Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God

by Tom Stone

In the tradition of Walking the Bible, an irresistible tour through some of the most powerful stories ever told.

Lusty, lightning-tempered, polyamorous Zeus was the most powerful and charismatic of the Greek gods, and the progenitor of some of the most enduring stories of world mythology. In Zeus, author Tom Stone takes readers on a 4,000-year journey through the god’s tumultuous life, from his origins as a sky god in the Russian steppes and his scandalous reign on Mt. Olympus to his approaching end in a palace storeroom in Christian Constantinople. Crossing the length and breadth of Greece, Stone and his Iranian wife explore the most significant sites in Greek myth, from mountaintops to subterranean caves, Olympus to Crete, and Mycenae to Macedonia. Along the way, he reveals how Zeus’s story grew from the soil of Greece and changed along with the country’s history, all with a brilliant mix of erudition and bravura storytelling. Combining mythology, history, and travel, this is an indispensable book for anyone who loves Greece or its great stories of myth and legend.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Mythology, Religion, Greece, Travel

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

TOM STONE has pursued a multi-faceted career as a novelist, travel writer, historian, and stage- and screenplay writer. Simultaneously, he has had a very successful career in the professional theater as a director, lighting designer, and stage manager.
While at Yale, where he gained a BA in English Literature and an addiction to the theater, he spent his summers toiling backstage at the prestigious Green Mansions Summer Theater near Lake George, New York. Contacts he made there garnered him a job as an Off-Broadway stage manager, and the following year he became an assistant stage manager for Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: U.S.A.
After a decade of working as a stage manager and assistant director for Robbins and Harold Prince on the original productions of “She Loves Me,” “Funny Girl,” “Fiddler On The Roof,” and “Cabaret” as well as the now-legendary efforts of Robbins’ American Theatre Laboratory (for which he wrote the play “Work in Progress,” he took a sabbatical from Broadway with the intention of spending a single summer in the Greek islands writing a first novel. As the Greek Fates would have it, he stayed twenty-two years. In the process, he married the French painter he met on Patmos, became a father of two, as well as a teacher of English and Theater at Anatolia College in Northern Greece, and a lighting designer and director for the Greek National Theater.
While in Greece, he finished and published his first novel, “Armstrong,” in addition to numerous books and articles about living abroad. These include “The Essential Greek Handbook,” “Greece: An Illustrated History,” “ Patmos: A History and Guide,” and “The Greek Food & Drink Book.”
In 1992, with his children in U.S. universities and his marriage moribund, he returned to Broadway via London and Vienna while working as resident director with Harold Prince’s new, Broadway-bound musical, “The Kiss of the Spider Woman.” But breaking completely back into the theater after so many years proved impossible. So, when one of his short stories was optioned for a TV movie, Tom headed west and soon found work writing film scripts for hire. As of this writing, ten of them are the market but none have as yet been produced.
Meanwhile, he devoted the greater part of his writing time to writing books. His memoir of living on Patmos, “The Summer of My Greek Tavérna,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2002 and was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Club in 2003. It has been translated into eleven languages, including Dutch, German, Danish, Hebrew, and Mandarin (Taiwan). After having been under option by Fox Searchlight Pictures in 2012, it is now in development with Grove Entertainment.
In February, 2008, Tom published “Zeus: A Journey Across Greece in the Footsteps of a God.” It became a Main Selection of the History Book Club and the QPBC, and this led to his on-going appearances in three segments of the History Channel’s series on mythology, “The Clash of the Gods.”
(Now no longer in print, “Zeus” has recently been resurrected as an e- and print-on-demand book titled “Chasing Zeus” and is available on Kindle and B&N as well as various other sites. Meanwhile, Tom has fashioned a stand-alone companion volume out of the large amount of material the publishers asked him to remove from the original edition because it far exceeded the contractual limit. This includes some 58,000 words of text (the length of a 200-page book) and 141 images and maps. It is available on Kindle for $1.99, the lowest price Tom could manage because of the large amount of images. Its title is: “Zeus: An Addendum.” )
In 2012, Tom fashioned what he thinks of as “an annotated novel.” Based on the legend of the Cretan Minotaur, its purpose is to both entertain readers and provide them with endnotes, images, and maps explicating the sources of the legend. Tom has recently republished the novel in two separate Kindle e-book editions. The one co

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those books the academics are going to damn with faint praise becuase it's more fun than scholarly. Mr. Stone keeps it interesting and entertaining, but what doesn't work is the travelogue he's added for what I suspect are marketing purposes. Well, that's not entirely true - Mr. Stone's travels aren't that interesting, but Zeus's are. Other than that, this is a great addition for those of us who enjoy the myths but don't care about every single aspect of any one story.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unaware that this was like a little journal, but after I realized it, I liked it. You follow a man and his wife on their journey through Greece, literally, in the footsteps of Zues, from the beginning all the way up to where a statue of Zues gets transformed for Christian purposes. It's quite fascinating and chok full of information that's interesting. The only fault I can think of at the moment? At some points it bounced a little bit and sometimes you wanted to know a little more. A good read, most definitely.

