Zeus was known in his time as much more than the father of the gods. He was also a womanizer, and as such, he fathered many, many offspring!
Zeus has cheated on Hera over a hundred times. However, she keeps forgiving him in the end.
Ganymede (or Ganymedes) was a young man from Troy. His beauty was unparalleled and for that reason, Zeus abducted and brought him to Olympus to serve as his cupbearer and lover. Ganymede's myth is an important step in the history of homosexuality.
In some versions of Greek mythology, Zeus ate his wife Metis because it was known that their second child would be more powerful than him. After Metis's demise, their first child Athena was born when Hephaestus cleaved Zeus's head open and the goddess of war emerged, fully grown and armed.
Zeus and his many lovers
He was definitely the most adulterous god, though, with his list of consorts and children being the most expansive in Greek mythology.
Before his marriage to Hera, Zeus consorted with a number of the female Titanes (and his sister Demeter). These liaisons are ordered by Hesiod as follows: (1) Metis; (2) Themis; (3) Eurynome; (4) Demeter; (5) Mnemosyne; (6) Leto.
Zeus had acquired wives as his worship spread from locality to locality and he had to marry each provincial earth goddess. However, polygamy was foreign to the Greeks and unacceptable, so they had to make him promiscuous.
II.
Aphrodite later and of her own volition had an affair with Zeus, but his jealous wife Hera laid her hands upon the belly of the goddess and cursed their offspring with malformity. Their child was the ugly god Priapos.
Hera. The most famous of Zeus' wives, Hera was also the sister of the father of the gods, and the goddess of women, marriage, family, and childbirth.
Zeus and Metis
His first and favorite lover was Metis, a Titan goddess and mother of Athena.
Under the name of Callithyia, Io was regarded as the first priestess of Hera, the wife of Zeus. Zeus fell in love with her and, to protect her from the wrath of Hera, changed her into a white heifer. Hera persuaded Zeus to give her the heifer and sent Argus Panoptes (“the All-Seeing”) to watch her.
Zeus slept with his own daughter, Persephone, because she was there.
Zeus fell in love with Io and seduced her. To try to keep Hera from noticing he covered the world with a thick blanket of clouds. This backfired, arousing Hera's suspicions. She came down from Mount Olympus and begain dispersing the clouds.
Perhaps partly because of the strange circumstances of her birth, Athena is often cited as Zeus's favourite child. He also greatly admired her strength of character and fighting spirit. Some believe Athena was Zeus's first born child, which might, somewhat unfairly, suggest why he chose her as his favourite.
Impregnation by Zeus
Nonnus classifies Zeus's affair with Semele as one in a set of twelve, the other eleven women on whom he begot children being Io, Europa, Plouto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, the mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.
Gods aside, Zeus also had sexual affairs with 20 mortals, including one male, Ganymede, a prince ofTroy.
Zeus was particularly promiscuous, a fact that made for much strife between him and his wife Hera, the goddess of marriage. It also led jealous Hera to persecute relentlessly his half-human children and his mortal lovers.
After Zeus became king, he and Metis were married, and she bore him a daughter, Athena, the goddess of wisdom. After hearing a prophecy stating that after Metis gave birth to Athena, she would have a son mightier than Zeus who would overthrow him, Zeus tricked the still pregnant Metis and swallowed her whole.
The relationship between Zeus and Hera had always been tumultuous. Zeus was consistently unfaithful, and Hera spent all her time exerting revenge on her husband's mistresses and offspring.
Who did Zeus marry? His sister Hera was the first and only to whom he was married, but that didn't stop him from fathering children with all and sundry, willing or not. Hera, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, constantly fought with Zeus throughout their marriage.
In Ovid's famous text Metamorphosis, Hades has an affair with a young Nymph named Minthe. Persephone, now in her later years, was so incensed with jealousy that she turned Minthe into a mint plant.
Hera figures out what Poseidon is up to and seduces Zeus to distract his attention away from the battle.
Zeus cheats on Hera because he's a reflection of the morals of the ancient Greeks. Unlike the Abrahamic god, Zeus was made in the image of man, not the other way around. Ancient Greek men viewed marriage as a necessity and a duty, not a partnership. Women existed to bear children, preferably male children.
"The story is told that Zeus was nursed by a goat there [Aegion (Aegium) in Akhaia (Achaea)], just as Aratos [3rd B.C. poet] says : 'Sacred goat, which, in story, didst hold thy breast o'er Zeus'; and he goes on to say that 'the interpreters call her the Olenian goat of Zeus,' thus clearly indicating that the place is ...
Hercules was the illegitimate child of Zeus and a mortal woman, as were Perseus, Helen of Troy and Minos (among other very, very famous offspring of Zeus).