Original subtitles

[thunder crashing]

NARRATOR: A son battles his father

for control of the universe and seizes more power than any god

ever had.

This is the story of Zeus, Greek mythology's supreme commander.

To us, it's a myth, but to the ancients,

it was reality, a way to make sense of a terrifying world.

Some Greeks believe Jesus was the one true god centuries

before Christ, and that nature's worst catastrophes

were a sign of his wrath.

This is the myth of Zeus as it was originally told,

and the surprising truth behind it.

[music playing]

If you control the sky, you control the world.

In Greek mythology, that power belongs to one god, Zeus.

He reigns as the enforcer of justice, the master of men

and gods.

Zeus was the king of the gods, but he was also responsible

for dispensing justice, both to the gods,

and to mortals on the Earth.

DAVID GEORGE: This is something really cool

about Greek mythology.

Because one of the things that you were supposed

to do as a Greek when you worship

the gods was simply to do what was required to keep

the gods from squashing you.

NARRATOR: As commander of the skies,

Zeus has the power of nature at his disposal.

That gives him the most devastating weapon of all.

PETER STRUCK: The most powerful symbol of Zeus

is the lightning bolt. This is what Zeus carries.

It's his main accouterment.

And it's the thing that makes him the most powerful

of all the divinities.

NARRATOR: Attributing lightning to Zeus

was a way for the Greeks to explain the unexplainable.

In a time before science, mythology put

faces on the forces that shaped the world.

MICHAEL FONTAINE: The Greeks used mythology

to try and figure out why the world operates the way that it

does.

They didn't have scientific explanations

yet for how the world came into existence,

or why lightning strikes here but not there,

or why it strikes then and not some other time.

KRISTINA MILNOR: natural world was very frightening to them,

so they associated it with the divine.

You know, these were symptoms of the gods' power

that they could use to punish people who hadn't worshipped

them properly.

NARRATOR: Zeus's command over nature

would make him Greece's most feared god.

But how did he get there?

[music playing]

What we know of Zeus begins with the writings

of the ancient Greek author, Hesiod, around 700 BC.

His book, called "Theogony," was the ancient Greek story

of creation, what the Book of Genesis is to our own world.

PETER STRUCK: "Theogony" is Hesiod's attempt

to make sense of the world, to bring order to it by telling

the story of a dynastic family rivalry

that winds up in a well-ordered cosmos, that is, the world

that you and I know today.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: In the myth, Zeus doesn't start out

as the king of the gods.

He rises from obscurity to challenge his father

for control of the universe.

And that won't be easy.

His father is Cronus.

He is king of the Titans, the most powerful gods

in the universe.

PETER STRUCK: The Titans are an older order of Greek god.

They're pretty rough around the edges.

They're not too bright.

They're also not very well civilized.

NARRATOR: As leader of the Titans,

Cronus is expected to produce offspring,

so he mates with his own flesh and blood, his sister

and fellow Titan, Rhea.

Incest shows up quite a bit in mythology.

Among the gods, there's really nobody else at the beginning

for them to have sex with so they end up

marrying one another.

There's an old-time aristocratic idea that says

that no one else is good enough for our family except only

our family, and the Greek gods definitely seemed to ascribe

to this kind of a principle.

NARRATOR: These two Titans siblings, Cronus and Rhea,

produce the next generation of Greek gods, mythology's

household names, the Olympians.

Among them are Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.

But they will not simply inherit the Earth,

they must fight for it.

Cronus was very worried about having children

because he was concerned that his son would be greater

than him and would supplant him.

The father fears being replaced by the son.

That's human psychology.

I mean, go to Freud and--

actually, Freud found it in classical mythology.

So this-- this fear of losing your power

to the next generation was real.

If you had a kid and you had something worth taking,

at some point, you needed to keep an eye on the kid.

So his solution to this problem

was to swallow alive all of his offspring.

As soon as his wife gave birth, he would actually ingest them.

PETER STRUCK: Now, of course, since they're immortal,

the children that Cronus swallows are not dead.

They are just locked away inside of his belly.

He's trying to control them and keep them

from developing a power base so they might be able to overthrow

him.

NARRATOR: To the Greeks who told the myth,

this was an appalling act.

Cannibalism was as deplorable then as now.

We see the Greek authors giving voice to their fears

through mythology.

Cannibalism, sacrifice were horrible taboos,

but when you project these things onto the gods,

it gives you a safe place to explore the consequences

of what might happen.

NARRATOR: Rhea is horrified.

All five of her children have been swallowed alive.

Now, she is pregnant again.

But this time, she has a plan.

She sneaks away and gives birth in secret to a son,

the future king of the gods, Zeus.

But Cronus is expecting another child to swallow.

So Rhea wraps a rock in a baby blanket and present it to him.

Without thinking twice, he grabs the bundle and gulps it down.

So the plan of Rhea is put into place.

Cronus has swallowed down the stone instead of Zeus.

Zeus, then, as an infant, is spirited away

and he's put in what the ancient myth tellers tell

us is the folds of the Earth.

NARRATOR: Zeus has been saved by his mother's cleverness.

It's a memorable story.

But could that secret cave at the heart of the myth

really exist?

It seems the ancients thought so.

[music playing]

They believed Zeus had been born on the island of Crete

in this mountain cave.

The cave on the island of Crete is perhaps the most

important sanctuary for the veneration of-- of Zeus.

It was considered as one of the possible places

where the baby Zeus was kept hidden from his own father.

NARRATOR: Excavations of the cave

have revealed that it was a major pilgrimage

site for visitors from across the ancient world.

It was a place that people would go to worship Zeus.

How do we know?

We've excavated thousands of dedications to Zeus and ritual

objects to Zeus from all over the Mediterranean.

NARRATOR: One find in particular ties

directly into the myth of Zeus.

Amongst material remains were these cool shields

that probably were along the walls

and were put up there to indicate

the clanging of shields that the people defending Zeus

used to muffle his crying when he was a baby so that Cronus

could not hear.

NARRATOR: A chosen son hidden to save his life.

For Christians and Jews, the story of Zeus's birth

is very familiar.

Many religious and mythological traditions

have stories of sacred or divine children

who are hidden away in order to protect them so that they can

grow to adulthood and fulfill their destinies.

We think perhaps of Jesus who is hidden away in the manger

so that Herod will not be able to get to him,

or of Moses, who is hidden away in Egypt.

NARRATOR: In the myth, Zeus quietly comes

of age inside the cave.

PETER STRUCK: He has a kind of training period there,

out of the eyes of Cronus, and is able to acquire his strength

and develop into a man.

NARRATOR: Zeus spends his childhood preparing to fulfill

his self-appointed destiny, to challenge his father

and the Titans for control of the universe.

Zeus has escaped the fate of his siblings, who were all

swallowed alive by their father, the Titan, Cronus.

Inside a remote cave hideaway, he

has matured into a fully formed god.

Now, he is ready to begin the epic power struggle he was born

to wage to avenge his father's savagery,

to liberate his five Olympian siblings from his father's

belly, and to seize control of the world

from the Titans who now rule it.

The stakes for him are tremendously high.

If he succeeds, he'll be master of the universe.

But if he fails, he may well be the one

that winds up down in Tartarus.

NARRATOR: Tartarus, the lowest level of Hades,

and the ancient Greek equivalent of Hell.

Tartarus was the part of Hades where the damned went.

The people who were bad or committed offenses

against the gods on Earth would be sent to Tartarus.

NARRATOR: If Zeus fails in his attempt to seize power

from Cronus and the Titans, he'll

be damned to this place for all eternity.

But if he wins, he'll command gods and men from his throne

atop Mount Olympus.

[music playing]

In Greek myth, Mount Olympus is the towering home of the gods,

but it's also a real location.

It's the highest peak in Greece, rising nearly 10,000 feet

above sea level.

And it's a natural setting for supernatural powers.

The Greeks really believed that their gods actually lived,

physically, on Mount Olympus.

It was important for them to actually

have a sense of where heaven was,

where the gods actually resided.

