== 役割と呼称 ==
ゼウスは、ギリシアのオリンピアン・パンテオンを統率する圧倒的な役割を担っていた。ゼウスは多くの英雄の父親であり、彼らのローカルカルトの多くに登場した。ホメロスの「雲取り」においては、ゼウスは中近東の神々と同じく空と雷の神であったが、同時に最高の文化財であり、ある意味ではギリシャの宗教観の体現者、ギリシャの原型となる神であったとも言える。
Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes <!--"and heroines" was sweetly motivated, but can we name even one sired by Zeus?--> and was featured in many of their [[Cult (religion)|local cults]]. Though the Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek [[religion|religious]] beliefs and the [[archetype|archetypal]] Greek deity.
Aside from local epithets that simply designated the deity as doing something random at some particular place, the [[epithet]]s or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority: