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place

Olympus

Places · Myth & story · Traditions

A mountain and, in Greek story, a seat of the gods. The geographic peak and the poetic court should not be collapsed into one address.

Hellenic religion

  • Olympus appears in Hellenic religion.

    The Iliad attests Olympus as the seat of the gods, a mountain-court of Homeric speech. Greek poetic geography, not Asgard and not the geographic peak as a hiking address.

    from Homer · Iliad, c. 8th–7th century BCE (this form)

    appears in · sourced · documented

  • Olympus is sacred to Zeus.

    Hesiod’s Theogony seats Zeus’s ordered kingship among the Olympian gods on Olympus after the Titans fall. A named mountain-seat sacred to that god in the cosmogony, not underworld as the below and not every peak dump.

    from Hesiod · Theogony, c. 700 BCE

    sacred to · sourced · documented

Roman religion

  • Olympus appears in Roman religion.

    Virgil’s Aeneid seats Olympus as the gods’ court from which Juno, Venus, and Jupiter watch the Roman destiny plot. A named Olympus in that Roman epic, not the Iliad’s Hellenic court restated and not a climbing address.

    from Virgil · Aeneid, 19 BCE (unfinished at the poet’s death)

    appears in · sourced · documented

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