NARRATOR: It is from his home base on Mount Olympus

that Zeus engineers his rebellion against Cronus

and the Titans.

Susan is gonna have to get others to come in and help him

out so that he can achieve supreme power.

NARRATOR: This is the ultimate family feud.

And so it is to his own flesh and blood

that Zeus turns first.

He knows his strongest allies will be his five siblings,

the Olympians, now fully formed adults,

but still trapped deep inside Cronus's stomach.

If they can be liberated, the Olympians

could tip the scales in Zeus's favor

and help him destroy the Titans forever.

He wanted to free his brothers and sisters,

so he concocted a potion.

NARRATOR: Quietly, Zeus enters Cronus's lair

and slips the drug into his nightly cup of mead.

Cronus drinks it and becomes violently ill.

First, he vomits up the stone his wife had given him

in place of baby Zeus.

According to tradition, that rock

is the cornerstone of ancient Greece's most sacred site,

the Temple of Delphi, the home of the Oracle.

Delphi is a sanctuary in Greece

where people would come from all around to consult with God.

It was a direct phone line up to heaven

to ask the answer to anything you wanted.

NARRATOR: To this day, thousands of years after the story was

first told, the stone that Cronus supposedly vomited

is still there.

PETER STRUCK: At the very center of the temple complex at Delphi

is an egg-shaped stone that was understood

to be the exact stone that played the role of being

the substitute for that Cronus swallowed.

And if you go there today to the temple of Delphi,

the locals will still tell you that the stone that's there

is the actual one that was in Cronus's belly.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: In the myth, after throwing up the sacred stone,

Cronus regurgitates Zeus's five siblings.

And they are ready to join Zeus's revolution.

What marks Zeus as a different kind of leader

from those that have come before is his intelligence.

He's able to persuade and convince those around him

that he should be leader, and he's able to build coalitions.

NARRATOR: Zeus now has his siblings by his side,

but he still needs more muscle to take on the Titans.

And there are some other estranged members of the family

who are out for revenge, forgotten brothers of Cronus,

the cyclopes, and the hundred-handers.

But to find them, Zeus has to go to Hell.

Cronus had feared the powers of these hundred-handers

and the cyclopes, and he locked them down in Tartarus.

Zeus knew that if he could get their power on his side,

he could marshal it to his own ends.

He goes down and talks to the hundred-handers and says,

I will pay you great respect.

And I know that my father Cronus has mistreated you.

Now, I've freed you, and now, you owe me.

And even they are moved, and they say, yes, great Zeus, we

realize not only are you very powerful,

but you also know how to treat people well.

So we appreciate that and we will now fight on your side.

NARRATOR: In gratitude for being liberated,

the cyclopes present Zeus with a gift, the power of lightning.

Lightning is one of the most devastatingly powerful forces

in nature.

When lightning arcs through the air,

the air is briefly raised to a temperature that can

be more than 50,000 degrees.

That's 5 times the surface temperature of the sun.

The lightning bolt gives Zeus the power to rule the universe.

With this lightning bolt, no one's

going to be able to overthrow him.

[thunder crashing]

[music playing]

NARRATOR: The battle lines are drawn.

The Titans will fight from Mount Othrys, the Olympians,

from Mount Olympus.

Between them lies the plane of Thessaly.

But this isn't just a mythical battlefield.

Thessaly's, actually, if we take into consideration

the modern map of Greece, is the central parts of Greece.

It's the biggest plain and the most fertile plain in Greece

from ancient times to today.

NARRATOR: Thessaly has a long, bloody history, stretching

from the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century

BC, to the World Wars of the 20th century AD.

And it is here that the ultimate battle of the gods

will play out.

Armed with a weapon of mass destruction

and an elite fighting force, Zeus

braces for an earth-shattering battle.

And to this day, a real place may still bear the scars.

Mythology's defining moment is now at hand.

The battle between father and son is about to begin.

It's the old guard of Cronus and his Titans versus the new blood

of Zeus and the Olympians.

The outcome will determine who controls everything.

