Uranus and Gaia - Father and mother of Cronos. Cronos eventually overthrew and castrated Uranus.

Cronos and Rhea - Like father, like son, Cronos' hate for his children eventually led to him consuming them, and ended up swallowing Zeus' brothers and sisters.

*Zeus - The King of the Gods. Forces his father to urp up his siblings, then fights him for control of the throne. Most of the Titans (save Atlas) have Cronos' back, while Zeus has his siblings, Giantites, and Cyclopes on his side.

*Hera - Sister of Zeus (aren't those Ancient Greeks nutty?) Rhea, her mother, hid her from Cronos using the sound of clanging spears to mask her.

*Poseidon - The elder brother of Zeus, this god ruled the sea and all water on earth. Since he was older, he always held a bit of resentment that his younger brother was anointed king of the gods. Since the ground was neutral territory assumed by Zeus, Poseidon often made his presence known by causing earthquakes, associating him with the natural disasters of tidal waves, earthquakes and stormy seas.

*Hades - Brother of Zeus and the god of the underworld. He had the 1/3 split of the world as the Greeks saw it: Zeus ruled the sky (and the ground, by default, since he was king of the gods), Poseidon ruled the seas, and Hades got the underworld.

*Hephaestus - son of Hera but NOT of Zeus, Hephaestus was the god of craftsmanship, that had a physical deformity that was often the source of drama among the Olympian gods. He was married to Aphrodite (a reconciliation 'gift' from his mother), but Aphrodite was often unfaithful with Ares, the god of war.

*Aphrodite - Goddess of love (and apparently, lust). One would worship her by having sex with her priestess. When Cronos overthrew Uranus, he castrated him, throwing his genitalia into the sea. From the white foam sprang forth Aphrodite

*Hermes - A travelling sort of god, and the sort of endeavors that rely on travel. Commerce, art and communication. He delivered messages between mankind and the gods.

*Athena - Protector of Athens, goddess of war, and the personification of civilization. Athena sprung from the head of Zeus in a variety of ways, according to different interpretations, the most common of which that Zeus swallowed Athena's mother

*Apollo - the workaholic of the gods, the many and varied tasks of Apollo were some of the most important in the Greek world. Apollo was the god of light, the god of fortune-telling and the arts. He lead a duel life; he was represented as a wolf, but was the god of shepherds. He spread disease with his arrows, but was the god of medicine. Her was an excellent archer, and with his twin sister, Artemis, he sometimes dispensed justice among the gods and demi-gods.

*Artemis - twin sister of Apollo, she was the goddess of hunts and nature. Think of her as the original survivalist. She lead a dual life in the fact that she was the godess of the hunt but also the goddess of wild animals (reflecting her brother's dual rolls in medicine and shepherding) She also dispensed what she believed was justice, although in the grand tradition of the Greeks, it could be for a personal insult or a slight.

*Demeter - The goddess of agriculture. She was basically an import or modification of those pre-historical fertile goddesses that ancient man used to worship.

*Hestia - Sister of Zeus and goddess of the home and household life. She was the goddess of purity & did not participate in the affairs that marked the relationship of the other gods. If the other gods were representative of momentous, life altering events, Hestia was the goddess of the everyday, of the continuance of life, the day-in, day-out. Her Roman name was Vesta, and Vestal Virgins were the priestesses of her template and were chosen from patrician families for a long period of time.

*Ares - god of war, he held an adulterous affair with Aphrodite. He (unlike Athena) was a bully, brute and a pretty unlikeable guy (maybe Aphrodite liked him because of his "bad boy" persona). In fact, he was only tolerated because he was the son of both Zeus AND Hera - a fairly infrequent occurrence.

In modern western religion we tend to look at our god figure (or figures) as the creator and grand master of all of creation, infallible and above the petty intrigues of modern man. These figures tend to make the rules, and define what is and isn't acceptable in life and in one's ethical make up.

The Greek gods, in contrast, we're just as fallible (sometimes more so) as human beings. This author would compare the Greek gods exploit's as less of parables and holy acts, and more of a soap opera and comic book set of plot-lines. Incest, castration, murder, all the 'good' makings that modern day television critics might dismiss as "banal".

Yet, as wildly fantastic, scary, and repugnant the adventures of these gods were (and sometimes the gods themselves), they served a purpose. They helped define the seemingly harsh life that the ancient Greeks had to endure. It helped them create structure and reason into a world that sometimes seemed unreasonable. An earthquake destroyed your city? Then Poseidon must have been slighted, build a temple, perform a sacrifice, even curse his name. Sometimes in Western society, science and technology take the place of those Greek gods as we "blame" the inadequacies in either to explain why people weren't evacuated, why something broke and caused people to die, why disease affects people that seemingly don't deserve it.

I started this hub because I have a natural interest in history and mythology. I would personally not consider it a reference source for any school papers that younger folks may be writing - these ancient things called "books" are still useful! Consider this a "work-in-progress", one that still needs even the most basic grammatical and spelling check, but I hope it can serve as a "jumping off" point, so you can formulate ideas on what you want to write about (if you are a student), or stimulates you to do more research (if you are a fan of Greek mythology.)

I used the wikipedia extensively to begin my work, then I progressed to using The Complete Encyclopedia Of Greek Mythology by Guus Houtzager to flesh out some of these gods and goddesses a bit more fully.