, crossing the night sky in her silver chariot. Best known for her love of the shepherd Endymion, sealed in eternal sleep so she might visit him forever.

The old ascetic woman of the Bhakti imagination who waited a lifetime for Rama and offered him berries she had tasted first to be sure they were sweet. He ate them as the sweetest of offerings, devotion outranking ritual purity.

Prince of Gandhara and Duryodhana's uncle, whose loaded dice won the rigged game that exiled the Pandavas. The epic's master manipulator, feeding his nephew's envy toward mutual ruin.

Daughter of a sage and a celestial nymph, secretly married to King Dushyanta, who, under Durvasa's curse, forgot her entirely until a lost ring restored his memory. Mother of Bharata, after whom India is named.

The slow-moving god of Saturn, son of Surya, whose gaze delivers the hard consequences of one's own deeds. Feared and propitiated more than almost any other planetary deity.

King of Hastinapura who married the goddess Ganga on the promise never to question her, and lost her when he did. His later desire for Satyavati extracted the vow that made his son Bhishma.

A ferocious being, part lion and part bird, that Shiva became to subdue the man-lion Narasimha when his fury would not cool. In Shaiva telling the form embodies power beyond even Vishnu's fiercest avatar.

The celestial bow of Vishnu, counterpart to Shiva's Pinaka, carried by his avatars Rama and Krishna.

The youngest of the four brothers, twin of Lakshmana, who served Bharata as Lakshmana served Rama. Slayer of the demon Lavana in the epic's later books.

The thousand-headed world-serpent, also called Ananta, "the endless," upon whose coils Vishnu sleeps between cosmic ages. The earth rests on his hoods; his yawns cause earthquakes.

The shield forged for Achilles by Hephaestus, its surface engraved with the whole world at war and peace, described at length in the Iliad.

Born the princess Amba, reborn, after Bhishma wrecked her life, for the sole purpose of destroying him. Raised as a prince and changed in sex, Shikhandi became the shield behind which Arjuna could finally strike Bhishma down, since the grandsire would not raise arms against one born a woman.

The king born with three eyes and four arms, fated to die by Krishna's hand. Krishna promised his mother he would pardon a hundred insults, and at the hundred-and-first, hurled his discus in open court.

The great ascetic god of dissolution and renewal, worshipped as the supreme being in Shaiva traditions. Emerges from the Vedic storm god Rudra into one of Hinduism's most complex figures, destroyer, dancer, yogi, and householder.

Teacher of the asuras who alone holds the secret of reviving the dead, making his demon pupils nearly unbeatable. Counselor to Mahabali against Vishnu's dwarf avatar.

The demon king who conquered the three worlds and, hearing of the goddess's beauty, demanded her hand. Her vow, to marry only one who defeated her in battle, was his invitation to destruction.

Ravana's sister, whose advances Rama and Lakshmana mocked and whose nose Lakshmana cut off. Her demand for vengeance, baited with Sita's beauty, is what set Ravana on his fatal course.

Bird-women whose irresistible song lured sailors onto the rocks; Odysseus alone heard it and lived, lashed to his mast.

The craftiest of men, who twice cheated death itself, once chaining Death, once talking his way back from the underworld. His sentence fit the crime: to roll a boulder uphill forever, watching it roll back each time from the summit.

Daughter of the earth, found in a furrow by King Janaka, and wife of Rama. Abducted by Ravana and held in Lanka, she remains steadfast through captivity and ordeal, revered as an avatar of Lakshmi and the ideal of constancy.

A winged lion with a woman's face who throttled travelers who failed her riddle, until Oedipus answered it. Undone by his wit, she hurled herself from the rock, lifting her plague from Thebes.

Sister of Krishna, wife of Arjuna, carried off with Krishna's own connivance, and mother of the doomed young hero Abhimanyu. The Pandava line survives through her grandson Parikshit.

Krishna's destitute boyhood friend who came to the palace ashamed to ask for anything, bearing only a handful of beaten rice. Krishna ate it with delight and, unasked, made him rich. The parable of friendship across fortune.