From the top of Mount Olympus, Zeus sends a fury of lightning

down upon his father's army.

The fighting shakes the Earth to its core.

The only way we can conceive of this battle

is simply worlds colliding, all the forces in the universe

smashing together at once.

PETER STRUCK: You've got the hundred-handers

over on one side that are ripping off

huge hunks of mountain and throwing mountains

at the other side.

From the Titans, you've got a lot of just brute force

and brute strength.

They're able to take a punch and keep coming back, coming back,

coming back.

NARRATOR: It's an apocalyptic scene, and not entirely a myth.

[music playing]

Experts have recently determined that a real event, just

as frightening, actually happened in the ancient world.

About 3,600 years ago, the Greek island of Santorini

experienced one of the most devastating volcanic explosions

ever.

Its effects were felt as far away as California.

The volcanic blast was the single largest seismic event

on Earth in the last 27,000 years.

To give you an idea of how massive it was,

imagine a mountain about 3 and 1/2 miles tall

being blown into the sky all at once.

NARRATOR: In 2006, scientists discovered that the Santorini

eruption was even larger than originally believed.

Excavations uncovered deposits of volcanic ash

piled 20 stories deep, blanketing a 30-mile radius

around the island.

Based on this evidence, it's now believed the eruption unleashed

the equivalent power of 50,000 Hiroshima bombs.

An explosion that powerful would have annihilated

much of the Greek world.

For the survivors, who knew little about how volcanoes

work, it could only have been the wrath of the gods.

When the ancient myth tellers told the story

of great cataclysmic battles that shook the earth,

they weren't doing so in a vacuum.

There had been massive seismic events that had happened

in the memory of some of the earlier generations of Greeks

before these myth tellers had written down their stories.

NARRATOR: As the clash of the gods plays out in the myth,

it appears that Zeus is finally about to seize control

of the universe.

His powerful allies have tipped the balance,

and the Olympians are closing in on victory.

But the Titans have one last weapon at their disposal.

From the depths of Tartarus, they call forth

a colossal beast, Typhon.

Typhon is a tremendously strong, powerful monster that's

challenging Zeus himself.

It's a last gasp effort and the final monster,

the final challenge he has to put down in order to secure

his reign over the universe.

NARRATOR: It is a supernatural death match,

a decisive struggle between good and evil.

And it will all come down to the ultimate weapon.

PETER STRUCK: As Zeus and Typhon are engaged in this final epic

battle, Zeus eventually gets the upper hand

and wins by his lightning bolt.

NARRATOR: With one final assault,

Zeus drives Typhon and his Titan allies

down into Tartarus, where they are damned to spend eternity

in a fiery abyss.

According to the ancients, it was across the Mediterranean,

on the island of Sicily, that Zeus's enemies descended

into hell through the volcanic crater of Mount Etna.

Local legend says Typhon is still inside

and has been behind all of the volcano's eruptions

over the centuries.

Greeks use this myth as a way of explaining

why lava was constantly pouring out of the volcano.

They explain that as either the remnants of Zeus's lightning

constantly shooting out, or of the flames of Typhon

still breathing just a little bit exploding flame out

of the center of the volcano.

NARRATOR: It is also said that Typhon causes

destructive windstorms storms.

In fact, his name is the basis for the word typhoon.

But in the myth, the storm clouds

have broken, for the time being.

Zeus's victory over his father makes him the king of the gods,

the absolute ruler of the universe.

So goes, the myth but what is the link to reality?

In 2003, at the base of Mount Olympus,

a lost temple was discovered.

It was the centerpiece of an ancient city known as Dion,

and it was dedicated to Zeus.

DAVID ROMANO: Dion was a city that

was built at the base of Mount Olympus

and so it's very close to the home of the Olympian gods

and goddesses and where Zeus lived in Greek mythology.

In fact, the name of the town, Dion, means Zeus.

NARRATOR: The Dion temple dates back

to the fifth century BC, the golden age of Greek mythology.

Scattered around the site are marble blocks

with unmistakable engravings, eagles.

