Greek Gods
Greek Gods and Goddesses are one of the basic elements of Greek
Mythology.
The stories about the lives and the adventures of the Greek Gods known
as myths were originally created by ancient Greeks in an effort to
understand and explain nature and all the things that were at that time
hard to explain using scientific knowledge and logic. These stories,
the Greek myths were spread around by travelers and and storytellers and they became part
of the Greek oral poetic tradition. A number of those myths survived
and are known today because of references at ancient Greek texts like
the Iliad and through iconic representation on ancient Greek art.
There are several references about the creation of Greek Gods and Goddesses in Greek Mythology. The most popular of all is Hesiod's Theogonia (The birth of Gods). Hesiod in his writtings suggests that the first gods were created by Chaos. Those Gods were Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (Underworld), Nyx (Night), Erebus(the darkness of the Underworld) and Eros (Love). Later Gaia gave birth to Uranus who was the father of Cronus the leader of the Titans.
The Titans ruled during the Golden age and were later overthrown by the Olympian Gods during a war known as Titanomachy (The war of the Titans). In this war Zeus and the other Olympian gods were aided by other deities like the Hecatonchires (Gods with 100 hands), Gigantes (Giants) and the Cyclopes.
After the titanomachy, the reign of the Olympian Gods with Zeus as their leader begins. The Olympian Gods were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Hades, Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares , Hermes, Hephaestus, Demeter, Hestia, Dionysus, Helius, Persephone and Hebe. The Olympian Gods are also known as the Dodekatheon , which in Greek means the twelve gods. However, you might have noticed that in the list above there are seventeen and not twelve gods listed. This is because at various times these seventeen different gods were recognized as Olympians, however never more than twelve at one time.
However, during the period that the Olympian Gods and Goddesses were the principal deities, there were also a large number of other Gods and Goddesses that the Greeks were worshiping. Many regions in Greece worshiped their minor gods and goddesses that were probably even unknown in other regions.