[David Rank · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written book combining the retelling of classic Greek myths, Greek history and prehistory, and a little personal traveloque, combined into an informative biography of the god Zeus. From Zeus's origins as an amorphous sky god to his anthromorphic minglings with humans and devolution into the Christian era, Tom Stone has done a marvelous job sorting through those confusing myths, giving them a chronology and fitting them into known history.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fulfills most of its goals as "a biography of Zeus," hitting major points, revealing gossipy details the reader didn't know, sometimes with dazzling writing - it's clear Stone was inspired, and that's crucial. The autobiographical bits could have been excluded, and I wish there'd been more about Zeus in the daily life of Greeks (similar to how Jesus impacts the daily life of Americans.

[Betsy Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone does a great job of providing what is, in effect, a biography of Zeus. I wanted a little more context for his claims that there was just one Great Mother, but that's just a slight quibble I have with what is otherwise a really fun and thought-provoking book.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thia book was a wonderful book to read!!! It talks about Mythology and the titans and gods it contains!! If Mythology is a favorite for you, then you should definitely read this book!! I'm so glad I found and read it!!

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating mix of archeology and mythology.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever and informational way to link history and Greek mythology.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history of Zeus and how the worship of Zeus and his Olympiad became the dominant religion in the development of Greek religious thought. It is interesting to compare the Monotheistic religion of today with the complicated and scary stories that made Zeus such powerful force in Greek life. I was particularly interested in the way the Olympic gods were worshiped--not by people trying live a better or different life, but only by people trying to placate the gods' wrath or favoritism. So we will sacrifice 20 oxen to Zeus and hope he favors us with victory or with change in the course of events to be in our favor. The gods were very remote and acted like humans with all the characteristics of capricious bullies and/or spoiled brats.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

At turns a travelogue, poetic reminiscence, history and mythology, this book is never much of any one thing. However the interplay of all these different genres and ideas produces a very lyrical and peaceful read. I would highly recommend this for a summer’s day on the patio with some wine. You’re not going to learn anything new, and you will question the veracity of some of the connections, but you will also enjoy it as a reflection on the living tradition of an ancient theme.

[maeby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book definitely does Zeus and his history justice. From the myths, to the ancient people who believed them, to the modern effects he still has. Honestly I would give anything to read books just like this on every god to ever exist.

[Jonny Andres · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty dry and very boring read. I've actually read tax code with more life than this particular book.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly readable retelling of the myths along with their context set against historical events and the writer's own travels around Greece. Very enjoyable and recommended.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book, it retells Greek myths with context from Greek history.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my halfway-through-the book review

So far, I have three main caveats to the book:
1) The travelogue aspect seems pointless as it's barely been mentioned (maybe 7 of 137 pages have dealt with it)
2) The level of supposition is disconcerting; apparently every 'bad guy' represents the Great Goddess Mother in a different form, and we get this gem in a footnote on page 73: 'Prometheus is given so many different mothers in varying myths that scholars rightly suspect all are really aspects of Gaia herself [emphasis mine].' So glad the author could clear that up for us! Speculation too easily becomes fact for the author.
3) The author appears to be anti-Christian, and it's coloring his prose unnecessarily. Thus "Although only Prometheus Bound ... would survive the book burning rampages of the early Christians" and "Herakles became the only human ever to be granted such an aptheosis. He would remain unique in this regard for about 1,300 years, until Jesus was taken up in a similar fashion from the Mount of Olives. Or so the Christians claimed." (That's pretty impressive: in one sentence, he equates the Ascension with mythology; in the next sentence, he makes the mythology appear more likely!) Look, I'm not one to overreact to criticism of Christianity (since I dole out my fair share), but this is unnecessary. Not sure who he's trying to impress here.

Ah well, we're probably looking at 2 stars by the time I'm done, but I wanted to make sure my reasonings for the rating would already be articulated before misremembered.

Final Review:

Overall, not a bad book if you ignore the author (which is largely my problem with the book). The travelogue doesn't really expand much (although one chapter towards the end actually spends more than a few pages on it) so I don't honestly know why the author even bothered to include it. The anti-Christian snark gets replaced by some anti-Iraq snark (again, who is he trying to impress?) that's just easier to ignore than to expound upon. Fortunately, as the book moves more into actual history from mythology, the suppositions become fewer, mostly because there's enough established evidence that suppositions are unnecessary.