In ancient Greece, eagles were the divine symbol of Zeus.

But there's more.

This headless statue was found in a nearby riverbed.

Carved into its 2,400-year-old base are three words,

"Zeus the highest."

There's a debate among experts about what this reference

to the highest means.

Some believe the statue could be a missing link between Greece's

worship of many gods and the single God philosophy

of Christians and Jews.

And at this find is proof that the Greeks were embracing

the idea of one god on their own before the arrival

of Christianity.

The Greeks sometimes identified that highest god

with Zeus.

After all, the word Zeus in its dative form,

"dios" is where we get our word, "deus."

So there's an etymological reason to understand Zeus

as the highest deity.

Starting in about the third and second and first centuries

BC, we have different philosophical and theological

schools that arise and that start

to propose a very strong view that there is only one God.

And that all the ancient stories and all the ancient tales

are actually just metaphors that reflect different aspects

of what this divinity is all about.

NARRATOR: For the people who worshipped at Dion,

it's clear that Zeus was different from all

the other Greek gods.

In fact, he may well have been the only one that mattered.

In the myth, Zeus has achieved the absolute power

he has long sought, but that power will soon be threatened

by an unexpected foe.

The king of the gods is about to be betrayed

by the person closest to him.

[music playing]

Zeus has won his epic clash with the Titans.

He now sits atop Mount Olympus as king of the gods and master

of mankind.

The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus above all others,

even though he was fatally flawed.

The ancient Greek gods are very relatable.

They have faults, they have strengths,

they have weaknesses, they have all the things

that normal human beings would.

In fact, when the Greeks in these early times

think about their gods, one way of trying to understand it

is that they see their gods as being a lot like you

and I, just really, really big.

NARRATOR: According to the myth, Zeus

has one very human weakness that threatens to be his undoing,

an uncontrollable sex drive.

SCOTT HULER: Zeus likes the ladies.

That's one of the most endearing and enraging things

about him is that he has this very, very human character

that he just-- he never saw a girl that he didn't like.

NARRATOR: Zeus will stop at nothing

to seduce his conquests.

He even uses disguise.

Zeus visits mortal women in various guises, whatever

it takes to consummate the relationship.

So in different tales, we hear of Zeus turning into an eagle,

turning into a swan, turning into a ball,

turning into all these different shapes,

turning into a human being to mimic a woman's husband's face

to trick the women as best he can into-- into having union

with him.

NARRATOR: A beautiful young goddess

named Metis is the first to capture Zeus's attention.

He takes her as his wife.

Metis is a very attractive and appealing young woman.

And the quality that really sets her apart is she

has practical wisdom.

In fact, her name in Greek means practical wisdom.

When Zeus spies her, he finds her very appealing.

NARRATOR: But Zeus's affection for Metis

is overshadowed by a dark prophecy that

threatens his grip on power.

He is told that she will bear him a child who

will one day seize his throne.

Suddenly, Zeus, like his father, must fear his offspring.

Zeus is representative of this awful tradition that starts

literally from the dawn of time of sons destroying

their fathers in order to take prominence.

NARRATOR: But Zeus vows that this time will be different,

and he takes a drastic step to make sure of it.

He swallows his wife alive.

Once again, family love falls prey to power.

It's history repeating.

But this horrifying act will make Zeus stronger and wiser.

MICHAEL FONTAINE: By swallowing her,

Zeus internalizes Metis, her cunning and prudence

all at once.

She becomes a part of Zeus.

In a sense, she's probably imprisoned in his stomach,

but he also takes on these greater qualities

of intellectual ability.

This, to us, seems a little strange,

but it's important to remember that for the Greeks, one

of the places that some Greeks thought that they carried

their wisdom and their ideas was actually in their stomach.

So when Zeus swallows Metis, he actually

takes her into the part of himself

where really, a lot of his best thinking was done.

NARRATOR: With Metis gone, Zeus is in need of a new wife.

And like his father before him, he

finds one in his own family, his sister and fellow Olympian,

Hera.

She's not like Zeus's earlier conquests.

