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There were a lot more than just seven, but here are some of the main ones:

Hera -- goddess of marriage

Athena -- goddess of wisdom

Apollo -- god of the sun and healing

Ares -- god of love

Hephaestus -- god of the forge and blacksmiths

Aphrodite -- goddess of love

Zeus -- father of the gods

Hestia -- goddess of the hearth

Dionysus -- god of wine and agriculture

Hades -- god of the underworld

Poseidon -- god of the oceans

2006-10-25 10:37:20 · answer #1 · answered by Wolfeblayde 7 · 1 0

The first gods
One type of narrative about the age of gods tells the story of the birth and conflicts of the first divinities: Chaos, Night, Eros, Uranus, Gaia, the Titans and the triumph of Zeus and the Olympians. Hesiod's Theogony is an example of this type. It was also the subject of many lost poems, including ones attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus, Epimenides, Abaris and other legendary seers, which were used in private ritual purifications and mystery-rites. A few fragments of these works survive in quotations by Neoplatonist philosophers and recently-unearthed papyrus scraps.

The earliest Greek thought about poetry considered the theogony, or song about the birth of the gods, to be the prototypical poetic genre - the prototypical muthos - and imputed almost magical powers to it. Orpheus, the archetypal poet, was also the archetypal singer of theogonies, which he uses to calm seas and storms in the Argonautica, and to move the stony hearts of the underworld gods in his descent to Hades. When Hermes invents the lyre in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the first thing he does is to sing the birth of the gods. Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods, but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic poet's function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses.

[edit]New gods
Another type tells the story of the birth, struggles and exploits, and eventual ascent into Olympus of one of the younger generation of gods: Apollo, Hermes, Athena, etc. The Homeric Hymns are the oldest source of this kind of story. They are often closely associated with cult-centers of the god in question: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a compound of two earlier narratives: one telling of his birth at Delos, the other of his establishment of the oracle at Delphi. Similarly, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, with its tale of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, narrates the back-story of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

2006-10-25 10:38:09 · answer #2 · answered by Brite Tiger 6 · 0 0

Actually there's more than seven... but you got the main biggies listed with the first answer.

2006-10-25 10:38:59 · answer #3 · answered by KC 7 · 0 0

Zues- The god of lightning and of the sky-KING of the gods

Poseidon- The god of water and of the sea. Zues's brother

Appollo-son of zues, god of prophecy, music and healing

Ares-son of zues THE GOD OF WAR!!!

Hades-THE GOD OF Death lord of the underworld

Hermes-The messenger god, god of haste

Hephaistos- The god of crafts, heat, and of weopons

2006-10-25 10:46:15 · answer #4 · answered by lala 2 · 0 0

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