Ultimately, though, the subject matter is worthwhile. It's a step above something like, say, Bulfinch's Mythology because it actually goes into history (including Roman and later history). If you're completely unversed in Greek mythology and history, this may be a good place to start as it's quick and easy to read. I certainly can't recommend any alternatives, although I do now plan on reading 'Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea' to see if that can be one.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book on Greek mythology, but it's also a biography and a history. So Tom Stone retells the myths, as you might expect, but he limits himself to the ones featuring Zeus, and the retelling is shaped to tell us about Zeus as a character (or person or god, whichever works best); this is the biography. And while he's telling readers about Zeus, he's also telling us about the Greeks—and this is the history. So he starts, not in Greece, but on the Russian steppes, where the people who would eventually migrate to Greece first imagined him as a disembodied sky god. The story follows the god and the people to Greece, and traces Zeus's development through what the Greeks wanted and needed from their gods. They begin to see Zeus as less of a force of nature and more as a god with a personality, Zeus reinforces their spread through Greece by his liaisons/rapes in myth, and as their sense of themselves strengthens, human heroes become more prominent in myth and Zeus and the other gods become more remote.

This could have been a dry, academic treatise, but Stone is a good storyteller as well, so I enjoyed rereading the book. (Happy to find out I liked it just as much the second time around: not all books hold up to a rereading.) The subtitle makes it sound like you'll be reading a travelogue, and there are bits of one: Stone and his wife traveled through Greece to various sites important in Zeus's mythology, and he talks about that trip as well. But the focus is mainly on the historical Zeus and how the Greeks influenced his development, which is a different approach than many books on mythology, and I found it really interesting.

[Lori Schiele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have, since I was very young (2nd-3rd grade), been enraptured by the Greek pantheon and the stories of the Olympians. I have collected numerous books--and read many others--covering Greek mythology.
This book, however, is the first one that tells the history of the Greek gods and goddesses, as well as the demigods, and the mortals, who were all a part of the mythology not simply told through a groups of individual stories. This author, instead, started from the very beginning and traced how nearly all of the mythologies, the stories, the individual gods and goddesses, the demigods and even man, can all be linked back to one mighty God--the Thunder-God and King of the Olympians: Zeus.
Following as close to chronological order as possible, Stone shows how Zeus was responsible for so much of everything that occurred, even when he was never actually mentioned and that, if you look back a little ways, you can usually find that he had his Mighty Hands in almost all things, both mortal and immortal alike.
A fascinating and new way to view the well-known Greek mythos and to see chronologically how everything happened, to whom, and when, and why... and how many times it was due to Zeus himself.
If you have any interest in Greek mythology at all--even if you think you know all there is to know---you will soon discover possibly there are many things you didn't. That is what happened with me. This is just an incredibly fascinating book.

[Nathan Dehoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a book that casually mixes history, religion, mythology, and travelogue, Stone writes about a tour of the ancient holy sites of Greece and ties them into a narrative about the rise and fall of Zeus. The god's origins are traced from his beginnings as a force of nature to his birth as a physical being (and, in some versions of the myth, his physical death as well), and how he later came to be seen as much less personal before his worship drastically declined in popularity. As the main god in the Greek world, Zeus gradually displaced other local deities, many of them Earth Mother types. Stone includes many of the classic myths, tying them to history and geography. Actually, the travelogue aspect is relatively minor, but it adds a certain personal element to the story. While Stone consulted many sources for this work, there is a fair amount of supposition and guesswork to much of it. I think it works to make ancient Greek religion seem much more vivid and understandable, but it's definitely a popular book rather than an academic one.

[Janina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an informative book about Zeus. While the author travels through Greece gathering information about Zeus, he includes the history of the people that settled there and all the subsequent wars that were waged in the quest for dominance.

The myths came alive for me and it had that feel of sitting around the campfire and sharing stories of Zeus and his many victories and conquests.

The history of the inevitable rise of Christianity at the end of the book and the downfall of Zeus as the All-Father made me sad. While Zeus's motives could be self-serving and he was a philanderer, it still made me sad that the pagans had lost their God in the way they had.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a great overview of the story of Zeus, and thus the mythological and historical background of the Greek people. It was written with a huge background of research, but also in a highly relatable and entertaining way. I was really pleased with the book as a whole and will definitely be looking into other works by Tom Stone.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Want to see a picture of Zeus? <\a>

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, well-written overview of Greek mythology woven into the history of the area. Wanted more contemporary travel tales.

[Regina Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Never read half of the stuff, I have to check it up to make sure it is all true.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great travelogue that puts Greek myths in a historical and geographic context, and a chronology.

[Pam Lobley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want an easy to read, fun, history of all the Greek gods through ancient Greek history, this is perfect.