The whirling, razor-edged discus of Vishnu and his avatar Krishna, loosed to behead demons and returned to the finger. It is both weapon and emblem of the wheel of time and cosmic order.

The exiled vanara king whom Rama restored to the throne of Kishkindha by slaying his brother Vali, in exchange for the armies of monkeys and bears that found Sita and stormed Lanka.

The sun god who crosses the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses. Father of Yama, of the river goddess Yamuna, and, secretly, of the tragic hero Karna.

The serpent king whose fatal bite killed King Parikshit, provoking the great snake sacrifice of Janamejaya, the very ritual at which the Mahabharata was first recited.

The golden winged sandals that bear their wearer swift as the wind over sea and land. Worn by Hermes on his errands and lent to Perseus for the killing of Medusa.

The king who dined with the gods and abused it, stealing their nectar, testing their omniscience by serving them his own butchered son. He stands forever in receding water beneath fruit that lifts from his reach: to tantalize.

Queen of the vanaras, wife of Vali and then of Sugriva, celebrated for her political wisdom. Her lament over the dying Vali, and her cool defusing of Lakshmana's wrath, are set pieces of the epic.

The demon whose boon allowed death only at the hands of a son of Shiva, secure while the great ascetic remained unwed. The gods' entire campaign to marry Shiva to Parvati exists to produce his destroyer, Kartikeya.

The deep pit below even Hades, as far beneath earth as heaven is above it, where the defeated Titans and the worst sinners are imprisoned.

Son of Odysseus, an infant when the fleet sailed and a young man hunting news of his father when the Odyssey opens. Guided by Athena, his search is the poem's coming-of-age story, ending with father and son fighting side by side.

The shadowed kingdom beneath the earth ruled by Hades, across the river Styx, where the souls of the dead endure. Few living heroes, Odysseus and Heracles among them, ever entered and returned.

Titaness of divine law and custom, second holder of the Delphic oracle and counselor at Zeus's side. Mother of the Seasons and, in most accounts, of the Fates, law older than the gods who enforce it.

Athens' national hero, who cleared the coast road of brigands, entered the Labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur, escaping by Ariadne's thread, then abandoning her on Naxos. As king he unified Attica; as a man he kept breaking what he saved.

The bolt of lightning forged by the Cyclopes and given to Zeus after the Titanomachy, the instrument of his sovereignty. With it he cast down the Titans and the giant Typhon and enforces the order of Olympus.

The three-pronged spear with which Poseidon rules the sea, raises storms and earthquakes, and struck the rock of the Acropolis in his contest with Athena.

The three-pronged spear of Shiva, its points named for the three gunas and the three times, past, present, and future. With it the great god destroys ignorance and the worlds at the ending of an age.

The great walled city of the Troad, ruled by King Priam and defended by Hector, besieged ten years by the Greeks over Helen and at last taken by the ruse of the wooden horse.

The snow-white, seven-headed horse produced at the churning of the ocean, the archetype and king of horses. Claimed by Indra, his color became the stake in the wager that enslaved the serpent-mothers in the Mahabharata.

The sky, born of Gaia and then her consort, who imprisoned his children inside the earth. Castrated by his son Cronus with an adamantine sickle; from his blood came the Furies, and from the sea-foam around his severed flesh, Aphrodite.

Lakshmana's wife, left behind for fourteen years. In popular tradition she slept her husband's share of sleep as well as her own, so that he could stand guard unsleeping, the epic's quietest sacrifice.

The radiant Vedic goddess of dawn who throws open the doors of darkness each morning. Some of the Rig Veda's most beautiful hymns are addressed to her, though later tradition nearly forgets her.

The changeless supreme abode of Vishnu, where he reclines on the serpent Shesha upon the ocean of milk with the goddess Lakshmi. The final rest sought by his devotees, beyond the wheel of rebirth.

The indestructible thunderbolt-mace of Indra, forged from the bones of the sage Dadhichi, with which the storm-king split the dragon Vritra and freed the waters. Its name means both "thunderbolt" and "diamond".

