Greek gods and their symbols

The Olympian gods and the attributes that identify them in Greek art, from Zeus’s thunderbolt to Hades’s helmet, and Medusa, whose face guarded shields and doorways.

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Also in: Ancient symbols

The Olympians

ZeusZeus’s symbol is the thunderbolt, the weapon Hesiod says the Cyclopes gave him. In Greek art he also holds a sceptre, often with an eagle, his bird, perched on it; the oak was his tree.
HeraHera’s symbols are a queen’s: a tall crown, the polos, and a sceptre. The peacock was her sacred bird, and her great statue at Argos held a pomegranate, with a cuckoo perched on its sceptre.
PoseidonPoseidon’s symbol is the trident, a three-pronged spear. Greek artists also gave him the horse, which he was said to have created, and the dolphin, so that he is easy to pick out among the gods.
DemeterDemeter’s symbols are ears of wheat (the “corn” of older English translations) and the torch. She was the Greek goddess of grain, and the torch comes from the story of her search for her daughter Persephone.
AthenaAthena’s symbol is the owl, her sacred bird, which Athens stamped on its coins. In art she is the armed goddess, with helmet, spear and shield and the aegis bearing the Gorgon’s head; the olive tree, her gift to Athens, was sacred to her too.
ApolloApollo’s symbols are the lyre and the bow, the two things the newborn god claims in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The laurel was his tree: it crowned his head, and his oracle at Delphi spoke “from his laurel tree”.
ArtemisArtemis’s symbols are the bow and arrows of the huntress and the deer she hunted, which also drew her chariot. The crescent moon came later, when Greek writers made Apollo’s sister a goddess of the moon.
AresAres has no single emblem: he is the armed warrior of Greek art, with helmet, spear and shield. The Homeric Hymn to Ares calls him “golden-helmed”, “shield-bearer” and “mighty with the spear”, and the Romans knew him as Mars.
AphroditeThe Greek goddess of love and desire, whom Hesiod has rising from the foam of the sea. Greek artists showed her with her son Eros beside her; the scallop shell she stands on and her doves are best known from Roman poets, a fresco at Pompeii and Botticelli.
HephaestusThe Greek god of fire and metalwork, the lame smith of the gods. Greek vase painters show him with a hammer and tongs, or riding a donkey back to Mount Olympus with Dionysus.
HermesThe Greek messenger god, herald of Zeus and guide of the dead to the underworld. Greek artists give him a broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, winged sandals and a herald’s staff, the kerykeion, which the Romans called the caduceus.
DionysusThe Greek god of wine and of the theatre, son of Zeus and Semele, daughter of Cadmus. Greek art shows him crowned with ivy, holding a two-handled wine cup and the thyrsus, his ivy-wreathed staff, often with satyrs and maenads around him.
HestiaThe Greek goddess of the hearth and its fire, eldest of the children of Cronos, who chose never to marry. She has almost no myths and few images: the fire of each home and town hall was hers, and she was given the first offering at every feast.

The underworld

Monsters and guardians

MedusaThe Gorgon whose gaze turned people to stone, beheaded by the hero Perseus. Her staring face, the gorgoneion, was put on shields, temples, cups and coins to frighten off harm. Since about 2021 a Medusa tattoo has also been widely worn as a sign of surviving sexual violence.

About greek gods and their symbols

Greek gods and their symbols follows the Olympian gods through the attributes Greek artists gave them, so that a god on a painted vase or a temple frieze could be told from the god beside it. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes an established iconography of attributes that identify each god in the art of Archaic and Classical Greece, and counts twelve principal deities. Zeus holds the thunderbolt and Poseidon the trident. Hera wears a tall crown, the polos. Athena goes armed with her aegis, helmet and spear, and the owl and the olive were sacred to her. Apollo carries the kithara and his twin Artemis a bow and quiver. Hermes has winged sandals and a herald’s staff, and Demeter a garland of corn-ears, with a torch in her hand. Ares is the god of war, Aphrodite the goddess of love, Dionysus the god of wine and the theatre, Hephaestus the lame god of metalworking and Hestia the goddess of the hearth. Two pages belong to the underworld: Hades, who received a helmet from the Cyclopes, and Persephone, who ate part of a pomegranate there. The last is Medusa, the Gorgon whose head Athena wore on her aegis and on her breast.

Where the attributes come from

Many of the attributes have a story in the poets. In the mythographer Apollodorus, the Cyclopes give Zeus thunder, lightning and a thunderbolt, Pluto (Hades) a helmet and Poseidon a trident, and after defeating the Titans the three brothers cast lots for the sky, the sea and the underworld. The Met points out that the Greeks had no single guiding work of scripture and no strict priestly caste, though Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, believed to have been composed around the eighth century BC, were powerful influences. The pages quote Homer, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, Pausanias and Apollodorus in the translations on the Perseus Digital Library, and museums for how sculptors and vase painters showed the gods.

The gods on the Parthenon

The east frieze of the Parthenon is a good place to see the attributes at work. In the central scene the peplos for Athena is handed over in the presence of the Olympian gods, who are carved larger than the mortals, the Acropolis Museum notes. On one block Ares sits beside Demeter, who holds a torch, and Hermes has his travelling hat over his knees; on another Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis and Aphrodite sit on stools, and little Eros holds a parasol for his mother.

Roman names

The Romans adopted the Olympian gods and matched them with their own. William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849) records that they identified Jupiter with Zeus, Juno with Hera, Neptunus with Poseidon, Mars with Ares and Diana with Artemis, and called Demeter Ceres.

The gods today

The gods are still worshipped in Greece. The Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes (YSEE), founded in 1997, describes itself as the official body of the Hellenic Ethnic Religion and says the Greek state recognised it as a known religion in 2017, the year the US State Department reported the permit for its first house of prayer.

Sources

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Library 1.2.1 (Apollodorus, tr. J. G. Frazer), Apollodorus, The Library, translated by Sir James George Frazer (1921), 1.2.1, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, book 1, chapter 2, section 1
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 8, 2026. How we research