Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Mercury and Venus
Page 3: Earth and Mars
Page 4: Jupiter and Saturn
Page 5: Uranus and Neptune
Page 6: Dwarf Planets
Page 8: Sun and Moon
Asteroids 2, 3, and 4
3 Pallas
Pallas (Athene to the Greeks) is the virgin goddess of war and of handicrafts. She presides over the rational use of war to protect a community, contrasting with Ares the God of blood-thirsty warfare (see Mars). Her mother, Metis, was Zeus’s first wife. When Zeus learned that she would bear a second child who would displace him as the king of the gods, he swallowed her whilst still pregnant with their first child. When the time came for the first child to be born, Hephiastos split Zeus’s head with an axe and Athene sprang forth fully armed. Metis was the personification of intelligence and so Athene became the personification of wisdom. As goddess of handicrafts she not only presided over spinning and weaving, but was also the patron of craftsmen such as carpenters, potters, and metalworkers.
4 Juno
Juno (Hera to the Greeks) is the youngest sister of Zeus and his seventh and last wife. As such she became Queen of Olympos and she bore Zeus three or four children, Ares (Mars), Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, and Hebe, the goddess of youth. The crippled smith-god Hephiastos may have been their fourth child but may have been the son of Juno alone. Specifically she is the goddess of marriage, married women, and childbirth. She is intensely jealous of Zeus’s other liaisons and vindictive towards them and their offspring. However she is always able to reestablish Zeus’s affections.
5 Vesta
Vesta (Hestia to the Greeks) is the eldest sister of Zeus, and became the Goddess of the Hearth, the sacred fire that burned at the centre of every home and community, and she was also the guardian of the community. She was wooed by both her brother, Poseidon, and her nephew, Apollo, but she renounced sexual love and swore an oath of chastity. She stayed quietly in Olympos and so played little part in subsequent mythology. The priestesses who oversaw her cult in Rome are the Vestal Virgins who keep a fire burning on her alter at all times and are also associated with the public Penates, the gods who protect the home.
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