Sugriva's mighty elder brother, who took half the strength of any foe who faced him. Rama shot him from concealment, an act the dying Vali protests, and the text itself debates, in one of the epic's sharpest moral passages.

The first poet, whose grief at seeing a hunter kill a crane bird burst out as the first shloka verse. A reformed highway robber in popular tradition, he composed the Ramayana and sheltered the exiled Sita in his hermitage.

The dwarf avatar who asked the demon king Mahabali for three paces of land, then grew to cosmic size and covered heaven and earth in two strides, claiming the king's own head for the third.

The boar avatar who dove into the cosmic waters to lift the drowned earth on his tusks, slaying the demon Hiranyaksha who had sunk her.

Guardian of rita, the cosmic order, who sees every deed and binds oath-breakers in his noose. One of the mightiest Vedic gods, later reduced to lordship of the ocean.

Chief of the royal sages and preceptor of the solar dynasty, owner of the wish-granting cow Kamadhenu. His long feud with Vishvamitra is the classic parable of spiritual power against worldly power.

Krishna's father, who carried the newborn across the flooding Yamuna in a basket on his head at midnight, prison doors opening before him, the serpent Shesha shielding the child from the rain.

King of the nagas, who served as the churning-rope wound around Mount Mandara at the churning of the ocean, and whom Shiva wears coiled about his neck.

God of the wind and of prana, the breath of life. Father of two of mythology's strongest figures: the vanara Hanuman and the Pandava Bhima.

A spirit that hangs in cremation grounds and animates the dead, best known from the riddling tales it tells a king in the Vetala cycle.

Ravana's youngest brother, who counseled returning Sita, was kicked from the court, and defected to Rama, who crowned him king of Lanka after the war. Tradition counts him among the immortals; his name remains a byword, honored or bitter, for leaving one's own for dharma.

Half-brother of the kings, born to a serving maid, and an incarnation of Dharma himself. The one voice in the Kaurava court that consistently spoke truth, and was consistently ignored.

One of the principal deities of Hinduism, the preserver who descends to earth as avatars whenever cosmic order (dharma) is threatened. A minor solar figure in the Vedas who becomes supreme in Vaishnava Puranic tradition.

The warrior-king who, humiliated by the sage Vasishtha's spiritual power, undertook millennia of austerities to remake himself as a brahmarishi. Teacher of the young Rama and seer of the Gayatri mantra.

The divine architect who builds the cities and weapons of the gods, golden Lanka, Indra's palace, and the discus of Vishnu forged from the shaved radiance of the sun.

The forest and pasture-land on the Yamuna where the young Krishna herded cattle, subdued the serpent Kaliya, and danced with the gopis. The heartland of Krishna devotion and the play of divine love.

The cosmic serpent-demon who coiled around the mountains and held back all the waters of the world, until Indra split him open with the thunderbolt, the Rig Veda's central act of creation-by-combat.

The island-born sage who divided the one Veda into four, fathered the Kuru princes, composed the Mahabharata, and appears within it as a character, watching his own descendants destroy each other.

Ambivalent nature-spirits in the retinue of Kubera, guarding hidden wealth in the earth and wilderness, benevolent or dangerous by turns.

The first mortal to die, who thereby became lord of the dead and judge of souls, keeping accounts of every deed. Also called Dharma, righteousness itself, and in that aspect, father of Yudhishthira.

The cowherd woman who raised Krishna in Gokul, bound the butter-thief to a mortar with rope and love, and once, looking into her child's yawning mouth, saw the whole universe inside.

Eldest Pandava, son of the god Dharma, so devoted to truth that his chariot rode above the ground, until one equivocal half-lie brought it down. His dice-game weakness cost his family everything; his righteousness won it back.

King of the Olympian gods, wielder of the thunderbolt. Overthrew his father Cronus and the Titans to establish the Olympian order, ruling from Mount Olympus as enforcer of oaths and hospitality.