She's mythology's most powerful goddess.

The king of the gods has met his match.

Between Zeus and Hera, we actually

see a relationship which is between two people who

are, on some level, equals.

So some of the conflicts between Zeus and Hera

I think we can see as the Greeks culturally working out, wow,

what would it look like if you actually

had two people with equal power within a relationship?

MICHAEL FONTAINE: She's the queen of the goddesses,

and she has wonderful beauty, she's supremely intelligent,

she's mighty, but she's also exceedingly jealous

because Zeus is always running after other women.

NARRATOR: The king of the gods continues

to step out with an endless string of sexual partners.

He conceives well over 100 offspring

with a host of lovers, both divine and mortal.

If I'm not mistaken, Zeus never

has an encounter with a woman that does not produce a child.

So in that sense, it's extreme virility, it's extreme power.

Zeus's ability to sleep with anybody

matches a kind of fantasy of what ancient Greek males would

hope or desire their lives to be.

Men fantasized about such things,

and they thought if there was an all-powerful god out there,

well, he would surely act on those fantasies.

NARRATOR: Zeus's promiscuity provided a perfect way

for Greeks to connect themselves to him.

Every corner of the Greek world boasted

of having its own hometown lovechild.

PETER STRUCK: As Zeus's fame and power

grow across ancient Greece, more and more cities and towns

want to be associated with him.

And they, therefore, claim that there

was some kind of actual liaison between Zeus

and some mortal woman within their family tree

that then produces the offspring that produces local ruling

families.

NARRATOR: Evidence of this connection

can still be found in cities throughout the Greek world.

Athens, Thebes, Magnesia, Macedonia, all

are named after children of Zeus.

But there is one individual who isn't happy about Zeus's

abundant fertility.

In the myth, his wife, Hera, has had enough.

She vows to make the king of the gods

pay dearly for his chronic philandering.

She doesn't like to be humiliated

in front of the other gods, so she will take it out

on her husband.

NARRATOR: Hera gathers the other Olympians together

and lays the groundwork for a revolution.

Hera actually goes to the-- her fellow Olympian gods

and says, why is Zeus in charge?

He's no more important or powerful than the rest of us.

If we all get together, we can kick him out.

So, in fact, they rise up and they bind Zeus with chains.

NARRATOR: Zeus awakes from a nap to find himself tied down,

a prisoner in his own bed.

It is the ultimate betrayal, a conspiracy

carried out by the siblings he once saved.

The god revolt was the greatest threat

that Zeus ever faced.

There was never any sense that mortals could challenge

his power, but the combined power

of all of the Olympian gods really could have defeated him.

This was indeed one of the most horrifying moments

in Zeus's career.

He was actually about to lose everything.

NARRATOR: But just when all seems lost,

help comes in the form of an old ally, the hundred-handlers.

When they hear Zeus is in trouble,

they come to his rescue, breaking his chains

as the Olympians run for cover.

[shouts]

NARRATOR: Zeus survives the coup attempt.

Now, it's time to exact his revenge.

His wife, Hera, is sentenced to hang from the sky

by golden chains.

His son, Apollo, and brother, Poseidon,

are condemned to hard labor.

They are ordered to build one of the ancient world's most iconic

monuments, the massive walls of Troy.

It's another example of myth explaining the unexplainable.

To the ancient Greeks, the walls of Troy

seemed too strong to have been built by man,

so Zeus's punishment of Apollo and Poseidon

helped explain their existence.

The ruins survive to this day.

In antiquity, people thought it actually

had been built by the gods or some kind

of divine intervention on behalf of the Trojans.

NARRATOR: In the myth, Zeus has dealt justice

to those who crossed him, but it will be human beings who

bear the brunt of his wrath.

That wrath will arrive in the form of a massive flood, one

that may even be linked to the biblical story of Noah.

[music playing]

Greece's most powerful God has survived a coup attempt.

He dealt swift justice to the conspirators,

but he's not through yet.

Now, mankind will experience the full measure of his rage.

In ancient times, fear of Zeus's punishment

kept a lot of Greeks out of trouble.

