God of this, god of that

Textkit Community Civilization and Culture of the Greeks and Romans
1

Venus is the roman goddess of Love, Zeus the greek god of thunder, Thor the norse god of lightning.

This is how these lovely creatures are introduced in school, in mythology dictionaries, and even in greek and latin textbooks.

I have been wondering for some time whether in greek or latin there would be any similar expression, t.i., deus + gen., or theós + gen.

I have still not seen it in any of my readings. I would like to ask if anyone has seen it anywhere, and when they first appeared.

Cheers!

2

Not exactly the same thing, but

2 Cor 4:4:…ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου ἐτύφλωσεν τὰ νοήματα τῶν ἀπίστων…

A fitting god for such a world.

3

Ok. So such reified classifications tend to be external to how they themselves (Greeks, Romans etc) talked about their deities. We like to think of a limited number (12 or so) deities with carefully delineated spheres of influence and easily identifiable characteristics. But the truth is gods were essentially local and highly varied and their epithets often point to specific features.

So, “Zeus” may refer to the character we know from literature but in real terms one finds Zeus Ombrios/Hyetios as a god of rain, Keraunios/Astrapaios as a god of thunder. You’d get variations of Zeus limited to a specific area like Nemeios (from Nemea), or Diktaios (from Dikte) etc. You would also find specific cultic iterations such as Zeus Melikhios (kindly Zeus, from Attica, who was worshiped as a snake).

So, you find epithets rather than nom +gen combinations and the information they could convey would in fact be extremely varied.

4

Not exactly the same thing, but

2 Cor 4:4:…ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου ἐτύφλωσεν τὰ νοήματα τῶν ἀπίστων…


A fitting god for such a world.

Indeed, thanks for the example.

So such reified classifications tend to be external to how they themselves (Greeks, Romans etc) talked about their deities. We like to think of a limited number (12 or so) deities with carefully delineated spheres of influence and easily identifiable characteristics. But the truth is gods were essentially local and highly varied and their epithets often point to specific features.

Quite messy they were.


So, you find epithets rather than nom +gen combinations and the information they could convey would in fact be extremely varied.

Thanks for clearing that up. Now that you mention I do remember seeing a Zeus Soteros somewhere.