Personified spirit (daimon) of zeal, emulation and rivalry — for Hesiod the son of the Titan Pallas and the Oceanid Styx, and eldest of her four winged children who attend Zeus.1
Zelus is the personification of zeal, emulation and the rivalry that drives one to match or outdo another. In Hesiod's Theogony he is named first among the children whom Styx, daughter of Ocean, bore in love to the Titan Pallas: Zelus (Emulation) and trim-ankled Nike (Victory), and after them Cratos (Strength) and Bia (Force), wonderful children. Apollodorus gives the same parentage, listing Zelus first of the four offspring of Pallas and Styx, while Hyginus, who keeps the line of Pallas and Styx, renders the same figure under his Latin name Invidia (Envy).2
Like his brothers and sister, Zelus has no house apart from Zeus, no dwelling and no path except where the god leads them; instead the four sit forever beside Zeus the loud-thunderer. This intimacy is the wage of an old loyalty: when the Olympian Lightning-god called all the deathless gods to Olympus and promised that whoever fought at his side against the Titans should keep his office and honour, deathless Styx came first of all, on the counsel of her father Oceanus, bringing her children with her. Zeus honoured her with great gifts and made her the oath of the gods, and her children he kept to live with him always.3
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story