Hesiod · Homer · Apollodorus
Pick a god, Titan or hero to see parents, siblings, consorts and children. Where the ancient sources disagree, each version is shown with the passage it comes from.
Roman name Jupiter (Iuppiter) Livy 22.10.9 (Livy, History of Rome)Met. 2.846–851 (Ovid, Metamorphoses)
Roman gods were identified with Greek ones, but not exactly: why the match is loose.
Epithet “cloud-gatherer” Il. 1.511 (Homer, Iliad)
Listed under: Olympians and Hades
The tree shows one figure at a time. Parents sit above, siblings and consorts beside, and children below, grouped by the other parent. Solid plaques are gods and other immortals; outlined ones are mortals; a dashed box is a parent the sources name but who has no entry here. Choose any name to move the tree to it.
Greek myths survive in many versions, so a figure can have more than one set of parents. Hesiod's Theogony has Aphrodite grow from the sea-foam around the severed genitals of Uranus, while the Iliad makes her the daughter of Zeus and Dione; Hesiod has Hera bear Hephaestus alone, while in the Odyssey he blames “my two parents”. Each version gets its own box marked “version 1 of 2”, and every link in the tree carries the passages it rests on. The short references link to free translations at the Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University), where you can read the lines in context.
The tree follows the oldest full accounts: Hesiod (around 700 BC), the Homeric poems and Hymns, and the Library of Apollodorus (probably first or second century AD), with a few tragedies and Latin poets where they disagree or give the Roman name. It leaves out many minor and later family lines, so an empty “children” box means none are included here, not that no ancient writer ever named any.
The Roman names in the side panel are the gods the Romans identified with the Greek ones. Those matches were never exact; the Greek and Roman name converter explains why.
Line numbers follow the editions linked. Translations: Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914); Iliad and Odyssey, A. T. Murray (1924 and 1919); Apollodorus, J. G. Frazer (1921), all at the Perseus Digital Library.
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Try WebTraceCheckCronus and Rhea, in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 453–458) and in the Iliad, where Poseidon says that he, Zeus and Hades are three brothers born to Cronus and Rhea (15.187–188). The sources disagree about the order of birth: Hesiod makes Zeus the youngest, the Iliad calls him the elder born.
Because the two oldest sources tell different stories. In Hesiod's Theogony she grows from the foam around the severed genitals of Uranus (lines 188–200); in Homer's Iliad she runs to “her mother Dione” and is called a daughter of Zeus (5.370–371). Apollodorus follows Homer. The tree shows both, each with its passage.
Ancient lists of “the twelve gods” differ, and modern lists differ too, most often over Hestia and Dionysus. Plato's Phaedrus (247a) has Zeus lead the gods in eleven companies while Hestia stays at home. The tree groups Zeus's brothers and sisters and his best-known children together under “Olympians and Hades”, since Hades lived below the earth.