When people did something wrong,

they would have to be very, very careful that Zeus did not smite

them with a thunderbolt. There are many, many examples

in Greek history of Zeus destroying entire cities

and civilizations because he felt that they had overreached

themselves, that they had blasphemed the gods, that they

had become too proud to be allowed to live any longer.

NARRATOR: The Greek author Hesiod

wrote that without the fear of Zeus's wrath,

humans would live like beasts, and the weak would

be in the hands of the strong.

Zeus is the order-bringer.

Zeus is the bringer of justice and the bringer

of civilization.

NARRATOR: When natural catastrophes occurred

in the real world, the Greeks believed that they were sent

by Zeus to punish evil men.

Often, stories were invented to explain what had made

the supreme god so angry.

[music playing]

According to the myth, Zeus's most frightening moment

of wrath comes after he sees humans engaging in cannibalism.

Cannibalism was as important as it

was in ancient Greek religion because they considered

it to be so heinous.

In fact, identification of eating human flesh

is something that you would attribute to wolves or to dogs,

but hardly to human beings.

NARRATOR: Zeus is no stranger to cannibalism.

His own father, Cronus, once swallowed

all of Zeus's siblings.

When he is confronted with the sight of mortals doing

the same thing, he becomes enraged

and vows to destroy the human race with a catastrophic flood.

Nine days and nights pass.

The rain is relentless, and the Earth slowly drowns.

The waters reached the peak of Mount Parnassus, which

stands over 8,000 feet high.

In all corners of the Earth, the human race perishes.

When the rain stops, only two mortals are still alive.

Incredibly, they have survived the storm by building an Ark.

A raging flood, an Ark, and only two surviving humans.

The parallels with the Old Testament are striking.

It could be the biblical flood of Noah.

It could be Zeus's deluge.

It could be similar sorts of giant watery disasters

that we see figuring in a wide number of different cultures

around the world.

IOANNIS MYONOPOULOS: All these stories go back

to a natural catastrophe that affected the collective memory

of peoples living in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea.

NARRATOR: A deluge like the one described in these myths

would have devastated humanity.

But could such a flood have really happened?

In the past decade, scientists have

uncovered some stunning clues that prove it did.

Research has shown that as the last Ice Age ended

about 7,000 years ago, runoff from melting glaciers

surged into the Black Sea basin, violently submerging

nearly 170,000 square miles of dry land.

For these people, their entire world was flooding,

and it surely must have seemed like they had angered the gods

to have brought down this kind of disaster upon themselves.

NARRATOR: Could this be the real-life disaster that spawned

the story of Zeus's flood?

[music playing]

In the myth, Zeus has held onto power

in the face of strong opposition.

But there is one more challenger he didn't count on,

Jesus Christ.

In the first century AD, his message

would take the world by storm and dethrone

Greece's dominant god.

IOANNIS MYONOPOULOS: When Christianity came and promised

salvation in the afterlife, so gave people something

to believe in, something that could happen to them

after their death, Christianity found many followers.

NARRATOR: Zeus's stranglehold on humankind

faltered as this new religion spread

across the Mediterranean world.

Ultimately, the same civilization

that worshipped him would reject him.

In antiquity, there was no more powerful force than Zeus

except for one, fate.

Not even Zeus himself could overturn it.

Much as he wants to, on occasion,

try to change fate or redirect it, he himself

is even subject to its dictates.

NARRATOR: Before the rise of Christianity,

Zeus's myth captivated the Greek world for thousands of years

and made him the most feared and respected of all the gods.

But he was only one of many, from Greece and beyond,

who would leave their mark on mankind.

Some are still familiar names, Hercules, Hades, Medusa,

and each of their stories is a window into a long-lost world,

a code waiting to be deciphered.

These myths reveal to us in a uniquely powerful way

the hidden strata that lay underneath our conscious, awake

lives, our understanding of the world.

And like an archeology of the human mind,

we can dig into them and see the deep recesses of human psyches.

And I think that's what makes these myths so powerful.

[thunder crashing]