The Greek Mythology Family Tree: A Visual Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Related

It was long ago that poly­the­ism, as the sto­ry comes down to us, gave way to monothe­ism. Human­i­ty used to have many gods, and now almost every reli­gious believ­er acknowl­edges just one — though which god, exact­ly, does vary. Some pop­u­lar the­o­ries of “big his­to­ry” hold that, as the scale of a soci­ety grows larg­er, the num­ber of deities pro­posed by its faiths gets small­er. In that scheme, it makes sense that the grow­ing Roman Empire would even­tu­al­ly adopt Chris­tian­i­ty, and also that the gods it first inher­it­ed from the city-states of ancient Greece would be so numer­ous. Through our mod­ern eyes, the var­i­ous immor­tals invoked so read­i­ly by the Greeks look less like holy fig­ures than a cast of char­ac­ters in a long-run­ning tele­vi­sion dra­ma.

Or maybe it would have to be a soap opera, giv­en that most of them belong to one big, often trou­bled clan. Hence the struc­ture of Use­fulCharts’ Greek Mythol­o­gy Fam­i­ly Tree, explained in the video above. Also avail­able for pur­chase in poster form, it clear­ly dia­grams the rela­tion­ships between every­one in the Greek pan­theon, from the high­est “pri­mor­dial gods” like Eros Elder and Gaia down to the chil­dren of Zeus and Posei­don.

How­ev­er pow­er­ful they could be — and some were pow­er­ful indeed — none of these gods act­ed like the infal­li­ble, omni­scient enti­ties of the major reli­gions we know today. They could act capri­cious­ly, venge­ful­ly and even non­sen­si­cal­ly, a reflec­tion of the often capricious‑, vengeful‑, and non­sen­si­cal-seem­ing nature of life in the ancient world.

For the Greeks them­selves, these myth­i­cal gods and mon­sters offered not just an explana­to­ry mech­a­nism, but also a form of enter­tain­ment, giv­en that noth­ing could go on in their ele­vat­ed world with­out high dra­ma. For us, they remain present in leg­ends from which we still draw inspi­ra­tion for our own larg­er-than-life sto­ries of hero­ism and vil­lainy, but also in our very lan­guage. Con­sid­er the ways in which we con­tin­ue to evoke the likes of the time-rul­ing Chronos, the love-bring­ing Cupid, the androg­y­nous Her­maph­ro­di­tus, or the mul­ti-head­ed Hydra in every­day speech. Though we may no longer need them to orga­nize our soci­eties, some of them have kept play­ing roles in the age of monothe­ism — which, what­ev­er its oth­er advan­tages, does­n’t require us to con­sult dia­grams to know who’s who.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Mythol­o­gy Expert Reviews Depic­tions of Greek & Roman Myths in Pop­u­lar Movies and TV Shows

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

18 Clas­sic Myths Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Pandora’s Box, Sisy­phus & More

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

A Visu­al Time­line of World His­to­ry: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Over 5,000 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.