Having thus connected the tribes, Greek life of systematization likewise wrought the principal gods into one great family, regardless of their varied origins.
Zeus fixed the abode of the gods on Mount Olympus, whence he decreed laws and controlled the heavenly bodies. When his mother Rhea forbade him to marry, he violated her and proceeded to court his sister Hera. Unsuccessfully, until he transformed himself into a bedraggled cuckoo, which the merciful goddess warmed against her bosom. Resuming his true shape, Zeus ravished her, shaming her into marriage.
Mother, now grandmother, Earth gave Hera a tree with golden apples as a wedding present. The newly-weds spent the wedding night, lasting 300 years, on Samos, but in spite of the birth of two sons and one daughter, Ares, Hephaestus and Hebe, the marriage could hardly be called happy. There was constant bickering over Zeus' numerous infidelities, which Hera proved utterly incapable of preventing, though she occasionally took bad revenge on her rivals or their children.
She only rarely succeeded in arousing her husband's passion, even though she sometimes borrowed Aphrodite's girdle; perhaps the wedding night had been too prolonged. Their family, however, increased to 12, partly by children born in wedlock, partly through extra-marital affairs with nymphs or mortals, a yield of four supplemented by two miraculous births.
Zeus grew increasingly overbearing, and at last the Olympians revolted, binding him, as he lay asleep, with rawhide thongs tied in a hundred knots. While the gods were quarrelling over his succession, the sea nymph Thetis, fearing a civil war, set one of the hundred-handed uncles to untie the knots all at once. No sooner was Zeus free than he hung Hera, the ringleader, on golden chains from heaven, with heavy anvils weighing down her ankles. She was only released after her fellowconspirators had taken an oath of loyalty.